# Painted Glass Goblet from the Begram Hoard > Unknown Alexandrian glass workshop - 1st century CE > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/alexandrian-glass-workshop/begram-hoard-glass-goblet-kabul/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-25 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Alexandrian glass workshop - **Date:** 1st century CE - **Medium:** Colourless blown glass, decorated in opaque polychrome pigment fired onto the surface (painted, or enamelled, glass) - **Dimensions:** Not published in the sources consulted for this record - **Object type:** Glass - **Period:** Kushan-era Afghanistan, 1st century CE (Roman import) - **Current location:** National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A painted glass goblet from Room 13 of the Begram hoard, one of hundreds of objects sealed into two locked storerooms at Begram, north of Kabul, and excavated by a French mission led by Joseph and Ria Hackin between 1937 and 1939. Made by blowing colourless glass and firing polychrome pigment onto its surface, the goblet belongs to a class of painted vessels attributed to a workshop in Roman Egypt, most likely Alexandria, and is one of roughly fifteen such goblets among a wider hoard of some 180 glass vessels, alongside Indian ivories, Chinese lacquer and Roman bronzes.What the sealed rooms actually were remains disputed: the Hackins read them as a Kushan royal treasury, Sanjyot Mehendale has argued for a merchant's warehouse of trading stock, and Lauren Morris's more recent research questions the ritual-versus-utilitarian framing behind both readings. The goblet's own modern survival is equally dramatic. While the wider museum collection was devastated during Afghanistan's civil war, a portion of the treasure, hidden in a Central Bank vault from 1989, was found intact in April 2004 and later exhibited internationally, including a run at the British Museum in 2011, before returning to Kabul.This record covers only this one goblet. The Begram hoard's other glass, its ivories, lacquer and bronzes are separate objects with separate histories, and no image of them should be mistaken for this piece. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1st century CE** Unknown Alexandrian (Roman Egyptian) glass workshop `[unknown]` (manufacture) Attributed on stylistic and technical grounds to a workshop in Roman Egypt, most likely Alexandria, following Whitehouse's and Menninger's classification of the Begram glass corpus. No maker is named or documented. Graded unknown: no maker or workshop is documented by name; the Alexandrian attribution is a scholarly stylistic argument, not a documented fact. - **1st century CE-1937-1939** Unknown; reached Begram via long-distance trade `[disputed]` (transit and deposition at Begram) How and why the goblet came to be sealed in Room 13 is the central unresolved question about the whole hoard. The excavators, Joseph and Ria Hackin, read the sealed rooms as a Kushan royal treasury concealed around the mid-3rd century CE against a Sasanian threat. Sanjyot Mehendale has argued instead that the rooms held merchant's trading stock that reached Begram by sea to Indian ports and then overland by caravan. Lauren Morris's 2021 dissertation questions the ritual-versus-utilitarian framing shared by both earlier readings and proposes the material could have been deposited later, in the late 3rd or early 4th century CE. No consensus exists. - **1939** Delegation Archeologique Francaise en Afghanistan (excavators Joseph and Ria Hackin) `[documented]` (excavation) Room 10 was opened in 1937 and Room 13 in 1939 during the DAFA mission directed by Joseph Hackin, with Ria Hackin leading the on-site excavation of the sealed rooms. This goblet's recorded findspot is Room 13. - **1922 (agreement) / 1939 (find)-1979** National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul `[documented]` (allocation under the 1922 France-Afghanistan partage agreement, then public display) Under the 1922 agreement, Begram finds were divided between the Musee Guimet, Paris, and the National Museum of Afghanistan, with Afghanistan retaining the unique and exceptional pieces. This goblet remained part of the Kabul collection; comparable painted goblets from the same excavation are held by the Guimet under the French share. - **1979-1996** National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul `[documented]` (closure and wartime disruption) The museum's public operations were disrupted by the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s. Once civil war reached Kabul in the early 1990s, the wider national collection suffered catastrophic losses: an estimated 70 percent of the museum's roughly 100,000 objects were looted or destroyed by 1994, the building was damaged by rocket fire and later used as a military position, and surviving material was moved to the Kabul Hotel for safekeeping. This is the documented contrast against which the Begram hoard's own survival stands. - **1989-2004** National Museum of Afghanistan, held in a Central Bank of Afghanistan vault `[documented]` (hoard hidden in Central Bank vault (object class)) In 1989, before the worst of the fighting, museum staff removed a portion of the treasure, described in the sources as the Bactrian hoard and other artifacts, to an underground vault at the Central Bank, an operation supervised by museum director Omara Khan Masoudi. The vault, six safes in total, was opened intact in April 2004 by a team of about 30 archaeologists and officials; roughly 2,000 objects were inventoried undamaged. Begram glass goblets are recorded among the recovered material. - **1989-2004** National Museum of Afghanistan, held in a Central Bank of Afghanistan vault `[unknown]` (this specific goblet's presence in the hidden group) The sources consulted do not confirm that this specific goblet, as opposed to the Begram glass corpus generally, followed this exact 1989-2004 hidden-vault custody route rather than some other wartime safekeeping arrangement. - **2004-2011** National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul `[documented]` (post-rediscovery custody and international tour) Afghan national collection material, including Begram objects, toured internationally after 2004 as Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, May-September 2008; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June-September 2009; also shown at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) and, retitled Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World, at the British Museum, London, March-July 2011. This goblet is specifically documented at the British Museum leg, photographed there on 2 June 2011. - **2011-present** National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul `[documented]` (current institutional custody) The object is understood to be back in the custody of the National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul, as part of the returned international-tour loan group. The museum closed briefly around the August 2021 change of government and reopened on 25 November 2021 under Taliban-provided security; no source consulted reports damage to Begram material since that reopening. - **2011-present** National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul `[unknown]` (exact date the object returned to Kabul) The sources consulted do not give an exact return date or confirm whether the object travelled to further venues into 2012 or 2013 before its return. ## Open questions - What figural scene, if any, is painted on this specific goblet? The documentation available for this record identifies it only as a large painted goblet from Room 13, unlike several other Begram goblets whose subjects are individually named. - Was this goblet part of the material moved to the Central Bank vault in 1989 and rediscovered in April 2004, or did it survive by a different, undocumented route through the museum's 1979-2001 disruption? The sources consulted document Begram glass goblets among the vaulted recoveries as a class, not this piece individually. - What is the goblet's Kabul museum inventory or accession number, and what was its original DAFA field or excavation number from the 1939 opening of Room 13? Neither is given in the sources consulted. - Exactly when did this goblet return to Kabul after the 2011 British Museum exhibition, and did it travel to any further cities on the tour before or after that leg? Not established in the sources consulted. - Could Lauren Morris's proposed later deposition date for the Begram hoard, potentially as late as the end of the 3rd or start of the 4th century CE, affect the dating of this vessel's context, as distinct from its likely 1st-century manufacture? The two dates, manufacture and deposition, are not the same question, and the sources consulted do not resolve how the later deposition argument bears on individual objects. - Which of the two reported closing dates for the British Museum's 2011 exhibition, 3 July or 17 July, is correct? Sources consulted disagree and this record does not resolve the discrepancy. ## Sources - [1] Wikimedia Commons, File:BegramGoblet.jpg, description page and file metadata (photographer Artacoana, CC BY-SA 3.0; image description records findspot Room 13, National Museum of Afghanistan, photographed at the British Museum, 2 June 2011). - [2] Musee Guimet, official collections page, 'Two female figures under a portico (Begram treasure)' (1922 partage agreement, 1937 and 1939 excavation dates, Joseph and Ria Hackin). - [3] Smithsonian Magazine, 'Lost & Found' (hiding of the treasure in the Central Bank vault under Omara Khan Masoudi, the April 2004 rediscovery, Fredrik Hiebert's account, Begram glass goblets among the recovered objects). - [4] The Art Newspaper, 'National Museum of Afghanistan reopens - but staff are unpaid and Taliban are guarding the treasures' (10 December 2021). - [5] Wikipedia, 'National Museum of Afghanistan' (civil war losses, 1989 vaulting of the Bactrian hoard and other artifacts, 2021 reopening). Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a published institutional history. - [6] Museums Association, 'Urgent calls to protect Afghan cultural workers and safeguard heritage' (August 2021), with statements from UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, ICOM President Alberto Garlandini, Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, archaeologist Ute Franke and UN Special Rapporteur Karima Bennoune. - [7] David Whitehouse, 'Begram: The Glass', Topoi Orient-Occident, vol. 11, no. 1 (2001), reviewing Michael Menninger's 1996 catalogue of the Begram glass corpus (approximately 180 vessels in 13 typological groups). - [8] Impart (Archaeology and Prehistory), 'Begram Ivories' (the Hackins' royal-treasury interpretation and Sanjyot Mehendale's merchant-warehouse and trade-route reassessment). - [9] University of Oxford Podcasts, 'Treasure and archaeology: reflections on the Begram hoard and the interpretation of deposits of valuable objects' (Oxford Treasure Seminar Series), Lauren Morris. - [10] Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, Book 11, section 28, C.D. Yonge translation, via Attalus.org (ancient testimony on the Alexandrian glass industry). - [11] Wikipedia, 'Treasure of Begram' (general overview of the hoard; approximately 180 glass fragments/vessels noted). Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with Menninger 1996 and the DAFA excavation reports. - [12] Wikimedia Commons, Category:Enamelled glass in the Begram Hoard, category listing and individual file metadata (comparanda images, findspots and licences for related Begram goblets and fragments). --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.