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Ekvtime Takaishvili
Paris. The Twenties. The 20th century. With its everlasting festive mood, this city looks
like a huge carnival. The French refer to this period as Les annes folles (The Crazy
Years), underlining the intense sociocultural and artistic dynamics of the
decade. The atmosphere of the years following the First World War was
full of optimism, lightheartedness and cheerfulness. It is the beginning
of Art Deco and jazz People like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso and
Matisse gather at evenings in salons to talk about art, and when it gets dark,
the festivities begin and Parisians get dizzy from the citys innumerable
luminaries.
A Georgian scientist was living in Paris during this legendary period.
He was not that fond of ball-masquerades and was living in extreme
hardship, but at the same time, he possessed an invaluable treasure
It was Ekvtime Takaishvili founder and chairman of the Society
of History and Ethnography of Georgia, lecturer, archaeologist,
antiquity collector, and the greatest protector of Georgian
treasures that has ever existed.
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treasures starts...
Nobody thought that the countrys fate would turn out this way.
the time they had agreed upon. The ship was already quite far
The red army then headed towards Kutaisi. It was clear that if the
the reason why it was moved, first to Batumi, and then to France,
any custodian.
On the 11th of March 1921, the Georgian treasure was leaving its
homeland in front of Ekvtime
They began to pursue it with a little boat and found themselves
in a very harsh weather. The captain even told them that the
chances of survival were almost inexistent; but with fates help,
they managed to get to Istanbul alive. As soon as they arrived,
they unloaded the packages from the Ernest Renan and then
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after an illness. They say that after her death, Ekvtime became
tranquility.
period of time, their daily ration was one liter of goat milk, one
egg for each, and 400 grams of bread.
About two years had passed since his arrival in France when
the Georgian treasure was under threat again, this time by
the New York Art Museum: the director of the museum had
the fact that her new Parisian life was radically different from
it was the peoples property, that guarding the items that one
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untouched.
scientists was sent from Georgia to bring back the treasure. One
of them had written that there was no hope that the treasure
were offering a large sum of money, and promised to edit albums for
them. Naturally, Ekvtime once again categorically denied the offer.
The noble emigrant Salome Dadiani was also asking for a part
of the treasure that had belonged to her family. The matter got
processed in court, and Takaishvili finally won.
The situation got very difficult when in 1932, after the League of
they got him proper clothes in Cairo, and then brought him back
to Georgia.
Ekvtime and several other Georgians, and moved the treasure from
the bank to the basement of the National Library of Versailles. They
After the end of the war and the German capitulation, Ekvtime
Takaishvili addressed the French Government to ask them to
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