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stop excavations at magenesia
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by moniek darge |
24-03-2008 |
read text: monarcheologist_monarchaeologist1.txt
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dear mr. julian h. scaff,
dear levka ori artists,
dear researchers,
first of all i want to apologize, because english isn't my native language...
please let me present myself:
i'm an archaeologist (i rather prefer to stay anonymous, this for a hidden but urgent reason),
and a friend of the daughter of phaedra, the archaeologist you, julian, mention in your most interesting
but quite alarming review, posted on the levka ori website.
in the past mrs. phaedra galanakis came quite often to my university.
she talked about her most astonishing discoveries
and on many occasions she spoke about the ceramic shards you're mentioning in your article.
in fact we kept all of this top secret and we do have good reasons for this.
she once even brought some of the shards with her to our seminar and ever since then,
i'm puzzled by the many questions and secret answers these discoveries reveal.
it's a long story, and until now it's too dangerous to tell anybody any details.
let me just warn all of you.
until now the goats have discovered a wall, that's right
but there's no evidence for the locals it's not just a simple 50 years old left over of a goat barn
let me give you one single hint:
the daughter of phaedra gave me a clue to a possible solution concerning magnesia:
an ancient map, showing cretan settlements of the pheniciens (1200-627 b.c.).
exactly today, march 24th 2008, i discovered a reproduction of a similar ancient map,
proving there has been a flourishing phenician settlement in the neighbourhood of paleochora.
thus long before plato described it, magnesia bloomed!
other phenician settlements on crete were located on the north coast and and on the most eastern tip .
more i can't reveal, since the whole affair should be kept top secret and that's the reason i write you.
phaedra, her daughter and me, we're all very worried about possible excavations at magnesia.
we want to warn you. you will be in huge trouble.
read the works of archaeologist marja gimbutas!
we visited paleochora and especially magnesia often.
this summer my collegues and i will travel to the east of crete
in order to find out about trade routes and other settlements.
let me tell you one thing
the situation is really alarming
abandon any digging project you have in mind
magnesia's secrets must stay hidden for now
why will become clearer to all of you later on
don't tell me, we didn't warn you!
yours,
monarchaeologist
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comments
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do not stop excavations at magnesia but keep it secret by fernand callebert (25/03 15:24)
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indeed adventurous influences could disturb some activities on the magnesia site, but the spirit and the endurance of creative artists will overcome and win.
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indeed the excavation must go on, but... by darge (25/03 19:41)
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dear fernand,
yes, i totally agree with you: the excavations must go on and of course, \"the spirit and the endurance of creative artists will overcome and win\". there\'s no doubt about that. you express this in a very beautiful and powerful way.
but think of the many lugubrious things that happened with archaeologist of for example the toutanchamon grave in egypt. i\'m sure we must inform ourselves in order to be protected, and also to be able to protect the levka ori participants. thus i will try and discover a book of this marja gimbutas in order to find out, what could happen and why, wherefor and when etc.
i think it will be impossible to keep the digging and all of the future treasures and discoveries secret. thus let us do something. i really hope also julian will react, because, as i understand it, he not only wrote the text, but he also had the idea of excavating magnesia. he should also be helping the participants now!
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do we need to excavate? by nico dockx (26/03 14:47)
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and what about imagining archeology differently? do we need to excavate the site. can we research without digging holes?
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No more excavations!!! by Bob Recon (26/03 21:10)
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Excavating, digging up, scraping away, leaving scars...this has been the human modus operandi since we first developed technology. I say no more excavations! If you want to dig, then dig through the pages of Plato\'s Laws. The archaeological discoveries you seek are not in the denuded hills of the Levka Ori but in the words of the crusty old philosopher!
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The excavate or not to excavate? by Julian Scaff (26/03 21:16)
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I think what we are proposing is not a traditional archaeological dig where we gradually disembowel the entire hillside and erect a museum in it\'s stead. Instead we want to tread lightly, to pick carefully through the exposed stones and dryland shrubs. Most of the excavation has already been done for us by centuries of wind erosion and hardy goats. What we venture to gain is immense: insight into the very origins of western philosophy; a glimpse of the worn down foundations of occidental civilization, lying precariously at the very southern edge of Europe.
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the hidden roots of our civilization by darge (27/03 09:10)
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to dig or not to dig is not the question i think.
lets read the monarchaeologists mail once more: something must stay hidden, some knowledge is forbidden...
if there\'s a clue i read we can find it in the works of the worldfamous archaeologist marja gimbutas. i tried to find some of her books, but they\'re not available in bookshops. all sold out. and the internet resources on her work are very untrustworthy, thus i think we could keep on experimenting, searching, reading, thinking, digging and trying to discover what should remain hidden.
but also why we may not have this knowledge? why is it dangerous??? many questions...
many adventures are waiting us
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do not stop the archaelogy of the imagination by fernand callebert (27/03 17:57)
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when I wrote: do not stop excavations, I would suggest to do not stop \'the archaelogy of the imagination\': do not stop to be creative by means of different disciplines. till now on magnesia we had successively visual, musical and literary artists, maybe yet philosophical imputs! is n\'t it nico and bob ?
keep it secret means: what we could find there is maybe so strong, that, before pubishing it, we have to ruminate it again and again. maybe not !
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my opinion about the above text by maarten callebert (28/03 10:15)
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my story goes...
when julian wrote his fictional text, he used real names of real archeologists working in crete. we all agreed this was dangerous, so julian changed the names into fictional names. for this he took a random greek name, found on the internet. little did he know, he took a very common name (like john smith or peter janssens) to use in his text.
monarchaeologist, the anonymous writer (i\'ll presume she is a woman for now), has kept a secret for a long time, protecting what her friend (daughter of phaedra) had found at the magnesia site. to protect this secret, she searches google from time to time for the search phrase \"archaeologist phaedra galanakis\", so she would find out if someone would talk about her findings. when she saw the url to levkaori.org, she clicked it immediately and to her horror, she reads a text about excavating the magnesia site. she reads it diagonally, not knowing the text was pure fiction and the name \"phaedra galanaki\" was a pure coincidence. in a fury, she immediately wrote an e-mail to monique as she thought the \"logos foundation\" is the archeological foundation of the levka ori group. in this mail she tried to warn us not to excavate the site.
when the mail was send, she calmed down, and realized she made a big mistake...
instead of diverting the attention from the site, she awoke our attention, and now everybody is talking about it. telling someone there is a \"secret\" is in fact not what we call \"keeping a secret\"...
in my opinion, there are two possible scenarios:
1. it was in fact a mistake.
we will probably get an email from her in a few days, saying it was all a joke, just to provoke us, or maybe she will say it was \"an art piece\" that was put there to get some \"interaction\" going on the website.
2. it was intended, she wants us to know about the secret.
we will probably get an email form her in a few days, saying it is NOT a joke, we really have to be scared, and really have to stop our meetings in the mountains... but ... in this mail she will reveal even more details about the secret... so we get closer to what is really going on.
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