AFGHANISTAN
June 25 till December 1, 2003
extended until
February 29, 2004
Museum of Ethnology
1010 Vienna, Neue Burg
During thousands of years, Afghanistan´s geographic position along the trade routes between China and Central Asia, India and the West has to a large extent influenced the country1s culture and population - a mixture of Turkish peoples and tribes from western Asia. The impression of a medieval country governed by warlords was created by reports of civil war, thousands of refugees, and the subjugation of women. Not many facts more are known about this Asian country, where more than a dozen different languages are spoken. In contrast to the dramatic events of the last two decades, culminating in the expulsion of the puritanical Taliban, in this exposition testimonies of times and ways of life gone by will be uncovered, displaying selected exhibits from the collection of the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna.
Besides objects of the Buddhist and early Islamic period, the exhibition focuses on items of everyday use. Across the two floors of the museum the exhibits are arranged according to specific interrelated subjects reflecting the people and their lives in Afghanistan: their history and their values, war and vanity, their pilgrimages and their hospitality, the works made by their hands and the sound of their songs.
The highlights are comprising a fully equipped tent of Pashtun nomads from south-eastern Afghanistan and a completely furnished yurt from the western part of central Afghanistan. Furthermore the exhibition will feature ornamental knotworks and preciously embroidered garments, weapons with inlaid works and metal fittings, vessels made of turned wood, ceramic, woven objects made of leaves of the Mazari palm, hubble-bubbles, musical instruments, elaborate silver jewellery and decorative jewellery made of glass beads, make-up utensils for women and men, amulets and rosaries, oil lamps made of metal or steatite, household goods and architectural fragments. Treasures of different civilisations will be assembled relating the past to the present and the future.