In 2016, Herschel Hepler was browsing Google Images to practice his paleography — the study of historical writing systems — when he stumbled upon an eerily familiar photo that would lead to a groundbreaking discovery.
“I recognized it immediately and said, ‘That’s a manuscript in our collection,’” Hepler, a curator at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, recalls.
The museum had recently acquired the manuscript — a rare Jewish prayer book — believing it to be part of the famous Cairo Geniza, a trove of ancient Jewish documents uncovered in a Cairo synagogue in the late 19th century.
But the black and white picture in Tablet magazine described the manuscript as a “16th to 17th century Hebrew book of Psalms, said to be from the Bamiyan area” of central Afghanistan.
Stunned by the revelation, Hepler set out to verify it. Tracking down the author of the Tablet article, British historian and archaeologist Jonathan Lee, Hepler confirmed that Lee had in fact found the book in an Afghan warlord’s possession in 1998 and photographed the cover and two inside pages.
“Without Jonathan’s documentation from his trip to Bamiyan in 1998, we would still be assuming this is probably from the Cairo Geniza,” Hepler said.
But if Hepler was surprised to learn about the book’s origin in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, Lee was equally stunned when Hepler revealed that the manuscript had been carbon-dated to at least the 9th century.
“At that point, I realized that the discovery was of major importance,” Lee said via email.
Recognizing their combined expertise — Hepler in Hebrew manuscripts and Lee in Afghan history — the duo joined forces and invited in other experts.
Their yearslong research not only established the manuscript as the oldest-known Hebrew book but also unearthed evidence that Jews had lived in Afghanistan — and along the ancient Silk Roads — for longer than historians previously believed.
But the thrill of discovery was dampened by the realization that the manuscript had probably been smuggled out of war-torn Afghanistan and bought on the antiquities market.
At the time, the museum, founded by the Green family, owners of the Hobby Lobby arts and craft company, was still reeling from its acquisition of artifacts smuggled from Iraq and Egypt.
The museum faced a significant challenge: Before it could showcase it to the world, it needed to legitimize its ownership of the manuscript. This required years of delicate negotiations with New York’s small Afghan Jewish community and an Afghan government teetering on the brink of collapse. The stakes were high, and the path to secure the manuscript’s rightful place in the museum would prove be too complex and demanding.
Lee’s discovery
Lee, who has spent the better part of the last five decades researching and writing about Afghan history and archaeology, discovered the book by chance.
In April 1998, he was guiding a Japanese TV crew in Bamiyan and was on the lookout for a Bactrian language inscription and gold coins looted from an ancient Buddhist shrine.
At the time, the Bamiyan Valley, with its famed Buddha statues still standing, was controlled by a local Shiite insurgent group, while the Taliban ruled most of the rest of the country.
The anti-Taliban group’s leader, Karim Khalili, kept a collection of antiquities, among them the cache of gold coins Lee had been looking for. Lee photographed them.
“Then, his [Khalili’s] advisers brought in a miscellaneous collection of other antiquities that included the ALQ,” Lee said, using the acronym for the “Afghan Liturgical Quire,” the Hebrew book in the Bible Museum’s collection.
A local man affiliated with the Shiite insurgent group had found the book under a collapsed roof in a cave the prior year and given it to Khalili.
Unversed in Hebrew, Khalili apparently showed the book to other foreigners visiting Bamiyan, trying to figure out what it was.
“I was told it had been found in Bamiyan, but then everything is found in Bamiyan,” Lee said.
As Lee recalls, the pocket-size book looked remarkably well-preserved for its age.
“The cover was somewhat bent, damaged and watermarked, but the folios were relatively well-preserved, and most of the texts readable,” he said.
To Lee, that suggested the manuscript was “not that old.” He left Afghanistan and for years didn’t give it much thought.
How and when the manuscript left Afghanistan remains unknown.
The 1990s were a dark period for Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage. As armed groups fought over territory, their men — often directed by their commanders and guided by traffickers — plundered the country’s vast archaeological sites and ransacked its museums. Seventy percent of the national museum’s treasures vanished, according to one estimate, many ending up in private collections and some reputable institutions.
“There is a long history of illicit export of antiquities from the country that goes back for decades but ultimately back to colonial times,” said Cecilia Palombo, a University of Chicago professor who has researched the plunder of Afghan antiquities.
A leading researcher with extensive experience in Afghanistan said the manuscript was likely taken out of the country after the Taliban overran Bamiyan in late 1998. The researcher spoke on condition of anonymity.
Research by the Bible museum found that an unnamed Khalili deputy made multiple sales attempts in the United States and Europe between 1998 and 2001 before “apparently” offloading it to a private collector in London in fall 2001. The collector kept it for a decade or more before Hobby Lobby bought it in 2013 and donated it to the museum.
The office of Khalili, who later served as a vice president, declined a VOA interview request.
The Tablet article
Although Lee had found the book in Afghanistan, he didn’t know how significant it was. On returning to England, he showed his photographs to a Hebrew specialist, who thought it was from the 16th or 17th century.
Then, after a cache of ancient documents dubbed the “Afghan Geniza” surfaced on the international art market, Lee decided to publish his photograph, along with an article about Afghan Jewish history. Citing the book as an example of “Jewish material [turning up] occasionally” in Afghanistan, he wrote that the “whereabouts of this manuscript is now unknown.”
He would find out four years later. That’s when, “out of the blue,” Hepler contacted him via LinkedIn and told him the manuscript was not the Book of Psalms but a prayer book, comprising Sabbath prayers, poetry and a partial Haggadah, the Jewish text recited at the Passover seder.
The Green family bought the book from an Israeli antiquities dealer in 2013 during a buying spree of ancient artifacts. Some of these items were later returned after it was discovered they had been illegally taken out of Iraq and Egypt.
The Afghan Liturgical Quire came with a forged provenance of its own, tracing the manuscript to collectors in London in the 1950s, masking any ties to Afghanistan. With Lee’s documentation, the museum was able to correct its provenance.
The museum had initially thought the book was from the 9th century, but a second carbon-dating test performed in 2019 showed it dates to the 8th century, making it two centuries older than the previous oldest-known Hebrew book in the world.
The discovery electrified experts.
For Hebrew scholars, the discovery offered the earliest evidence of a bound Hebrew book.
For Afghanistan specialists, it highlighted “how significant this region was in respect of the history of the Middle East, Inner Asia and Northern India, and Afghanistan’s ancient connectivity with cultures and religious traditions,” Lee said.
Yet the realization that it had been smuggled out of Afghanistan cast a cloud over its legitimacy.
Afghan laws and the 1970 UNESCO Convention make it illegal to export cultural artifacts and heritage items without government approval.
To legitimize its custody of the manuscript, the museum adopted what it calls a “human rights-based approach” to cultural heritage.
Invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the museum argued that the Afghan people and Afghan Jews living in New York have a right to access the manuscript.
“One of the things this project is focused on is on access — so, access to the Afghan Jewish community, access to the people of Afghanistan,” Hepler said.
To get the backing of both stakeholders, the museum initiated discussions with officials of the former Afghan government and members of the Jewish community in New York.
These efforts culminated in the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 2021 with the Afghan embassy in Washington before the Taliban takeover, ensuring the document would be held in custodianship.
The Afghan ambassador at the time, Roya Rahmani, did not respond to a request for an interview. Another former Afghan ambassador wrote a letter of support for the project.
Jack Abraham, head of the Afghan Jewish Federation who was born in Afghanistan, said his group offered its full support for keeping the manuscript in the United States.
“I told [Hepler], ‘What you have in your hands is our heritage. It belongs to us. It could be any of our forefathers,’” Abraham said.
But some Afghans see it as equally part of their heritage.
“This is the property of Afghanistan and must be returned to Afghanistan,” a senior former government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Barnett Rubin, a leading Afghanistan scholar and an advisor on the ALQ project, said both communities can legitimately lay claim to the book.
“The museum wanted to have the approval of any one of the two main entities that might have a claim on it to their custody of it,” Rubin said.
With a custodianship agreement secured, the museum launched an exhibit in September, celebrating the project as an interfaith collaboration among Jews, Christians and Muslims.
A second exhibit is planned for New York starting this month.
While the Bible Museum technically owns the manuscript, Hepler said Afghanistan and the Afghan Jewish community “have a lot of agency in this custodianship.” To that end, the museum plans to provide one high-quality replica to the Jewish community and three to major cultural institutions in Afghanistan.
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