Layman bearing offerings

The Buddhist monasteries at Hadda were famous internationally until their destruction by fire in the 800s CE. One thousand years later, a British explorer named Charles Masson (1800–1853) documented the site and collected many sculptures from the ruins that are now in the British Museum in London. French archaeologists carried out systematic excavations between 1926 and 1929. They brought many sculptures to the National Museum of Asian Art, Guimet, in Paris. Some sculptures entered other museum and private collections around the world. In the 1970s, Afghan archaeologists continued to document the Buddhist sites of Hadda and brought many more sculptures to the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul.