Man Spends 23 Years Carving Sprawling Underground Temple Under His House
July 4, 2018 5:15 PM   Subscribe

"Levon Arakelyan was 44 years old in 1985, when his wife asked him to dig a potato storage pit under their house in the village of Arinj, in Armenia’s Kotayk region. He obliged, but after finishing work on the pit, he just couldn’t stop chiselling, so he kept at it every day, for the next 23 years." Man Spends 23 Years Carving Sprawling Underground Temple Under His House.
"Levon Arakelyan’s amazing underground complex covers an area of 280 square meters, reaches up to 20 meters underground and consists of 7 rooms connected by a network of corridors and staircases carved through sheer rock. The walls are decorated with a variety of artistic carvings, mosaics, sculptures and even a small altar. Looking at it all, it seems almost impossible to believe that he did it all exclusively by hand, with hammer and chisel, shunning any modern tools completely."
posted by mbrubeck (44 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is great. There's a William Saroyan short story about a man who digs a home underground and keeps expanding it into a palace, but his sweetheart won't even go inside for a look and breaks up with him for living in a hole.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 5:46 PM on July 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Kids today with their computers and their "Mining Craft!" In my day, you took a chisel and went out into the backyard and it kept us entertained for 23 years!
posted by PlusDistance at 5:50 PM on July 4, 2018 [39 favorites]


The underground home that Saroyan used for his inspiration is in Fresno, California and is the Forestierre Gardens. Here is the wiki link. I recommend it whenever people find themselves in the Central Valley.
posted by jadepearl at 5:57 PM on July 4, 2018 [7 favorites]


This is basically I how I play Minecraft.
posted by JamesBay at 5:57 PM on July 4, 2018 [4 favorites]


NOW HIRING: Orcs
posted by JHarris at 6:11 PM on July 4, 2018 [10 favorites]


Incredible. Thanks for sharing.
posted by dobbs at 6:22 PM on July 4, 2018


At what point does ambition become mental illness?
posted by davebush at 6:23 PM on July 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


Sometimes you just have to paint the cats
posted by thelonius at 6:54 PM on July 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


NOW HIRING: Orcs

Dwarves wielding a mattock will be much more useful...
posted by jim in austin at 6:57 PM on July 4, 2018


This is all very well, but now where does she keep her potatoes?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:58 PM on July 4, 2018 [21 favorites]


At what point does ambition become mental illness?

[CONTENT WARNING]

Well, there are elaborate cave dwellings and dwellings carved into caves and other rock all over Armenia, and in the latter stages of the the genocide carried out against the Armenians by the Turks, it became common practice to herd Armenians into these caves, build bonfires at the entrances, and suffocate them all to death, or if the cave happened to be hundreds of feet deep, simply throw them by the thousands into it.

So in this case, I'd say it was mental illness from the get.
posted by jamjam at 7:07 PM on July 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


a potato storage pit under their house

Why avoid using the word ‘cellar’?
posted by Sys Rq at 7:23 PM on July 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


Because Prince Humperdinck thought Pit of Despair sounded cooler.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 7:30 PM on July 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


At what point does ambition become mental illness?
You are using one to stigmatize the other.
posted by LarsC at 7:44 PM on July 4, 2018 [8 favorites]


I think part of the problem with this question is the public perception that there is a blurry line demarcating mental illness, clinicians can be much more precise. I came across a definition of addiction which suits this situation perfectly: compulsive behavior in spite of negative consequences. Was his behavior compulsive? Probably. Were there negative consequences (as in, losing income, family, community, health)? Probably not. If he had pursued his obsession to the point it was negatively impacting his well-being, then you could conclude, clinically, that he had crossed into mental illness territory.
posted by simra at 8:53 PM on July 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


I don't know, this sounds really passive-aggressive: "You asked me to dig a potato pit, I'm just going out to dig it some more."
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:55 PM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Huh.

I wonder if my house is on bedrock.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:01 PM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I dig it.
posted by darkstar at 9:11 PM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Well, to quote the article,
Levon worked on his magnus opus until the day he died, in 2008, at the age of 67. He succumbed to a heart attack, but his wife believes it was the work and lack of rest that killed him.

So... sounds like it did impact his physical health at the least. But then again it is the main tourist attraction in the town, and it sounds like his wife was pretty proud of him. So maybe the positive consequences just outweighed the negative ones, to him?

Any way, pretty hard to judge a man's degree of obsession and /or compulsion when he's been dead for 10 years! Neat cave though.
posted by Arandia at 9:54 PM on July 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


There are so many worse things a person could be doing. Perfectly sane in my opinion.
posted by M-x shell at 10:00 PM on July 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


Wouldn't it be cool if you bought a house, and you discovered that this guy had been the previous owner, just by poking around the back of the basement one day?
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 10:11 PM on July 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


This is all very well, but now where does she keep her potatoes?

Do you want hobbits? Because this is how you get hobbits.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:32 PM on July 4, 2018 [7 favorites]


Seems like as good a way as any to spend your life.
posted by bongo_x at 12:10 AM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


Creating by taking away. Pretty neat concept. The only limit was his ambition, and limited he was not.
posted by mantecol at 1:35 AM on July 5, 2018


If you're inspired. Or neck-deep in potatoes.

Ask This Old House - How to Cut and Shape Stones (video, quick, this is how you split rock, square it, and knock down high spots)

The Art of Making in Antiquity (Roman stoneworking tools)
The Art of Making in Antiquity is an innovative digital project designed for the study of Roman stoneworking. Centred on the photographic archive of Peter Rockwell, this website aims to enhance current understanding of the carving process and to investigate the relationship between the surviving objects, the method and sequence of their production and the people who made them. The resource comprises around 2,000 images, largely Roman monuments with a selection of contextual sources, accompanied by analysis of the working practices underlying their making.
The Art of Stoneworking: A Reference Guide - a 1993 book by Peter Rockwell, who put a scan up as an Issu.com browser-ebook thing.

Frilli Gallery 1860 The Carving of a marble block Apollo & Daphe replica after Lorenzo Bernini (video) (I like the bits showing the modern use of the electrical saw to remove shallow slices.)

Frilli Gallery The carving of a marble block Putto Cecioni (video) (Nice bits showing use of the pointing machine to transfer measurements)

Carving Marble with Traditional Tools (video)

A Continuous Shape (video, nice cinematography, needs more step-by-step) - Carving a portrait bust from a model, (after first modeling in clay), London-based stonecarver Anna Rubincam.
webpage, instagram
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:04 AM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


In Saint-Emilion* they have a sort of underground cathedral. Over the years they’ve had to take increasingly drastic reinforcement action to stop the whole place falling into the massive hole. Just saying.

*Vaut le detour
posted by Segundus at 2:31 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


This seems like it would be a giant radon collector.
posted by cmfletcher at 2:50 AM on July 5, 2018


I read that Seymour Cray also liked to tunnel (yes, that Cray) but since I heard the tale it's been Snopes'd, albeit not entirely conclusively. I like it, anyway, especially the original punch-line: "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem", he said.
posted by cstross at 3:01 AM on July 5, 2018


There was an excellent link here a while back... fantasy, fancy web design, a little girl and her trollish daddy, digging deep under the house. "Nice situation you've got here."
posted by Meatbomb at 3:49 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


There's a huge weird labyrinth under Liverpool that were built in the early 1800s for reasons that are still debated. There is a tunnel inside another tunnel, a tunnel directly on top of a tunnel, and a tunnel so small that people suggest perhaps it was built by three year olds.
posted by quacks like a duck at 4:59 AM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


It’s like digging on the beach: big version. There’s something very satisfying about tidying up all that rock into neat lines and shapes.
posted by lucidium at 6:20 AM on July 5, 2018


His wife Tosya, who now runs his underground temple as a tourist attraction, says that he was motivated by a series of visions and dreams in which a mysterious voice told him to keep digging. It said that Levon was going to create a He listened, and worked a whopping 18 hours a day, every day, for 23 years.

Create a what, mysterious voice that told this man to dig out an underground temple until it killed him?

Create a what???
posted by gauche at 6:22 AM on July 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


Mysterious voice: 𝑰'𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒚𝒐𝒖'𝒗𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒅 𝒅𝒊𝒈𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒈
posted by moonmilk at 7:39 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sure hope he placed enough torches down there before he logged out...
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:46 AM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


Best man cave ever.
posted by resurrexit at 9:32 AM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jesus, I feel sorry for his wife, who's putting the best face on it now.

Also, he dug a hole 18 hours a day for 23 years, sleeping three hours a night,and he might've had mental health issues? Didn't he have to work? Spend time with his family? Do—I don't know—anything other than dig a pointless fucking hole on the say-so of a "mysterious voice"? What a tragedy.
posted by the sobsister at 11:44 AM on July 5, 2018 [4 favorites]




Create a what, mysterious voice that told this man to dig out an underground temple until it killed him?

Create a what???


Note that the article very distinctly doesn't say *what* squamous cthonic entity this Temple was designed to venerate. The altar is mentioned, but not pictured, for the idol it displays is repellent to the workings of the unfractured mind. The angles of hand hewn pillars bending beyond descriptions derived from Euclid's limited framework, the textures of stone seem noxiously organic, as if they ripple and suppurate when no eye is cast upon them, the voice that echoes back to you contains words you cannot pronounce, designed for tongues inhuman to gutturally croak and howl IA IA IAAAAAA
posted by FatherDagon at 1:00 PM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


If anyone wants more strange underground temple experiences, I warmly recommend Atlas Obscura's VR tours if you have the hardware, particularly The Temples of Damanhur. A wonderful subterranean phantasmagoria, and still an active religion.
posted by chortly at 2:06 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Well, I did want more strange underground temple experiences, until I read FatherDagon's [eponysterical] post and my eyes melted.
posted by moonmilk at 2:31 PM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't think that anyone in this thread is qualified to diagnose this guy based on the article. I also have no idea the state of feminism in 1980s Armenia but am willing to believe that he didn't do his share of emotional labor. This looks like outsider art to me. He felt compelled to create something, people have passions. He was an artisan who spent a great portion of his life working on his magnum opus and he left behind something that can be admired or disparaged depending on how you look at it. I think it's art.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 12:00 AM on July 6, 2018


At what point does ambition become mental illness?
You are using one to stigmatize the other.

No, I'm not.
posted by davebush at 6:49 AM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


"There's a William Saroyan short story about a man who digs a home underground and keeps expanding it into a palace, but his sweetheart won't even go inside for a look and breaks up with him for living in a hole."

I've always found the idea of living underground attractive. I find myself idly imagining various structures and whatnot at night before I sleep. I've never bothered to research to see if this is relatively common -- I suspect it is because I can intuit that my attraction relates to a desire for seclusion and security. But I find myself also liking the idea for energy conservation reasons and related. I tend to think about sustainability and self-sufficiency in the design. I'm not at all a prepper in the sense of preparing for civilization breaking down, I just am strongly attracted to the idea of a home that is hidden, secure, and is as self-sufficient as possible. Not because I'm a misanthrope, either, but I really, really like the idea of being able to be secluded when I want to be.

I frequently have dreams about living and/or sleeping in secret rooms in otherwise public places. An underground dwelling is this writ large -- usually when I imagine it, I prefer a natural landscaping above, with as minimal and inconspicuous an entryway as possible.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:26 PM on July 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


sebastienbailard: "Do you want hobbits? "

I mean...yes?
posted by Chrysostom at 7:34 PM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


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