Two of these many investigation efforts deserve attention. During the period of antiquity, a British envoy by the name of James Lewis abandoned his post for the British East India Company at Agra in 1827 and headed north-east under the alias of Charles Masson. His three-year travels would take him through Northern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and he would later record detailed accounts of his travels for the Bombay Government in the Masson Bombay Dispatches in 1834. This British antiquarian is also known to have surveyed and excavated a significant number of Buddhist artefacts around Kabul and Jalalabad alongside his discoveries from ancient Kapisa, Kushan capital of Begram in the 1st–3rd centuries C.E. The 30,000 coins he recovered during these excavations play a large role in defining the basis of Greco-Bactrain, Indo-Parthian, and Kushan numismatic history of Afghanistan. Most of the treasures and artefacts that Lewis recovered were sent to the British Museum in London where most are housed today.
