The cache is being kept by private antique dealers in London, who have been producing a trickle of new documents over the past two years, which is when Shaked believes they were found and pirated out of Afghanistan.As Mr. Norani notes, the looting is unfortunate. We can only hope that the site of origin can be located and excavated properly some day. But even if we are that lucky, much important context for the manuscripts will have been lost.
It is likely they belonged to Jewish merchants on the Silk Road running across Central Asia, said T. Michael Law, a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University's Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
Cultural authorities in Kabul had mixed reactions to the find, which scholars say is without a doubt from Afghanistan, arguing that the Judeo-Persian language used on the scrolls is similar to other Afghan Jewish manuscripts.
National Archives director Sakhi Muneer denied the find was Afghan, arguing that he would have seen it, while an adviser in the Culture Ministry said it "cannot be confirmed but it is entirely possible."
"A lot of old documents and sculptures are not brought to us but are sold elsewhere for 10 times the price" the ministry pays, said adviser Jalal Norani, explaining that excavators and ordinary people who stumble across finds sell them to middlemen who then auction them off in Iran, Pakistan and Europe.
Still, and especially given the volatile politics of the region, we are lucky to have them at all.
HT Sue Homer on FB. Background here.