Gozzo the archaeologist

by Kujivunia

Gozzo-Archaeologist and the Lost City

Gozzo the griffin was a treasure hunter. He liked to dig in the ruins. The earth and ancient garbage hid priceless artifacts from him.

For many months he had been digging up the hill on which, according to ancient legends, the great city of pony Amikla stood, captured and destroyed to the ground in one of the raids of a cruel Handful of Robbers, a fierce and warlike ancient Griffin jarl.

Gozzo the treasure hunter knew well that almost any destructive raid is accompanied not only by ashes, but also by a lot of treasures. Locals always hope to dig up their gold in quieter times, although there is often no one to return for the treasure.

But it turned out that Gorst was also a treasure hunter, and left nothing to Gozzo. The latter found arrowheads, skeletons of ponies, foundations of buildings, whole mountains of clay shards and bricks. And not a single treasure.

Gozzo was desperate. He dreamed that the rune masters would stop enchanting battle swords and money safes and finally invent a magnet for jewelry. But the rune masters did not want to invent a magnet for jewelry in any way, and Gozzo-treasure hunter could not find the treasure in any way.

The Gryphon filled his trusty pipe with tobacco. He wasn't one to give up easily. On the contrary, he was very stubborn. There was only one thought in my head: to dig deeper. He had already tried, but until now there were some clay crumbs instead of stone walls at a greater depth. Obviously, this place used to be much poorer. On the other hand, Gorst the Robber did not look like someone who likes to dig deep, and perhaps some ancient and poor treasures have been preserved for centuries, hiding from everyone under meters of soil.

In the first month of in-depth excavations, Gozzo collected several boxes of ordinary treasures, and then completely dug up the royal tomb, with many golden artifacts, the most wonderful of which were the golden funeral masks of the kings of this city. The griffin immediately realized that he had found the treasures of Falalei himself, who died in this massacre of King Amikles.

Gozzo took out the entire treasure and sold it to the Canterlot Museum. In return, he received a considerable sum and the eternal glory of the discoverer. The resounding success drowned out the voices of critics and skeptics. Someone doubted that all these valuables were one treasure, and considered them a combined hodgepodge from all over the excavation. Others complained about the excavated ruins, where layers of different epochs were mixed into one vinaigrette, from which absolutely no information could be obtained, except that a treasure-digger had been here.

Gozzo paid no attention to them. Fame and money are enough for him. Everyone is capable of criticizing. But who found the treasure of Falalei — Gozzo or his critics? Who made the greatest discovery, who found the two main characters of the "Amikliad", the city of Amikli and its king Falalei — Gozzo or his critics?

But many years later, Gozzo's criticism was joined by the most powerful, most dangerous and most unwanted critic. He was a confident middle-aged archaeologist who had personally developed some archaeological techniques. He came up with the idea of photographing every layer and every find on the spot in order to carefully document the context. It was he who found the site of the Gokhanov massacre, mysteriously eluding generations of archaeologists. It was Gozzo, the archaeologist.

Gozzo the archaeologist resumed the excavations of Amikl, but for a whole week he could not gather his will into a fist, but only drank and cried in his tent, with wild eyes wandered through the vinaigrette from the archaeological layers, shook his fists and exclaimed "Damn you, Gozzo!" - such was the depth of the depths of his mental shock and pain.

One thing consoled him: despite all his stubbornness and determination, Gozzo the treasure hunter was not a tractor. He could not dig up the whole city, and the remains of stone buildings were not particularly destroyed.

For many seasons, Gozzo, an archaeologist, came to dig Amicles, and was able to describe as many as eleven layers, from the primitive parking lot of the oldest ponies, to a thriving center of local trade, which eventually declined and turned into a wooded hill. The only trouble is that the events of the "Amikliad" took place on the Amikli-seven layer, which was confirmed by the conflagration, traces of violent death on chopped skeletons and characteristic bronze arrowheads of the Amiklian era, which could be used by a Handful of Robbers, the ancient Gryphon drottnar, as Gozzo the archaeologist called him, or the leader, as the ponies called him.

Gozzo found the "Falaleian treasure" in the Amikla-two layer, which was a thousand years older than Gorst's raid. Then the city also burned down, and also from a raid... by someone who fired arrows with stone tips -a slightly outdated design not only for Gorst, but also for his twenty—times-great-grandfather.

An annoying mistake was made by a whole tsunami of descriptions of finds on each of the layers and scientific papers on these piles of documents. Falaleian Amicles-seven long summers that were a dark horse against the background of Amicles-two with their rich treasure, finally got their deserved fame.