KEY POINTS:
Some of Afghanistan's oldest and most famous exiles have come home, welcomed by prayers and talk of peace on a chill, grey winter day.
They range from the only known item touched by Alexander the Great to a 2300-year-old shower spout and everyday yak-hair fly swats.
Across from the battle-scarred ruins of the Darul Aman palace in Kabul, National Museum staff began unpacking and logging more than 1400 items - weighing eight to 10 tonnes - from possibly the world's only official museum-in-exile.
"Afghanistan's past, its memory, was lost. Now it has returned," said Paul Bucherer-Dietschi, curator of the Museum-in-Exile in Switzerland, beaming as he opened the first crate.
The celebration was almost six years to the day after the Taleban blew up the standing Buddhas of Bamiyan, towering sculptures carved out of cliffs in a valley in central Afghanistan.
The newly returned treasures are being moved into the same building the Taleban ransacked after taking power in 1996.
Despite their objection to idols and images, the hardline Islamists and their Northern Alliance enemies asked the Foundation Bibliotheca Afghanica in Switzerland for a safe place to store artefacts in 1998. Key Taleban commanders feared their own hardliners would destroy important pieces of the country's history.
The first item pulled out of the first crate yesterday was a gargoyle used as a water spout for bathing in the northern city of Ai-Khanum, founded by Alexander the Great 2330 years ago.
One of the most prized items is a glass phallus inserted every March into a hole in the foundation stone of Ai-Khanum. It is the only known object reliably believed to have been touched by Alexander, who conducted the first ceremony.
- REUTERS
