Buddhas of Bamiyan
The Buddhas of Bamiyan (or Bamyan) were two 6th-century monumental statues carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of Hazarajat region in central Afghanistan. Carbon dating of the structural components of the Buddhas has determined that the smaller 38 m (125 ft) “Eastern Buddha” was built around 570 CE, and the larger 55 m (180 ft) “Western Buddha” was built around 618 CE.
On orders from Taliban founder Mullah Omar, the statues were destroyed in March 2001.
The two statues: Salsal and Shamama
Inhabitants of the area call the larger statue Salsal (“the light shines through the universe”) and identify it as male. The shorter statue is called Shamama (“Queen Mother”) identifying it as a female figure.
Technically both were reliefs, as at their backs they merged into the cliff wall. The main bodies were hewn directly from the sandstone cliffs, but details were modeled in mud mixed with straw, coated with stucco. This coating, the majority of which wore away long ago, was painted to enhance the expressions of the faces, hands, and folds of the robes; the larger one was painted carmine red, and the smaller one was painted multiple colors. The lower parts of the statues’ arms were constructed from the same mud-straw mix supported on wooden armatures. It is believed that the upper parts of their faces were made from great wooden masks. The rows of holes that can be seen in photographs held wooden pegs that stabilized the outer stucco.
Reconstructing Salsal digitally
After the Taliban leader commissioned the destruction of the statues in 2001, the photos on the internet were what remained of these incredible work of art.
Thanks to photogrammetry, we knew that reconstructing the destroyed sculptures digitally was now possible. Mertaman, a dear member of Scan the World’s community, helped us build a dataset of around 300 photos from multiple angles depicting the larger sculpture before and after its destruction. After working on it for a few months, we are finally proud to share with you the outcome of such hard work.
While the beauty of the original sculpture could never be fully reproduced with the current dataset, we are happy to tell the story of the Buddhas of Bamiyan and finally have one of them on Scan the World’s map.
