Ligabue Magazine 50
First semester 2007
Year XXVI
For decades it was the great archaeology mystery.
A train bound for Izmir, a budding young English archaeologist, an elusive femme fatale, and priceless ancient jewellery, seen once but never found again. These were the ingredients in the Dorak Affair, an enigma which seemed destined to remain such. Until one day, a tenacious English journalist came along and discovered a telling typing mistake in a key letter, bringing down the castle of cards in a wretched heap. Only one question then lingered on: why was the whole story invented at all? Davide Domenici gives us a blow-by-blow account up to the scoop that cracked the mystery.
Islands of solitude – Down under, where the Indian Ocean rises up to crash on the coast of the Antarctic, are some of the most impervious and lonely islands in the world. They are part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, inhabited only by wind, sea and ice. The few living creatures you might meet will only be passing through, that is why it is difficult to see humans, seals and penguins all at once. Lucia Simion took a trip down there and shot some photographs of scenes, which seem to be almost spell- bound in solitude.
The Queen of Meroe’s treasure He was looking for a treasure and to find it proceeded to dismantle three pyramids. Then at the top of the highest one he finally discovered the jewels of the Queen of the ancient realm of Meroe, in the Sudan.
The man in question was Giuseppe Ferlini, “a physician, soldier, geographer and archaeologist”. In the 19th century his name was known in the courts of Europe. Then everyone forgot about this extravagant figure, who enjoyed promenading in his native Bologna dressed up as a Turk and discussing queens and lost realms. His story intrigued me so much I decided to retell it in this issue.
Too many pandas – With its cuddly soft-toy look, the panda has become the symbol of wildlife conservation. Now we discover that the pandas have been overprotected and in increasingly large numbers are destroying crops and attacking farm animals. The frustrated Chinese farmers have even begun to kill them. The article explains these developments and outlines the long history that led to the zoological classification of the black-and-white bear.
Mud mosques – To really enjoy the beauty of mud-brick mosques, you have to explore them slowly, towards dusk, when light and shade seem to contend for them. You might even feel the desire to caress their curves, as if those mosques built by hand-modelling mud were human forms.
The largest is at Djennà, in Mali. It is a masterpiece of that original architecture still found in Dogon villages and on the walls of the grain stores owned by women and adorned with reliefs telling of a world that once was. Giulio Badini, who has Africa in his blood, describes this unusual architecture.
Tourists? No thanks – Sooner or later it had to happen. The American Indians no longer want tourists visiting them. At least this is the case with some groups who live along the Orinoco and the Yanomami scattered between Venezuela and Brazil. They have called for a halt to tourism because they realise the extent of the damage hordes of visitors could wreak. They have seen the beginnings of ethnocide and are aware that if they don’t want to lose hands down, they must fight to curb the “contagion” before it becomes a devastating epidemie. Antonio Marazzi reports on how the resistance began.
Venice in windows – We have always guessed that Venice has many different hidden intangible faces. But we had no idea what they might actually look like or where they were concealed, until Riccardo Zipoli, a lecturer in Persian language and literature at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, has been a photographer since 1972, glimpsed one in an unexpected reflection in a window for a few moments, before it vanished. He managed, however, to pull out his camera in time to capture it. Since then, he has stalked those haunting hidden faces through the streets and squares of Venice, wherever light comes out to play.
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