For centuries, the two giant stone Buddhas of Bamiyan province have watched over the restive plains of Afghanistan, the silent guardians of the country's pre-Islamic history.
Painstakingly hewn out of a cliff face by Buddhist monks between the second and fifth centuries AD, their faces have long since disappeared, destroyed by iconoclasts and the elements.
The massive Buddhas carved into sandstone near the provincial capital Bamiyan stand 50 metres and 34.5 metres tall. The larger of the pair is considered the world's tallest standing Buddha.
Before their faces were lost, they wore the same serene smiles of the much later Buddhas in the far East, but their classical features and Hellenistic Greek robes represented their unique place not just in the history of Afghanistan, but of the world in general.
Greece said yesterday some artworks in Afghanistan bore characteristics of ancient Greek history and it may try to buy them to prevent their destruction. "Since some of the monuments have characteristics of the Hellenistic period, the Greek government . . . is considering buying and transferring the statues to Greece", the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Panos Beglitis, said in Athens.
The Buddhist artworks contain Hellenistic elements from the 3rd century BC, a leftover of Alexander the Great's campaign of conquest stretching from Greece into south-central Asia.
The statues represent some of the first examples of Buddhist art representing the form of the Lord Buddha himself. When they were built, Afghanistan was one of the most cosmopolitan regions in the world, a stop along the fabled Silk Route and a melting pot of merchants, travellers and artists from China and India, central Asia and the Roman Empire.
Buddhism was introduced in Afghanistan around the third century BC and the area around Bamiyan, in the centre of the country, remained Buddhist until the arrival of Islam in the mid800s.
Islam was not fully established in the region until the 11th century AD.
Once protected by pilgrims and monks who lived in nearby caves, the Buddhas of Bamiyan were one of Afghanistan's leading tourist attractions until the 1979 Soviet invasion and subsequent civil war.
They now appear to be doomed, victims of a Taliban decree ordering the destruction of all statues in the country to prevent the worshiping of "false idols."