ISTVÁN B. GELLÉR

ISTVÁN B. GELLÉR / THE GROWING CITY / FINDS

About the Town Daimons

The only group of finds which can be proven not to have been unearthed among the ruins of the Growing City. Jean-Luc Troison stumbled upon them on the southern slopes of Takud-Bar, and writes of their discovery in a mass of correspondence. The statuettes were assumed to have been taken by envoys as gifts, but it is also possible that they were identifying marks for ambassadors which gave authority to the message they took. They were probably made of varying materials to delineate the rank of the envoy. The three discovered examples are of bronze and of clay, but there are written references to examples made from gold and of ivory (here possibly mammoth tusk). On the second example to be found (sometimes referred to by Dubonnet simply as "smoky ass"), some traces of gilding were also discovered. We will probably discover more of the accessories of the statuettes when the finds in the imploded salt mines of Obermeisenhausen see the light of day. The motionlessness and closed mass fundamentally signal the meditative character of the Growing City, although the twisted plait of hair intimates a possible explosiveness.
Total uncertainty surrounds the researchers as regards their bases or immediate environment, for Troison makes no reference to any accessories or tools discovered at the find-spot. A solitary piece of data in the Growing City refers to a forty foot high granite plinth on the top of which lay a bronze statue. "There crouches the bronze woman in her malachite nest, her face surveying the clouds", runs the surviving fragment of the ancient incantation.
Another vague reference can be found in Plinius of certain sledges upon which the Town Daimon was dragged from house to house in order to cure various ailments, and which were covered in small bells in gratitude. However, it is most likely that the inhabitants of the Growing City found a means whereby the Daimon or its replica lived between heaven and earth, as is befitting such a case...

Further reading:
The correspondence of Jean-Luc Troison and Alexandre Dubonnet, October-November 1938 as well as the Abu del al-Kallahi publications: The Takud-Bar Discoveries and the Statues of the Town Daimon, The University Press, Ankara, 1939.
The Cellars of Takud-Bar, ib., 1940.
Notes from the Excavations of Jean-Luc Troison, The Growing City Archive, Jersey, Seven Oaks House.

The first and the second City Daemon statues

bronze, 10 × 10 × 15 cm
(traces of gilding on the base and back of the plinthless Statue No. 2)

About the Town Daimons

The first and the second City Daemon statues

Finds