Summary: 1,000yo manuscripts written by ancient Silk Road family found in Afghanistan Nearly 100 mysterious manuscripts thought to be 1,000 years old and written by a Jewish family that lived along the ancient Silk Road have been discovered in an Afghan cave. Scho

 

 

 

 

 

1,000yo manuscripts written by ancient Silk Road family found in Afghanistan

Nearly 100 mysterious manuscripts thought to be 1,000 years old and written by a Jewish family that lived along the ancient Silk Road have been discovered in an Afghan cave.

Scholars and historians are excited about this new cache of documents, which was purchased by Israeli antiquities dealer Lenny Wolfe six months ago.

He came across them as part of an ongoing search for the "Afghan Genizah," a reference to the Cairo Genizah collection of 300,000 Jewish manuscript fragments discovered in a synagogue storeroom in Egypt.

Written in a plethora of languages, including Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo Persian, these new documents are attributed to an 11th Century family headed by Abu Ben Daniel from the northern Afghan city of Bamyan, according to Haaretz.

They would have been quite familiar with the area’s two biggest attractions back then and up until 15 years ago - giant Buddha statues built in the 6th Century and blown up by the Taliban six months before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

 

 

Wolfe first purchased 29 of the documents in 2013, which he returned to Israel where they have been studied in the National Library.

Since then, he’s been on the lookout for more documents from the family’s archive, at the behest of the Israel Antiquities Authority, and purchased the new batch six months ago.

While Wolfe has yet to find a buyer from what he calls an "appropriate institution," it’s understood negotiations are ongoing and his asking price is unknown.