Pakistan’s Barikot Buddhist temple among Top 10 Discoveries of 2022

News Desk

Islamabad: A roughly 2,300-year-old Buddhist temple, discovered last year, in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province has been featured in the “Top 10 Discoveries of 2022” by the renowned Archaeology Magazine.

The ancient Buddhist structure, situated in KP’s Barikot Town, was discovered by archaeologist Luca Maria Olivieri of Ca Foscari University, Italy and his team in collaboration with the provincial department of archaeology and museums in December last year, Arab News reported on Monday.

Barikot Town serves as an entrance town to the picturesque Swat Valley, where thousands of tourists throng every year to vacation in the mountains. The Gandhara region makes up part of present-day northern Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan.

The area is famous for its Gandhara style of art which is heavily influenced by classical Greek and Hellenistic traditions.

This region was a crossroads for the exchange of goods and culture among the civilizations of the Middle East, and Central Asia since the sixth century BC.

The monument is dated back to at least as early as the end of the second century BC, Arab News reported.

This makes it the oldest known Buddhist structure in the region and places its construction firmly during the period when Barikot is known to have been a center of Buddhist teaching and a sacred pilgrimage site, the magazine said.

Archaeologist Maria Olivieri told the magazine that he did not expect there to be Buddhist monuments in the city at such an early stage. Until now, we have not excavated any evidence of Buddhist presence in Barikot dating to before the end of the first century AD, he added.

The remnants excavated from the ancient site include a 10-foot-high apsidal structure on which a circular shrine was later made. The building also contains an iconic cone-shaped Buddhist stupa. Olivieri and his team were surprised by the building’s shape, which is well-known from Buddhist structures at this time but is very rare in Gandhara, the magazine wrote. The team has also found Buddhist sculptures and inscriptions. Additional input from Arab News