Italian archeologists have been protecting Pakistani archeological sites for 70 years: Ambassador Andreas Ferrarese

Newswire

Islamabad: Italy’s Ambassador to Pakistan Andreas Ferrarese this week said that Italian archeologists have been protecting the Pakistani archeological sites for 70 years.

“The Italian archaeological mission in collaboration with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa archaeological department has been protecting and excavating archaeological sites for the last seventy years in Pakistan,” he said after a team of Pakistani and Italian archaeologists found a 2300-year-old Apsidal temple of the Buddhist period and a treasure in the Bazira city of Barikot tehsil, Swat district in Pakistan. The location of these artefacts is in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The head of the Italian archaeological mission in Pakistan Dr Luca Maria Olivery explained that the the Pakistani and Italian archaeologists during joint excavations at a historic site have discovered over 2,300 years old Apsidal temple of the Buddhist period in north-west Pakistan besides recovering other precious artefacts. The temple discovered in Swat is even older than the Temples discovered in Taxila remains of Pakistan.”

Professor Luca said, “This is an astonishingly important discovery as it attests to a new architectural shape of Buddhist structure in Gandhara. We only have one other example of the apsidal temple in a city at Sirkap, Taxila. However, the apsidal temple of Bazira is so far the earliest example of this architecture in Pakistan.”

As per the archaeologists, the temple is almost 2300 years old and along with that 2700 other Buddhist period coins, rings, pots and other artefacts worth millions have been recovered.

An interesting discovery is of something written in the Kharosthi language of the King of Greece, Menander.