Archaeologists Find the Bactrian Gold at Tillya Tepe

In 1978, an archaeological expedition led by Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi dug into a cemetery packed with gold at Tillya Tepe, near Sheberghan in northern Afghanistan. Located barely half a kilometre from the fortified settlement of Yemshi Tepe, the low mound yielded six burial pits holding the remains of five women and one man. Within these graves lay an astonishing assemblage of more than twenty thousand ornaments, coins, and luxury items fashioned from gold, silver, and ivory, a collection that soon became celebrated internationally as the Bactrian gold.

The buried individuals were adorned with an elaborate array of personal goods, including rings, medallions, stone-inlaid necklaces, ornate belts, polylobed daggers, and an intricate folding crown. Physical anthropology revealed that several of the bodies exhibited cranial deformation, a customary practice attested among Central Asian steppe nomads. Datable coinage located in the tombs places the interments around the first century BCE to the first century CE. The graves represent an era when nomadic groups, most notably the Yuezhi, had asserted authority in Bactria following the decline of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom.