The mystery of Father Carlo Crespi's metal library
The Italian Father Carlo Crespi (1891-1982) arrived in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle in 1927.
Over time he collected, at his Salesian mission in Cuenca, a ghostly collection of ancient items of inestimable historical and archaeological value: middle-style-oriental gold statuettes, numerous objects of gold, silver and bronze: scepters, helmets, discs, plates and many metal sheets that contained archaic incisions similar to hieroglyphics, the so-called ''metal library''. Among the several plates, one of them was approximately 20 inches long and had 56 signs stamped on it, as if it were an alphabet older than that of the Phoenicians.
Father Carlo Crespi was very old and perhaps not very lucid when the video of Stanley Hall, attached in this article, was recorded, but in the last part of the video (exactly at minute 4 and 18 seconds) it is very clear that the metallic library, jealously guarded by him, was real.
Watching the last part of the video in slow motion, where you see metal plates, you notice that pictograms or a kind of hieroglyphics are printed there, as if they wanted to represent the history of a town.
Carlo Crespi always declared to everyone who interviewed him that all the elements in his museum had been given to him, over the years, by Suhar indigenous people, who in turn had collected them in the Cueva de los Tayos. Here is a statement from him, repeated many times to various researchers:
Everything that the Indians have brought me from the cave dates back to ancient times, before Christ. Most of the symbols and some prehistoric representations date back to times before the flood.Father Carlo Crespi
The Italian religious man maintained that the finds he was guarding were of antediluvian origin and that they were hidden in the cave by descendants of Middle Eastern peoples who had escaped the flood.
Many people who contacted me during these years argued that Father Carlo Crespi's ''treasure'' was made up of forgeries or real pieces but not from the Cueva de los Tayos.
It is a possibility, but, in my opinion, there is some truth in this story of the Cueva de los Tayos, for several reasons.
First of all, Father Carlo Crespi never gave lectures about his collection and it was never advertised in order to gain money or fame; on the contrary, it was rather elusive and controversial.
What need would there then have been to invent everything and compile a mountain of false articles?
There is then the possibility that he has been deceived by clever craftsmen. To this end, the writer Richard Wingate writes:
It has been said that Father Crespi's pieces are fake and that the indigenous people gave them to him. However, the signs carved on some of them were recognized as Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian hieratic, Punic and Demotic.
How could the indigenous Suhar or improvised artisans from the Cuenca area have transmitted inscriptions in ancient languages on the articles they gave to Crespi?
It is true that all or some of his pieces could have been authentic, but not from the Cueva de los Tayos, but also in this case, why would he have divulged that they were given to him by the Suhar indigenous people? He wouldn't have gained anything by saying that.
Some of Crespi's articles were analyzed by renowned archaeologists, such as Professor Miloslav Stingi, member of the Prague Academy of Sciences, who after having analyzed some of them, said:
The sun is often a central part of some Inca items, but man was never placed on the same plane with the sun, as I see in some of these pieces. There are representations of men with sun rays coming out of their heads, and there are men represented with points, as if they were stars coming out of themselves. The sacred symbol of power has always been the mind, but in these objects the mind or head is represented simultaneously as the sun or a star.
With this statement, Stingi tends to maintain that some of Crespi's articles do not derive from indigenous people (whether Andean or Amazonian), but rather have a different origin. Look carefully at the gold plaque I show below: it is a pyramid with a sun on its top.
Very strangely, the levels of the pyramid are 13 and the sun set on its top is reminiscent of the omniscient eye. On the sides there are also two felines, two elephants and two snakes. At the base of the pyramid are the letters of an archaic alphabet that, according to some, would be a proto-Phoenician.
The pyramid, the sun set on its top and the 13 levels are undoubtedly Masonic symbols. We know that Freemasonry has origins dating back to the nights of the temples and, therefore, this could be a golden plate of Middle Eastern cultures. We also note that elephants are not present in South America (except before the flood, mastodons), and this reinforces the thesis that the object in question has a non-indigenous origin. As far as felines are concerned, these are not pumas or jaguars (typical of Andean and Amazonian cultures), but cats, sacred animals of ancient Egypt. The snake, on the other hand, is a universal symbol worshiped in all cultures of the ancient world as an image of the regeneration of life and a metaphor for the woman's womb (it is found, in fact, in the cracks of rivers).
Also in this object you can notice some important details:
First of all, we find the pyramid again, this time made up of 5 levels. In the first three there are symbols of an ancient, undeciphered alphabet. Then, an elephant, an atypical symbol of South American cultures and, on top, a sun with ten rays.
Has the metal library ever been seen outside the ghostly museum of Father Carlo Crespi?
In fact, there have been some other people who claim to have been inside the Cueva de los Tayos and to have seen with their own eyes other plates of the metal library. The first of all is the Hungarian of Argentine nationality Juan Moricz, who declared that he had completed an expedition in 1965 guided by Suhar indigenous people.
In the second expedition, led by Juan Moricz in 1969, in which Gastón Fernández Botero participated, however, no traces of the metal library were found, but only stalactites and stalagmites.
After the second expedition, Juan Moricz made an attempt to make his discovery official, on July 21, 1969, declaring in front of a notary that he had discovered important objects in archeology in the cave.
Several people have written to me arguing that Moricz had bad faith and that he, after having seen Carlo Crespi's collection and having heard its probable provenance, thought of divulging that he had found the metal library inside the cave to obtain money and fame. This is also a possibility, considering that Moricz never showed any photographs of his findings.
There are, in addition, other statements, such as that of Major Petronio Jaramillo, extracted from the book ''Más Beyond the Andes'' by Pino Turolla.
Jaramillo, who declared having entered the cavern in 1956, described some ancient pieces and the famous metal sheets, but in this case there are no photographs either and, therefore, it can be concluded that the metal library was seen and photographed only and exclusively in the Father Carlo Crespi museum.
When Carlo Crespi died, in April 1982, his wonderful collection of Middle Eastern (or antediluvian) art was removed from the Cuenca museum to an unknown destination.
Some rumors maintained that the Central Bank of Ecuador had purchased, on July 9, 1980, for a sum of $10,667,210, approximately 5,000 archaeological pieces of gold and silver from the Salesian mission.
However, the person in charge of the museum of the Central Bank of Ecuador, Ernesto Davila Trujillo, categorically denied that the State entity had purchased Father Crespi's private collection.
According to other people, Father Crespi's findings were secretly sent to Rome, and today they would be found in some corner of the Vatican.
At this point a consideration arises: if Father Carlo Crespi's objects, including the metal library, were fake, why were they made to disappear?
If they had been fake, they would have been sold at any flea market for a cheap price.
Assuming, therefore, that the majority of those objects were authentic, but not from the Cueva de los Tayos, why would they have been kept right in the Salesian mission of Father Crespi? What need would the legitimate owner (the Salesian order? The Vatican?) have had to send them to Cuenca? Maybe to hide them? In this case, however, Carlo Crespi would never have shown them to anyone.
As can be seen, the mystery of Carlo Crespi's metal library retains its relevance, since no one can be sure of its true origin, much less its current location.
The fact that it has been hidden could be proof not only of its authenticity, but also of its inestimable value and, perhaps, of its uncomfortable meaning.
YURI LEVERATTO
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