The Buddhas of Bamiyan
Fifteen centuries of carved stone, undone in a fortnight.
- EXISTED
- 6th century AD, March 2001
- WHERE
- Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan
- LOST
- March 2001
- CAUSE OF LOSS
- Deliberately dynamited as idolatrous
For fifteen hundred years two colossal Buddhas, one fifty-five metres tall, the other thirty-eight, stood carved into a sandstone cliff in the Bamiyan Valley, on the old Silk Road where the cultures of India, Persia and the Hellenistic world had met and mingled. Monks once gilded their faces and painted the niches above them; travellers for a thousand years recorded their awe.
In the spring of 2001 the Taliban government declared them idols and set about their destruction, first with anti-aircraft guns and artillery, and at last, when the stone proved stubborn, with dynamite lowered into holes drilled in the figures. After two weeks, nothing remained but two vast empty alcoves, the precise negative of what had been lost, a silence in the shape of a god.
Over several weeks in March 2001 the two giant Buddhas were shelled and finally dynamited. Only the empty niches remain in the cliff, the shape of what stood there printed forever on the rock.