#the idea that a codex and a given text are the same is very much an artifact of modern publishing

[delicrieux]

☆ﾐ 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚊𝚢 “𝚘𝚑”

PART 10: BIG DICK IS BACK IN TOWN

y/n is back in brooklyn for the holidays. thinking that a stream will make her feel less homesick for cali, she starts working on her famously titled hentai.free.srv. what was supposed to be a relaxing stream turns into a special delivery about two hours in.

─── corpse husband x reader ─── soc. media + written fiction! ─── word count: 2.2k ─── ❥ req: Here's one... You know those apps for delivery like Domino's or whatnot... What if reader is streaming Among Us with Corpse, and reader mentions they're hungry and Corpse offers to order them food, and readers like no no it's fine... Then there's delivery at the door (Corpse ordered beforehand) 

author’s note: fucky format is also back in town baby!!! also if you find any mistakes - no u didnt <3 thank u everyone for enjoying this story sm i literally cant believe how feral yall going strawberry cow was a nuclear explosion im still recovering tbh. got an ask a while ago and decided to incorporate it into myso. happy holidays everyone! myso will continue on monday!

ultimate masterlist.  ҉  myso masterlist   ҉   previous.  ҉   next.

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Indeed, being soft on any social media platform was the biggest disgrace and needed to be eliminated post haste. Moreover, it was a slippery slope - once you start flooding your timeline with cute imagery and heart emojis, what will stop you from posting inspirational Facebook quotes? Disgusting. If Rae were here, she would chide you (not you thinking about her as if she’s dead or something). For once in your life, you feel like you deserve it. 

Alas, you hope this little chaos you’ve caused is enough to throw everyone off. The stans, especially. You know the hashtags, you’ve seen ARMY scourging for info online with the same fervor and ruthlessness 1 Direction fans hacked airport security cameras just to spy on the boys. If you had any dirty secrets online, they are out to the public now - thankfully, besides the Harry Styles stan account (with edits and all), you have nothing. Though, now that you think about it, exposed nudes would have been better than your Punk!Harry edit receiving almost a million views. God, your life’s a fucking mess.

Your fans aren’t the only ones out for info - you, too, are trying to decipher Rae’s message. Code: Barbecue Sauce. The two of you had come up with it roughly two years ago, around the same time when you promised that if you didn’t find significant others by the time you’re 40, you’ll just marry each other. It was one of the many rules found in your friendship codex. Barbecue Sauce signifies information - an exchange of information. And depending on how it ends or begins (”So I’m sitting there” alludes to Rae, “On my titties” alludes to you), secret data on that person is given away, usually free of charge. 

But why? And to whom did Rae give away what? You had pestered her mercilessly and even sent some voice messages where you were crying. You were only crying because of a video of a grandpa smiling you saw on TikTok, but you are a snake, and so you put those tears to good use. If streaming doesn’t work out, you’ll just become an actress. Hollywood would love you. Your PR firm sure as fuck wouldn’t, though.

Rae was having none of it. She said you’ll figure it out eventually. Told you to channel your superior puzzle skills. You were quick to remind her that you can barely count to ten without having an aneurysm. Oddly serious, she admitted that she worries for you sometimes. Why only sometimes?! you demanded. She merely sighed. uttering under her breath something that sounded closely to “Boke.”

You leave her for barely a week and she’s already neck deep in the gay volleyball anime, hoodie and cardboard cutout and everything. Your life is falling apart.

But Brooklyn is nice. It had snowed when you stepped off of the plane. Thousands of snowflakes sprinkling into your hair, dotting your cheeks and nose. You missed this sight back in Cali. You missed your parents, too. 

Home cooked meals, old sweaters, your old room and about 40GB worth of old high school pictures on your computer. You went through them all one night. Some were stomach churning, cringe inducing nightmares. You were especially fond of those. Texted some of your friends that were still in Brooklyn, met up, decided to bake. Bad idea, Rae was the resident chef back in Cali. Besides laughing till your stomach hurt, and almost burning down your kitchen, nothing all that significant happened. Somewhere down the line, at about 3 am, half-way through a cheesy rom-com you had the overwhelming urge to text Corpse.

That’s where the problems really started. God, you missed California, missed being in the same timezone with a guy you hadn’t even met yet, how embarrassing is that?! You missed skating around and taking pictures of the beach in the setting sun, sending it to him, silently wishing he was with you to admire the view. 

You really want to call him. And to hang out with him. But for some reason, the thought of that springs up immediate anxiety and you shy away from asking. Him sending you cute good morning texts doesn’t help, either. Maybe it’s better he doesn’t know that you’re a blushing, stuttering mess each time you read “baby”. 

Late evening. Your stream is already set up, people are slowly trickling in and you greet them with a grin and a soft “Hello! Hi hi!”. You did your best to make your room a perfectly chaotic backdrop - led lights, an embarrassing amount of anime merch and plushies. You always try to balance out your weeb side by dressing hot as fuck for your streams - today’s inspiration just so happens to be egirls. Mostly because you watched one too many egirl make-up tutorials on TikTok, and also because you’ve been listening to Corpse’s song all day.

Yeah, no, who are you kidding, you dressed up this way because you were hoping Corpse was watching your stream. You didn’t forget your cat headphones, either. You know he likes them. You want to make him suffer. Perhaps then, finally, he will ask you out, so you wouldn’t have to.

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“I feel like,” You start when you put away your phone, staring idly at the chat, “I feel like I need a new name for you guys. Calling you guys after two years of streaming is just... weird, no? I also don’t respect men so I don’t want to call you guys. Like, so many creator’s have, like, a name for their fans. Uhm, Cody Ko has the chodesters, Kurtis Conner has, uh, folks? Kurtis Town? Citizens! Markiplier has mommy issues--” You can’t help snorting, “So, I’ve been, like, thinking - I know, shocking! - so I was thinking I’m gonna name you cockroaches. Because you’re grimy little shits impossible to kill. And also then I can use the legendary Minaj meme ROACHES!”

Your stream enthusiastically echoes ROACHES, making the chat swim. Yes, if anyone would enjoy such a name, it would be your audience. You’re as equally proud as you are disturbed.

“Well, anyway.” Leaning back into your chair, you throw your arms out with a bright grin, “Big dick is back in town, baby! If you noticed the backdrops different, it’s cuz I’m in Brooklyn now. Don’t ask me when I will return to Always Sunny, I don’t plan that far ahead.”

While Minecraft boots up, you decide to answer a few questions.

r u dating sykkuno?

You want to smack your head into the keyboard, but as it is, you can’t exactly afford a new one, so you refrain, “No, Sykkuno and I are not dating, we are just good friends. Uhm, I’m not sure how much I’ll have to repeat this, but, we really aren’t, so if the roaches could chill - Oh my God, that sounds so stupid, I love it - uh, yeah, if the roaches could chill that’d be great.”

the roaches lmao sounds like we’re a sports team

“Oh shit, yeah it does, uh-- maybe I can make like, jerseys or something. That’d be cool, I think.”

how disappointed are your parents with the way your life turned out?

“My parents are actually not disappointed at all!” You say with a cute little smile, “Uhm, they’re both really proud, actually. They’re glad I found something I love doing and made a job outta it. Dad finds my Youtube videos endearing. Yes, they watch pretty much all of my videos, unless I explicitly tell them not to. And yeah, with all the fucks and thirsting for anime characters. Uhm, it was very embarrassing at first, but I mean, after a while, shame just...doesn’t exist anymore, I guess? Funny thing about my parents, actually, when they watch my videos-” You eye catches a comment, “Oh! No, they only watch my Youtube videos. They don’t know how to use Twitter, thank God. Uhm, anyway-- when they hear a name they don’t know, like, I dunno, Dabi, or something, they google--” You’re grinning by now, eyes crinkling, giggling softly, “--who that is, and buy me like, merch and stuff. It’s really cute. 

can i be adopted by ur parents plz

will you and corpse ever collab?!

You were about to answer, though the man of the hour himself decides to do it for you.

Corpse_Husband: yes.

Okay, not to say your heart skipped a beat, but it totally did. With a pleased smile, you nod, like one of those bobble head toys sold at the dollar store. The motion is oddly reminiscent of Sykkuno’s own nod. Perhaps you had picked it up from him. The chat seems to notice.

pack it up, sykkuno

More questions pile about this mysterious collab you and Corpse are planning. Yeah, you’d like to hear more about it, too, since he single highhandedly decided one was happening right now. Corpse remains silent. Fine, keep your secrets. 

“Okay, guys, oh, I mean, roaches, Oh my God--” You’re covering your mouth, giggling, “-calling all roaches, calling all roaches, calm down. Everyone grab a snack and a blanket I’m turning up the music volume so we can all chill. Entering chill zone. Entering chill zone. Roaches, prepare.”

we are prepared

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An hour or so passes and you grow hungry. It shows with the amount of cakes you had baked in your server. Currently, you find yourself throwing eggs at the wall of one of the renovated houses, your face scrunched in concentration and slight frustration. 24 of the 50 eggs have been wasted. “What’s a girl gotta do to get some chicks around here?” you had uttered under your breath, until, finally, a screech - the egg finally spawns a mob. Your mouth falls open, “Aww, look!” You approach it, so small, walking in zigzags beside you, “It’s a baby chicken! Die, bitch.” The baby chicken is no more as you swing your bedazzled (you have mods) diamond sword. You’re cackling by the time the dust settles.

y/n is a child murderer

“Roaches,” You address your fan-base, spurring another fit of laughter - you can’t get over the name, “I think I’m like, forgetting that eating in Minecraft won’t actually make less hungry in real life.”

take a break and go eat queen <3

“Fuck no, we starve and die like men. Now I actually really need another chicken.”

Another twenty minutes trickle by and you’re trying to lure back a panda from the jungle when there’s a knock on your bedroom’s door. Whipping your head to the side, you slide down your headphones. At the same time, your mom pokes her head through the ajar door, “MOM!” You scream, “Get OUT of my room I’m playing Minecraft!” But your yell has no actual bite to it, as you don’t manage to hide your smile. Your mom laughs, doing some sort of sign language and motioning for you to follow her with her head. That or it’s some sort of performative dance. 

“I’m live right now,” You tell her, pointing at your screen. She knows this already, though, “do you want to say hi?” 

The roaches spam the chat with friendly hellos. You mom, quite impatient now, waves you over. 

“Sorry, roaches, mom needs something. Be back in a bit!”

Stopping the stream, you rush out of your seat and pleased she slinks into the hallway. “What’s this about?”

“Your pizza came.”

“My what now?” You echo, confused.

“Domino’s. You ordered pizza?”

“What? No? I was busy with the stream, I never--”

Thankfully, you had managed to grab your phone from your room before you exited. You almost choke on spit once you read the messages.

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You decide that it’ll be impossible to stream after experiencing what you had just experienced. You tweet out a quick apology to the roaches (God, that fucking name) and say that you had a breakdown but you’re okay. That is as a close to the truth as you managed to muster. It’s a sad sight, chewing and crying; your mom winced when she saw your state - disheveled hair and rundown eyeliner and everything. “D’aww,” She had muttered, caressing the top of your head, “don’t cry my little raccoon.”

If anyone was ever to ask you where did your chaotic nature come from, you’d answer with my mom. To make yourself feel better, you took a selfie - duck face and peace sign and the horrible 2000′s angle. Sent it to Rae. 

looking hot, her message read. 

thanks, was all you replied with.

You couldn’t just leave things as they were. Once you calmed down, you wanted to text Corpse, but how would you follow up the ungodly caps lock and screeching? Impossible. An idea sprung to mind, one that was brave. Taking the first step.

Instead of sending a text, you sent a voice memo.

“Thank you for the pizza, it was delicious.”

You voice still sounded a bit raspy. His reply was instant. Your heart skipped a beat. He sent a voice memo back.

“Glad you liked it, baby.”

He was going to be the death of you.

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tags (in italics is those i couldn’t tag! make sure all’s ok w your settings!) : @littlebabysandboxburritos - @fairywriter-oracle - @tsukishimawh0re - @ofstarsanddreams - @bbecc-a - @annshit - @leahh19 - @letsloveimagines - @bellomi-clarke - @wineandionysus - @guiltydols - @onephootinfrontoftheother - @liamakorn - @thirstyfangirl - @lilysdaydreams - @pan-ini - @mxqicshxp - @tanchosanke - @yoshinorecommends - @flightsandfantasy - @liljennyx3 - @slashersdream - @unknown-and-invisible - @sinister-sleep - @fivedicksinatrenchcoat - @mercury–moon - @peterparkerspjsuit - @unstableye - @simonsbluee - @shinyshimaagain - @ppopty - @siriuslystupid - @crapimahuman - @ofthedewthesunlight - @mythicalamphitrite - @artsyally - @corpsesimpp - @corpsewhitetee - @corpse-husbandsimp - @hyp-oh-critical - @roses-and-grasses - @rhyrhy462 - @sparklylandflaplawyer - @charbkgo - @airwaveee - @creativedogs - @kaitlyn2907 - @loxbbg - @afuckingunicornn - @fleurmoon - @yeolliedokai - @truly-dionysus - @multi-fandom-central707

more tags are in the comments bcs tumblr only allows me to tag 50 people max 💙

#corpse husband #corpse #corpse husband x reader #corpse x reader #corpse husband imagine #corpse social media au #corpse husband fanfic #social media au #corpse husband x y/n #corpse x y/n #corpse husband fic #reader #xreader #imagine #imagines #myso #make you say oh

[rosalind-of-arden]

Smoke and Iron Reread chapter 22-23

And now we’re back to Morgan. And Annis. There can never be enough Annis.

A hint in the ephemera here that some level of Obscurist talent may be present in everyone. Potentially relevant in Sword and Pen? Talented metalworkers, storytellers, and Medicas are given as examples. Medicas can use the talent deliberately. Some religions also teach that everyone has the talent. Which ones, I wonder?

This text was written in 1733 but not sent to the Black Archives until 1881. Presumably a year when the Library’s control of information got stricter?

Timeline: it took Morgan “weeks” to figure out how her powers were restricted.

If Gregory didn’t write the script in Morgan’s collar, who did?

Obscurists have room service available.

Annis says that Morgan isn’t feeling well. Specifically, she says Morgan can’t keep anything but soup down. Could be feigning a stomach virus or something. But what else is nausea a symptom of? Pregnancy! Feigning pregnancy would be a very nice and sneaky way of getting out of forced breeding.

In addition to mesmerism, Annis knows “a great many obscure and only partly legal things.” Like what, Annis? We want to know what!

Annis is on Team Morgan in part because it’s what Keria would have wanted, and in part because Gregory is an asshole. Really, I think Morgan has underestimated the number of Obscurists who probably feel the same.

So, did Annis order curry just to troll the English girl, considering they were planning to swap plates?

Morgan “nearly choked” on the curry at first, then powers through eating the rest and decides it’s good enough to get used to the heat. She approaches food the same way she approaches everything else: once she has made up her mind, nothing is stopping her.

Sounds like Morgan and Annis spent some time testing Morgan’s drug-limited powers, and Annis has worked out how to make excuses for Morgan if she isn’t feeling well.

Morgan is worried about Jess and Wolfe. Especially Jess, who she fears might get desperate enough to do something stupid. She does not seem to be concerned about the others, so she definitely trusted Anit.

Morgan did not count on Gregory being able to limit her powers, and again we see some fairly harsh self criticism over that: “What kind of conspiracy couldn’t coordinate efforts? One doomed to fail.”

According to Annis, neither Gregory nor Keria could break the wards on Eskander’s room. Eskander did let Keria in to see him when she asked, and he might have given her a key. There’s how visits with young Christopher could have happened.

Eskander and Keria “understood that love was a trap, a weapon that could be used against them.” Is this why Wolfe thinks his parents hated each other? In addition to being privately guarded with each other, they might have put on a public show of fighting to keep the Archivist from learning how much they cared about each other. Kids can be terrible at lying and keeping secrets, so they might have kept up the act in front of him, in addition to any real tensions he witnessed.

Also, gee, I wonder where Wolfe’s aversion to public displays of affection might come from?

Being in the Iron Tower, and hearing about Eskander and Keria, makes Morgan question her feelings for Jess. This is a very understandable response, really.

Morgan imagining Jess, features she probably appreciates about him: ink-stained fingers, his “quiet, odd smile”, intelligence, speed, violence, fearlessness.

Morgan constantly feels afraid. Realistic response to her situation? Or does she have anxiety on top of that?

More Annis thief skills: she has sewn smuggling pockets into her robes.

The air processing hub is on the 12th floor and Eskander’s room is two floors away, so either 10th or 14th. The library was on the 7th. There is a department on the 4th making the linked crystals.

Apparently, the Artifex department regularly sends ideas to the Obscurists that don’t work. Or at least, that Annis thinks don’t work. How much of this is bad design and how much is coverup of things that work that the Artifex doesn’t want people to know about? What could Obscurists and Artifexes accomplish together if they could actually collaborate without all of the Library’s limitations? I want some Morgan-Thomas collaboration, dammit!

At first it was Morgan reluctant to trust and seek allies. Now she’s realized she needs to work with others, and Annis is the one getting nervous about bringing more people in on their little conspiracy. Annis is a lot like Santi was in Paper and Fire: unhappy with how things are, but afraid of risking the comfortable and (seemingly) safe position she’s created for herself. She’s more easily convinced than Santi was, probably because she only has herself to worry about.

Morgan puts a lot of weight on respecting others’ agency. She’s unhappy about mesmering the servant but justifies it because Gregory was using him too. She cannot justify mesmering the other Obscurists. There’s some immaturity there, that black and white worldview compared to Annis’s pragmatism. Annis has a valid point about the way living in the Iron Tower for a long time would twist a person’s way of thinking. But it’s also a politically savvy move to avoid mesmering any Obscurists: if they find out she’s been mesmering them, they won’t trust her, and she needs to build trust.

Annis on Gregory: “I’ve run circles around that little shite since we were both your age.” So now we officially have conflicting canon on Gregory’s age. Editing error somewhere. Since we have the Wattpad story also putting Gregory’s age the same as Annis and Keria, let’s just conclude that the statement in Paper and Fire is the incorrect one. We can say Wolfe was lying there, if we want to reconcile the whole thing.  He always tends to dissemble after showing affection, and he’s not at his best after being dragged through Rome and into the Iron Tower, so he came up with complete obvious bullshit as an excuse for being nice.

Annis is more comfortable with lying to Pyotr than Morgan. Here’s more of Morgan valuing free choice over manipulation.

More Morgan giggling awkwardly at thoughts of Annis’s love life. More Annis expanding Morgan’s worldview. Morgan: “You didn’t have to, ah, promise him...” *can’t even say sex* Annis: I like sex! Morgan: “Do you love him?” Annis: Aromantic and happy that way!

“In the Tower, we’ve never had the luxury of weddings and marriage and growing old together.” Along with the whole Obscurists don’t get married thing, this seems to suggest that matchmaking isn’t a permanent thing. So even Obscurists lucky enough to get matched with someone they like might get broken up by the breeding system.

We have layers of limitations on Morgan here. There’s the drug restricting some uses of her power. Then there’s the Codex monitoring. There’s Gregory watching her. There’s her own body and the changed nature of her power.

Morgan has much more control over her energy draining than she did in Philadelphia. There, she drained the fields without even knowing it. Now, she could theoretically drain small amounts from many sources if not for the tower’s limitations. She can keep herself from draining Annis and Pyotr.

Energy-hungry Morgan has dark streaks on her hands.

How fucking heavy is this garden level? “The earth here went deep.” That’s going to weigh a lot.

Linking the crystals apparently took enough power that Morgan needs to drain a 10-foot circle of garden. She drains the life so completely from everything around her that the soil isn’t fertile anymore. And she still needs more. Or feels like she needs more. 

It’s hard to tell here how much of her hunger is genuine need to replenish energy and how much is the nature of her energy vampire state. Does she need more and is denying that need by force of will? Or does she have adequate energy but insatiable hunger because of the corruption?

Morgan can barely walk after draining energy.

Morgan really did try to help the crops in Philadelphia grow. So she was healing Santi, weakening the wall, and helping the crops, all at once. That’s how much it took to push her over into corruption.

Fair point by Morgan that her energy draining isn’t all that different from killing and eating things.

Annis compares Morgan to the devil. Ouch. Understandable, but still not the kindest thing to say to a vulnerable teenager.

Morgan is afraid that if she kills a person by draining them, she will become something worse than what she is. She’s afraid of losing control. That and fear that Gregory would kill her first are what keeps her from draining Gregory.

Morgan’s power corruption is an interesting microcosm of what’s going on in the Library as a whole. She has power, and she sets out to use it for good, but becomes corrupted. She has to fight the draw to descend further into corruption in her efforts to achieve her goals because if she lets the corruption take over, she will become a monster. That’s exactly what happened to the Library, starting out powerful but good and becoming corrupt.

#The Great Library #smoke and iron reread #smoke and iron spoilers

[brooklynislandgirl]

Beth and UARF!Billy

All Hands || -

who wakes up first in the morning

He’s still asleep by the time she makes her way into his office with a small pile of reports from Dr Gates. Mostly because he’d been up until dawn watching the weather patterns out on the open water. She knows because she dragged her board out before the last stars faded into obscurity so that she could catch a few waves before proper sun-up. Sometimes when he sits on the docks with his laptop beside him, staring out at the sea, she swears he looks like he’s dying on the inside.Maybe he is. She would, if she couldn’t go out into the ocean.

who’s the first to fall asleep at night

And he’s still working when she leaves the actual facility a little behind the rest of the crew. There’s a get together over at John’s cottage, and they’re making plans on taking a cutter over to the Big Island for their days off, a rarity at the aquarium. But as much fun as everyone is having, it’s too loud. Too drunk. Too everything for comfort and she finds herself cleverly making off with a plate of appetisers no one is going to miss, and some cokes…because Billy doesn’t drink. Which was why they stopped inviting him.

By the time she makes it back to him with her ill-gotten gains, he’s all bent back and head bowed over his laptop. There’s not a single naked person on the screen; he’s editing video for a virtual symposium on seal reclamation. He barely acknowledges her presence except to mutter something under his breath.And much to her surprise, two quiet hours later, he gestures to the only thing that’s changed; a couch unearthed from the Miocene Graduate School epoch of random texts. There’s what looks suspiciously like a doggie blanket draped on one end, and a pillow that doesn’t match anything, anywhere in the universe.What else can she do but curl into a ball and nap?

what they playfully tease each other over

“Doctah Manderly, can you please pass the salt?”“Doctor Riley, have you double checked your figures? Random unsubstantiated facts…”“Doctah Manderly, not da salt I was aksin’ for.”“Perhaps you should have been more clear, Doctor Riley.”

John can’t roll his eyes any harder. “For fucksake, can you just pass her the condiment tray already?”They glance at each other. He’s almost smiling.

It’s going to be a good day.She never does get the salt, though.

what they do when the other’s having a bad day

It’s unusual not to find him with the seals. It’s even more so to have Annie come trotting up to her, teeth tugging at Beth’s skirts gently. By the time they get back to Billy’s office ~never his…parent’s bungalo, she’s noticed~ he’s curled up on the floor, arms and legs tucked as close to his torso as possible. Eyes squeezed shut. All the lights off until the darkness is a living, breathing thing.Not even his laptop is on.She can see from the sliver of light that penetrates the gloom from the open door that his bottle of tablets is laying on its side on his desk, and he tried to give himself a dose of Keppra. The groan directs her attention back to him and she quickly comes inside, Annie at her vanguard, and closes the door.In the silence she picks her way to him and slides down the front of the couch so she’s sitting next to him. Carefully she cushions his head in her lap and starts rubbing small circles between the atlas and axis of his c-spine. She can’t make his migraines go away, she can’t do anything about the seizures, but she can certainly offer what little comfort she can.

how they say ‘i’m sorry’ after arguments

“Wot’s’ee sayin’?” John asks.Ben narrows his eyes and focuses on Billy’s face. A minute later, the whippet-thin groundskeeper shakes his head and shrugs. Which invariably annoys Silver to no end. The blow out last night had been legendary in its own quiet way.Manderly had stood her up. The celebration of her first article co-chaired with Gates, and Tall-Blonde-And-Anti-social couldn’t be assed to show for the cocktail party and the grant announcement. Flint had slipped out and turned back up empty handed and Miranda…had the pinched face of disappointment twinned with worry.

The rest of the crew had taken bets on exactly how upset Hurricane-Beth had been and what kind of fresh hell Manderly had in-store for him. Silver had a hundred bucks riding on the outcome.~*~“In short… it was unavoidable, and maybe in the future, I could be given more than a day’s notice.”“Yeah, okay.”“You…keep saying that. But I don’t quite believe you.”“Okay.”“Doctor Ri–Eliza—Beth. Would you please look at me?”

“Why?”“Because I’m trying to apologise and it’s very disconcerting having to stare down at you.”“And I’m tryin’a read.”

“And I’m trying to apologise.”“Thank you, William. Apology accepted.”Billy throws his hands in the air and wanders off.

which one’s more ticklish

His hands are warm. They are wide-palmed but slender. Long, clever fingers, tapered at the tip. And they are evil. In one of his rare appearances, Billy is joining the pool party. Sits on the edge of her deck chair. In moving her feet so he didn’t crush them, he absolutely noticed the flinch when his thumb graced the line of her in-step. He tries it again and is rewarded with the most unladylike snort in the whole course of human history. She squirms and writhes and the more she does, the firmer his grip becomes because she doesn’t get to escape, and he’s not about to let her kick him.

Her feet are ticklish.He skims his way a little higher, intent on trying for her knees, now that her legs are laid across his lap. She jerks again. This time though there’s no laughter behind it. As soon as his fingers glide over the scar-tissue she bolts upright. Adjusts the wrap so it covers her from the waist down, over her bikini. The gaze she throws his way is full of hurt and full of malice before she stalks off.He mutters under his breath because once more he’s managed to much things up. There ought to be a precisely indexed and double-spaced codex somewhere detailing the nature of women. He doesn’t understand why everything with her is so hard. They aren’t with seals. They aren’t with Miranda. They aren’t with Annie who leans her head into the side of his leg.

their favourite rainy day activities

It’s the off-season and the facility is down to a skeleton crew. Most everyone’s gone to the Big Island or Oahu or even the mainland for some much needed rest. But Billy isn’t satisfied letting other people take care of his seals, and Beth… as much as they don’t get on sometimes… can’t stand the idea of him staying alone, with virtual strangers even if it IS only for a week.So they follow the same patterns they do every day. Walking the beach with Annie and his seals in tow, feeding treats now and again and she collects shells. They eat together quietly. He spends hours in his office, she keeps company with Dr Gates’ open water tank, daydreaming about swimming with the man-eaters that stop by to visit, and with the others. And the rain comes in the quiet of it all, because of course it does. Beth leaves half her hut open to the elements. It’s the least civilised one of the residences. There’s no real furniture, per se, beyond the bed that takes up most of the room inside, a fireplace, some book shelves, the hammock strung up to the beams, and little touches. Her surf-board in a corner, and a few suitcases that live in a perpetual state of Schrodinger’s packing.

Billy lays across the bed on his stomach, reading an honest to goodness novel. He’s got a blanket bunched up under his chest, his arms. She uses his side the same way and flips through her phone for something by Chopin. Annie’s in her own space, as close to him as she can be.They don’t talk, they don’t really do anything. It’s still the best week, ever.

how they surprise each other

“What is that, even?” Billy stares at the dubious blackened lumps of..oddly flat charcoal.“Pancakes!”“Panca-”“Ya know. Breakfast in bed.” The more he pokes at them with the fork the less amused she looks, the less proud.He’s so going to regret this. And so will Annie. And Gates. And Flint. And anyone else who comes into contact with him afterwards.

He forces himself to chew a bite he’s chisled free. His face strained as he whispers, “delicious.”

their most sickening shows of public affection

It’s the New Season Luau.Some of the staff have dug an imu and there’s an entire pig roasting in its depths not far from the long table covered with other things; local delicacies, people’s family recipes, a mixture of traditional and new. There’s no tourists, no visitors. Just the faculty and workers of the research centre.John and Ben and some of the others are flinging a Frisbee just down the beach in full light of the citronella torches. Miranda and Flint are debating with Gates who is content to trade a bottle with Randall.The night air is balmy and Beth’s standing further apart from the rest, arms wrapped around her bare waist. Billy comes up behind her and drops his chin down on the crown of her hair, breathes in the scent of the plumeria blossom tucked behind her ear, Annie leaning against his leg. He rests his arms over top of her. Pulls her closer into him.

He thinks about asking her to dance.She thinks about letting him.

#nolegacies #The Salt in my Bones|Billy Manderly #No Man's Land|Billy and Beth #Urca Aquarium and Research Facility|A Modern AU #Aloha'aina|Hawai'i

[examiningmormonism]

Critically Examining the Case for Book of Mormon Historicity

Preface: This started as a YouTube comment and turned into a much more extended essay, as I had meant to work on such an essay for some time. In case you're inclined to ask why I bothered to write all of this, here's why: for different reasons, I find the ancient Near East, the Bible, ancient Mesoamerica, and Mormon origins to be profoundly interesting, and these subjects converge in discussing with LDS scholars the origins of the Book of Mormon. I've never been LDS and my interest in Mormonism is largely academic, though as a believing Christian I have an interest in engaging Mormonism from an orthodox Christian perspective. For those who are interested in reading through this, I hope it both stimulates your own consideration of these issues and sharpens up your ability to engage credibly with LDS family and friends who use such arguments. This essay considers seventeen arguments made by Dr. John Clark, a well-regarded archaeologist of ancient Mesoamerica.

As a non-Mormon and an interested reader of LDS scholarship (which I enjoy reading in the midst of deep disagreements) , I think that this video provides a good encapsulation of where defenses of Book of Mormon historicity tend to go wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkF4hlddGfw

 The basic model of these arguments for Book of Mormon historicity are that there is a feature of the Book of Mormon text which was unknown or absurd in Joseph's day but which is now confirmed by historians of the ancient Near East and Mesoamerica in our own day. In order to evaluate these arguments, I want to spell out what I take to be important methodological points:

1. The two models we are comparing are a) the Book of Mormon as an ancient Mesoamerican codex engraved by authors of roughly Near Eastern extraction and b) the Book of Mormon as a production of the 19th century, written by author(s) familiar with the then popular ideas about the "Mound Builders." These mounds no longer occasion much interest because most of them have been removed or have been built over. But to persons of Joseph Smith's time and place, the Indian Mounds dotted the landscape and provided observers with much material upon which to speculate. Dan Vogel's "Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon" provides a clear and well-argued defense of this model of Book of Mormon origins.

2. This means that we are not looking at what scholars of ancient America thought in Joseph Smith's day. Then, as today, what academics thought and what was ingrained in the popular understanding were very different things. As LDS scholars often point out, Joseph Smith was relatively unlearned. We would therefore expect a production by Smith or someone associated with him to reflect popular understandings of ancient American civilization rather than academic understandings of that civilization. Hence, to compare what **academics** thought of ancient America in the 19th century with the Book of Mormon is a false trail. Nobody is suggesting that a 19th century scholar of ancient America composed the Book of Mormon.

3. We are not comparing 19th century conceptions of Mesoamerica with 21st century conceptions of Mesoamerica, as nonbelieving accounts for the production of the Book of Mormon do not set its narrative in Central America. Rather, as just described above, the setting of the Book of Mormon according to those who reject its historical authenticity is generally in the North American Heartland, including upstate New York.

These considerations lead us to the most important principle in evaluating claims of Book of Mormon authenticity. If a feature of the Book of Mormon text is found **both** in the ancient world **and** in the popular understanding of Joseph Smith's time and place, then the feature of the text **provides no argument for its authenticity or for its non-authenticity.** Both skeptics and believers of the Book can fall into this trap. In the same vein, we must understand that American culture in the 19th century was far from a monolith. What was believable and normal in 1830 Palmyra might be laughable to a scholar of that period or to a layperson in another area of the country. Thus, that critics once laughed at a feature of the Book of Mormon which has since been found in the ancient world is only significant if the feature was laughable and unexpected in the precise cultural context which enveloped Joseph Smith himself.

Each of the arguments made by Dr. Clark is a point which concerns two worlds. While Dr. Clark is an eminent expert in one of these worlds, in the other, he is merely a layman. The former is Mesoamerica, the latter is 19th century upstate New York. This point must be emphasized, because in several instances Dr. Clark explicitly makes a claim about what was conceivable for "19th century Yankees", with similar claims implied for his other arguments. My argument is that the major failure of his argument turns not on a misunderstanding of Central America (Clark is too much of a scholar to simply have "misconceptions" about Central America), but on a series of failures to grapple with Joseph Smith's own cultural context. Because of the paramount importance of a well-crafted methodology in approaching the question of Book of Mormon historicity, I will be returning to this point again and again in relation to the specific arguments presented by Dr. Clark.

With these points in mind, let's turn to the specific arguments.

1. Metal plates in stone boxes.

The first concerns metal plates sealed in stone boxes. We are told that this claim was thought to be ludicrous in Joseph's time but has since been shown to be authentically ancient. The engraved gold plates of Darius, sealed in a stone box, probably provide the closest analogue to the Book of Mormon plates. But there are serious issues with using this as an argument for the Book's authenticity. First, while engraved metal plates have been found in the ancient world, there has never been a text of the size of the Book of Mormon found- not even close. That a local aristocrat such as Laban had much of the Old Testament translated into Egyptian and engraved on brass plates indicates that the engraving of large records, comprising multiple scrolls, must have been somewhat common in the 6th century BC. The plates that have been discovered provide only a moderate parallel to the description found in the Book of Mormon.

Still, were there no analogue of similar precision found in Joseph Smith's own time and place, this would be a remarkable parallel. However, there are such analogues. The first comes from the surviving Spalding Manuscript, which I use only as an example of what was current in Joseph Smith's background, not as an argument for the Spalding-Rigdon model of BoM authorship. The Spalding Manuscript describes a colony of Roman Christians from the 4th century AD, blown ashore to the American continent accidentally. The internal narrative of the story is that Fabius, the leader of the colony, recorded the history of his people on a document and then sealed it away in a stone box, placing that box inside a cave. Fabius does so in order that the record might come forth and be translated by future Europeans so that they might know the history of Fabius' people. The plates of the Book of Mormon are similarly supposed to record the history of an ancient civilization extracted from the Old World, sealed away in a box with the intention that they should later come forth and be translated so that the later inhabitants of the American continent might know its history. Moreover, testimony from Brigham Young and Oliver Cowdery suggests that the stone box was thought to be hidden away inside a cave filled with records. I am not suggesting literary dependence. Rather, I am pointing out that analogues, even relatively close ones, were indeed present to Joseph Smith in 1830, and that the currency of these ideas indicates that the Book of Mormon's internal account of its sealing in a stone box does not need to be explained in terms of the ancient world: ultimately, it would be a wash.

But what about metal plates? Fabius' account is not engraved on plates of metal. Was this laughable in Smith's context? No, it wasn't. Fawn Brodie (whatever one thinks of her reconstruction of Smith, I refer to her book because of its citation of primary texts) notes that "a Palmyra paper in 1821 had reported that diggers on the Erie Canal had unearthed 'several brass plates' along with skeletons and fragments of pottery." (No Man Knows My History, 35) So, we find that in the cultural world immersing the young Joseph Smith, there are already ideas of records sealed up in stone boxes as well as engraved metal plates, and that these ideas were linked with the Indians, particularly the Mound Builders which forms the setting of the Book of Mormon according to nonbelievers.

So this, at best, is a wash. At worst, the immediacy of the parallel to Joseph's own context and the lack of precise analogues in the Near East (given the length of the record) provides a slight advantage to nonbelieving models for BoM origins. An argument could be made for either, but this is miles away from the slam dunk suggested by Dr. Clark.

2. Ancient American writing

Dr. Clark argues that the Book's description of writing and books in ancient America are exceptionally prescient, given what was then thought of ancient America.

The above examples suffice to show that it was hardly inconceivable in Joseph Smith's world that ancient Americans had writing systems. After all, the fundamental idea undergirding popular ideas about the Mound Builders was that the Mound Builders represented a lost civilization of basically Old World extraction, having all the sophistication known from the Old World, but wiped out by the ancestors of the American Indians known in the 19th century. The Book of Mormon provides a particular spin on this narrative, but it is recognizable as a form of the narrative. So, given the Book's situation in this narrative world (according to those of us who don't believe the Book is historically authentic), it is entirely reasonable that writing systems should be described. And since nobody is alleging that Joseph produced the Book based on an academic understanding of Mesoamerica current in his day, Clark's comparison of the BoM with the scholarly knowledge in 1830 is a false one. However ludicrous ancient American writing might have been to the scholars of 1830, Joseph Smith wasn't acquainted with their ideas, but with the ideas of those for whom ancient American writing was to be expected.

There is thus a close analogue in both the world of Joseph Smith and in ancient Mesoamerica, if one is simply considering the presence of written language. Given that the writing systems of ancient Mesoamerica are not presently related to any Old World writing system, the parallel to the Book of Mormon is quite vague, as the latter describes writing systems derived from Hebrew and Egyptian. So the parallel is merely in the concept of written texts- hardly precise enough to be striking.

3. Ancient American Warfare

Dr. Clark describes the notion of warfare in ancient America as having been "ridiculed" in the Book of Mormon until about twenty years ago. But as before, the question concerns the source of that ridicule. Would a person in Joseph's environment ridicule the idea of wars of extermination among the ancient inhabitants of the Americas? Certainly not. This was the basis for the mythos of the Mound Builders- that the creators of the advanced civilizations of ancient America were savagely wiped out by the ancestors of the Native Americans known to Joseph and his contemporaries. These immense wars of genocide were then seen to explain the ubiquity of the mounds heaped up with the remains of ancient inhabitants of the continent. The Book of Mormon contains a number of passages suggesting its origin, in part, as an etiology of these mounds, where the bones were visibly heaped up almost immediately under the surface:

Alma 16:11: "Nevertheless, after many days their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth, and they were covered with a shallow covering."

Alma 28:11: "And the bodies of many thousands are laid low in the earth, while the bodies of many thousands are moldering in heaps upon the face of the earth; yea, and many thousands are mourning for the loss of their kindred, because they have reason to fear, according to the promises of the Lord, that they are consigned to a state of endless wo."

Mormon 2:15: "And it came to pass that my sorrow did return unto me again, and I saw that the day of grace was passed with them, both temporally and spiritually; for I saw thousands of them hewn down in open rebellion against their God, and heaped up as dung upon the face of the land. And thus three hundred and forty and four years had passed away."

Ether 11:6: "And there was great calamity in all the land, for they had testified that a great curse should come upon the land, and also upon the people, and that there should be a great destruction among them, such an one as never had been upon the face of the earth, and their bones should become as heaps of earth upon the face of the land except they should repent of their wickedness."

Even apart from the link between the Mound Builder mythos and the Book of Mormon, bloody wars with Native Americans were a matter of living memory and direct knowledge for contemporaries of Joseph Smith's. This is one place where I am genuinely mystified by Dr. Clark's assertion. Why would anybody in Joseph Smith's environment be surprised that he describes ancient Americans as fighting wars?

4. Nature of Civilization

Dr. Clark states that the account of ancient American civilization differs markedly from what Joseph would have expected from his own knowledge of the American Indians and their culture, But this misses the point in a crucially important way. The Mound Builder mythos itself arose as an explanation for an apparent discontinuity for the high civilization evident from the mounds and the perceived low culture of the Native Americans of the 19th century. As wrong as Rodney Meldrum is, he and his compatriots have played a helpful role in reminding everyone that there is evidence of civilization in North America, with highways, fortifications, and the like. In their efforts to demonstrate that "Joseph knew" the setting of the Book of Mormon in the Heartland of North America, they have also provided extremely helpful documentation showing that this evidence of civilization was known to Joseph and his contemporaries.The important point is that these features were immediately apparent in Joseph Smith's own day, as the mounds which have now been eradicated or built over were visible to the naked eye and well-known as a feature of the landscape.

[As a minor footnote, even if these things were not known to Joseph and his contemporaries, anyone describing an ancient civilization of Old World extraction would draw features known from Old World cultures, which is particularly predictable for a narrative like the Book of Mormon, anchored in the detailed information given about ancient Israelite civilization.]

According to the Mount Builder mythos, the architects of the great civilization evident in the Mounds were wiped out by the ancestors of the Indians known to 19th century Americans. In the Book of Mormon, this position is neatly filled by the Lamanites, cursed with a red skin (which is at the very least the strong prima facie evidence of the BoM text) and identified as the forefathers of the Indians. 2 Nephi 5:24 serves as an etiology for the perceived low culture of these Indians:

2 Nephi 5:24: "And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey."

Enos 1:20 provides an even clearer example:

Enos 1:20: "And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God. But our labors were vain; their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us."

And see also:

Mormon 6:9: "And it came to pass that they did fall upon my people with the sword, and with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the ax, and with all manner of weapons of war."

The red-skinned Lamanites are noted for their association with the bow and the axe- both well known associates of Native Americans known to Smith, whose favorite weapons were the bow and the tomahawk axe. I'm not sure when the teepee became a stereotype for Native Americans in general, but if it was present in Smith's day (I'm working to confirm or deny its presence), then the notation about the tents provides another specific convergence to Smith's background and context. The reference to the shaven heads likewise hits the mark for the Native Americans known to Smith, for whom a partially or entirely shaved head was a common hairstyle. And the reference to loincloths is easily accounted for in terms of the "breechcloth" which was common to most Native American tribes and would have been immediately known to Smith and his contemporaries. Thus, while the Nephites (and righteous Lamanites who are turned white- thus suggesting a path of redemption for the Natives known to Smith) are described in terms of civilization familiar to the Old World, the Lamanites who are the ancestors of the American Indians known to Smith (in the unbelieving model of Book of Mormon origins) are described in a way which immediately rings true with what was thought in the 19th century. I don't write this to attack Smith or his contemporaries for believing this, but simply to note that the Book of Mormon resembles almost precisely what one would expect from a text drawing on the Mound Builder mythos.

5. Weapons and Armor

Dr. Clark then states that the description of Book of Mormon weapons and armor converge unexpectedly and specifically with ancient Mesoamerica. As evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon, this point cannot prove very much, since the weapons described are easily explained as a result of a) a biblical history of ancient America mirroring biblical warfare, where all of the mentioned weapons and armor are described and b) knowledge of weapons used by Indians of the 19th century and found in Indian Mounds. The latter accounts for the peculiar prominence of the axe (tomahawk) and bow in relation to the Lamanites, who are linked with the Native Americans of the 19th century on the non-historical model of Book of Mormon authorship.

5a. Excursus on Metals in Mesoamerica

By itself, then, the presence of these weapons is neither an argument for or against the Book of Mormon, as their textual presence can be explained both as an authentic Mesoamerican history and as a projection of biblical warfare. However, when further detail is considered, the weapons described point away from Book of Mormon historicity and towards a 19th century origin. First, as mentioned above, the weapons associated with the Lamanites are suggestive of a 19th century cultural background. Second, and more seriously, while most references to Book of Mormon weapons and armor are nondescript concerning their makeup, those details which do exist each point towards a metallic origin. No reader of the Book of Mormon without knowledge of ancient America would have any reason to suppose that they were made of anything else- on "bloodstains" see below. Evidence of metallurgy in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times is slim to nonexistent. It is important to distinguish metallurgy from the use of metal. John Sorenson has plausibly noted linguistic and some archaeological evidence for the use of metals in Central America during Book of Mormon times.

However, as Deanne Matheny points out:

"It is important to distinguish between metalworking, 'the act or process of shaping things out of metal' and metallurgy, the 'science and technology of metals' which may involve such processes as smelting, casting, and alloying." ("Does the Shoe Fit" in "New Approaches to the Book of Mormon", p. 283)

The Book of Mormon is very clear that the Lehites and the Jaredites possessed advanced metallurgical technology. Not only does the text describe tools (such as swords fashioned after Laban's model) which can only be produced by metallurgy, it makes explicit references to metallurgy. "Dross" is used as a metaphor in both Alma 32:3 and 34:29. The latter is placed in the mouth of Alma himself, preaching to the people and saying "if ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth) and is trodden under foot of men." This comment is immensely significant in evaluating the presence of metallurgy in the Book of Mormon, because its use as a metaphor indicates that it must have been common enough for the average person to understand. Hence, in the society described, metallurgists would play an important economic and civic role, and given the intelligibility of the metaphor, it would be strange if Book of Mormon civilizations did not use their knowledge of advanced metallurgy to produce metal weapons and armor, as such implements would provide a decisive advantage in war with those cities which did not use metallurgical technology.

Helaman 6:11 explicitly describes the extent of metallurgy at this point in Book of Mormon history: "And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich."

Helaman 6:9 describes the geographical extent of this knowledge: "And it came to pass that they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceeding plenty of gold, and of silver, and of all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north."

Thus, in the first century before Christ, advanced metallurgy is known among both Nephites and Lamanites and is prominent throughout the entirety of the lands described in the text. Given the vast extent of this knowledge- in both land northward and land southward, among both Nephites and Lamanites, among both rich and common (as evident in its intelligible metaphorical application)- it would be totally unexpected for this knowledge to simply pass away, as some Book of Mormon scholars have suggested occurred. Metallurgy is an important enough technology that once it is established on a large scale, it will not be forgotten by accident.

2 Nephi 5:14-15: And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people. And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance.

The close textual conjunction of the making of swords like Laban's sword and the description of metallurgy strongly mitigates against an interpretation which suggests that the swords were like Laban's in form but not in their metallic constitution. 1 Nephi 17:10-11 describes the process of Nephi's metallurgical knowledge, where ore is mined, refined through the use of bellows as smelting tools. The emphasis placed on the working of various metals suggests that they must have been of supreme importance in Book of Mormon societies. Indeed, the use of metal seems to be a literary motif that runs throughout the Book, as signified in its engraving on a book of metal plates.

Jarom 1:8: And we multiplied exceedingly, and spread upon the face of the land, and became exceedingly rich in gold, and in silver, and in precious things, and in fine workmanship of wood, in buildings, and in machinery, and also in iron and copper, and brass and steel, making all manner of tools of every kind to till the ground, and weapons of war -- yea, the sharp pointed arrow, and the quiver, and the dart, and the javelin, and all preparations for war.

The text here links the use of metallurgical "machinery" with the making of both agricultural tools and weapons of war. Such would be expected from a projection of Old World civilization as known from the Bible, but would be manifestly unexpected as a description of an ancient Mesoamerican civilization.

Ether 7:9: Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.

Here, almost at the earliest point in Book of Mormon history, we are told of metal swords being produced by metallurgy in ancient America.

Ether 10:23-27: And they did work in all manner of ore, and they did make gold, and silver, and iron, and brass, and all manner of metals; and they did dig it out of the earth; wherefore they did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper. And they did work all manner of fine work. And they did have silks, and fine-twined linen; and they did work all manner of cloth, that they might clothe themselves from their nakedness. And they did make all manner of tools to till the earth, both to plow and to sow, to reap and to hoe, and also to thrash. And they did make all manner of tools with which they did work their beasts. And they did make all manner of weapons of war. And they did work all manner of work of exceedingly curious workmanship.

Several centuries later (during the time of Kish and Lib) in Jaredite history, metal is a central feature of Jaredite civilization, and the mining of ore and its refining into metal is described in the context of agricultural tools and weapons of war. The phrase "exceedingly curious workmanship" is also generally used of metallic implements in the Book of Mormon.

At the very latest point in Book of Mormon chronology, Moroni indicates that metallurgical knowledge was available to him in Mormon 8:5: "Behold, my father hath made this record, and he hath written the intent thereof. And behold, I would write it also if I had room upon the plates, but I have not; and ore I have none, for I am alone."

If ore were available, the text clearly implies, Moroni had the skills necessary to extract the necessary metals and make additional plates. Thus, metallurgy is in evidence from almost the beginning of the Jaredite history to the exact end of the Lehite history. Moreover, it is not presented as an ancillary feature of Book of Mormon civilizations. Rather, metallurgy is presented as central to the economies of both Nephite and Jaredite peoples. It is described in conjunction with the creation of agricultural and military implements during both the Jaredite and Lehite periods. War and food are twin pillars of any ancient society, including ancient America. It was known at the beginning, middle, and end of the Lehite period, with its use spanning the entirety of Book of Mormon lands and both Nephite and Lamanite branches of the nation.

Evidence for metallurgy during this period in Central America is basically absent. I say "basically" only to leave open the possibility that I have missed the publication of marginal evidence for metallurgy during the appropriate period. However, as far as I know, the first evidence for metallurgy in Mesoamerica comes around 700 AD. Before this period, the only evidence for pre-Columbian metallurgy is in ancient Peru, which is not relevant to Book of Mormon lands on the standard Mesoamerican geography. What is remarkable is the absence of the evidence in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times when its presence is clearly known in Central American archaeology from 700 onwards, especially in light of the centrality of metallurgy to Book of Mormon civilizations.

While it is always possible that evidence for metallurgy will be forthcoming in the future, as long as one is speaking of the present state of the evidence, one is faced with the complete absence of archaeological evidence for one of the most central features of Book of Mormon civilizations for the entirety of its timeline of two and a half millennia. Given the appearance of such evidence several centuries after Mormon's death, this is evidence that one would expect to see if the Book of Mormon were truly an ancient Mesoamerican codex. But it is missing.

Back to Weapons and Armor

I spent so much space discussing the issue of metallurgy because of the centrality of warfare to Book of Mormon history and the importance placed on the convergence between Book of Mormon history and ancient America in this respect by Dr. Clark and other LDS scholars. Below I will return to the issue of specific weapons and the nature of the convergence with Mesoamerican evidence.

5b. Breastplates:

Breastplates are described several times in the Book of Mormon, and are known from ancient America. However, the one time that the makeup of a breastplate is identified, we are told that it is of brass and copper, referring to Jaredite armor brought to King Mosiah:

Mosiah 8:10: And behold, also, they have brought breastplates, which are large, and they are of brass and of copper, and are perfectly sound.

5c. Swords:

Ether 7:9: Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.

1 Nephi 4:9: And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

2 Nephi 5:14: And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people.

Mosiah 8:11: And again, they have brought swords, the hilts thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; and there is no one in the land that is able to interpret the language or the engravings that are on the plates. Therefore I said unto thee: Canst thou translate?

Thus, when it comes to swords, the only textual evidence for the composition of swords in the text of the Book of Mormon is that they are metal. Dr. Clark, however, argues that there is evidence for non-metal swords in Alma 24, where the swords are described as having the ability to be stained with blood.The first thing to point out is that the text describes the swords, after having been cleansed, becoming "bright", an adjective which makes far more sense in reference to a clean metal sword which shines in the sunlight than it does to a wooden sword. Second, the use of "bloodstained" in reference to swords provides little evidence that the swords were anything other than metal, as "bloodstained" is used of metal swords in the parlance of Joseph Smith's day.

To give just one example (searching Google Books produces a good number of examples) from 1825, Augustin Thierry's "History of the Conquest of England" (p. 127) describes a "bloodstained sword." Language of staining with blood is frequently metaphorical- one says that one has bloodstained hands if one is guilty of murder, not because the skin on one's hand has reddened permanently. Given, then, that this phrase was attested in Joseph Smith's day when speaking of metal swords, one cannot take this as evidence that the swords are anything other than metal. Of course, it's possible, given the constraints of the text, that some of the swords described could be made of something other than metal. But there are a number of passages which clearly describe metal swords, and there are no passages which clearly describe a non-metal sword. There are no hermeneutical grounds for assuming that every sword in the text refers to a non-metal sword unless it specifically states otherwise. Such an interpretation must be brought to the text on the basis of Mesoamerican archaeology, in which case the strength of an independent convergence between the text and the evidence disappears.

Evidence for metallurgy in the appropriate time periods is presently lacking, and the Book of Mormon text needs to be supplemented by conjecture to bring it into line with the archaeological evidence. Thus, the picture that Clark paints of a specific convergence between the Book of Mormon text and Mesoamerican civilization of the appropriate time period is exaggerated at best. At a deeper level, however, this point reveals the profound discordance presently existing between Mesoamerican archaeology and the Book of Mormon. Throughout the text, metallurgy is presented as widely known and centrally important for agriculture, warfare, and trade. With regard to the specific issue of weapons, the convergence suggested by Dr. Clark is actually a substantial discordance, for the weapons known from ancient Mesoamerica are not made of metal, while the only indications provided in the text are for metal weapons and armor, along with a substantial metallurgical industry. This must be regarded as a substantial argument against the historicity of the Book of Mormon- a major textual feature permeating the whole narrative which is entirely absent from the appropriate time and place.

5d. Cotton Armor

Dr. Clark briefly mentions cotton armor as a convergence between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. Such a convergence, as something not present in the Bible nor (to the best of my knowledge) to the Indians of Joseph Smith's day, would be exactly the kind of convergence which is striking. But it is not present, as Dr. Clark suggests, in the Book of Mormon text. On screen, Alma 43:19 is cited, which refers to the "thick clothing" of the Nephite armies. At most, this is a vague convergence rather than a specific one as cotton is not mentioned. However, a better textual explanation for this feature can be found. I discussed above the description of Lamanites as wearing loincloths and its connection with the "breechcloths" widely known among the Indians of Joseph Smith's day. This is described in the text as one of the features differentiating the civilization of the early Nephites with the wildness of the Lamanites, who are nearly naked, live in tents, and subsist on uncooked meat. Here, in Alma 43, we see Nephite and Lamanite soldiers clashing, and the differences between the two cultures (the stereotypical contrasts present in the Mound Builder mythos) is drawn into focus. In Alma 43:20, we are told about the Lamanites who see the Nephites with their armor and "thick clothing":

"Now the army of Zerahemnah was not prepared with any such thing; they had only their swords and their cimeters, their bows and their arrows, their stones and their slings; and they were naked, save it were a skin which was girded about their loins; yea, all were naked, save it were the Zoramites and the Amalekites"

This text is very similar to the above-cited text concerning the initial wildness of Laman's people. We are told of their typical weapons of warfare and their near-nakedness except the "skin which was girded about their loins." The meeting of these armies thus provides a glimpse at the sharp difference between the civilized Nephites and the wild Lamanites who explain the perceived savagery of 19th century Native Americans. The reference to "thick garments" then, is explained best as a contrast between the near-nakedness of the Lamanite army with the sophistication and civilization of the Nephite army. While it is possible, given the constraints of the text, that it refers to cotton armor, the literary contrast is sufficient to explain why "thick garments" are described, so that absent any additional evidence (which is not, as far as I can see, present), it is an unjustified leap to identify characteristically Mesoamerican cotton armor in the Book of Mormon text.

To sum up this most important section, there is nothing that I can see in the textual description of Book of Mormon implements of war that is convergent with ancient Mesoamerica in a way that is discordant with Joseph's own context. On the other hand, there are major discordances between present knowledge of Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon- discordances which are convergent with Joseph's own context.

6. The Use of Severed Arms as War Tribute to the King

Dr. Clark next turns to the story of Ammon and the presentation of severed arms to King Lamoni as evidence of a convergence with ancient Mesoamerican war practice, which is said to include the presentation of severed arms as a traditional feature of warfare. However, the documentation provided about ancient America is too vague to make this a strong convergence. This article cites the specific sources underlying this argument:

https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/why-did-the-servants-present-lamoni-with-the-arms-of-his-enemies

In this case, two sets of parallels are cited. The first set comes from the ancient Near East, but the parallel concerns merely the severing of any body part as a war trophy, including heads, arms, hands, or legs. This practice is attested in the Bible, obviously available to Joseph Smith, and does not apparently include the ritual presentation of the severed body parts to the king. From ancient America, Izapa Stela 25 is cited, which is mythological in nature. It shows two heroic twins in a fight with Seven Macaw. When one attempts to grab Seven Macaw, Seven Macaw tears off his arm and hangs it over a fire. Here, the only parallel is in the tearing off of an arm, hardly specific enough to require situating the Book of Mormon in the ancient world. And while the authors state that the story "likely reflects actual Maya attitudes and practices in war and conflict", no specific evidence for this practice is described. The other example cited comes over a thousand years after the close of the Book of Mormon and refers to the Aztecs throwing severed limbs of Spanish soldiers at the Spaniards to taunt them. In addition to the chronological gap, there is no evidence that this was an established ritual among Mesoamerican civilizations, and the severed limbs are used to taunt enemy soldiers and strike terror into them rather than being ritually presented to the king.

Ultimately, then, there is no specific evidence that the practice described (once) in the Book of Mormon was a ritual practice in ancient Mesoamerica. Alma 17 describes Ammon's enemies "lifting their clubs" against Ammon, who cuts their arms off. The image which one is supposed to derive from this is of a number of soldiers attacking Ammon all at once, who is so skillful in battle that as soon as one raises an arm against him, he slices the arm off, and within moments, he swiftly maneuvers to cut another arm off in the same way. Thus, the severed arms are significant in that they particularly reflect Ammon's valor and skill in warfare and his ability to decisively win an engagement in which he is significantly outnumbered. The peculiarities of the text are explained in terms of the literary purpose of the story. As above, this does not rule out ancient Mesoamerican context, but absent more specific evidence, hypothesizing such a context is unnecessary to explain the text's production and thus does not indicate an anomaly in a model of 19th century authorship requiring the Book's ancient authenticity as an explanation.

7. Towers as a Place of Final Surrender

Dr. Clark then turns to the scene described in Moroni 9, where Mormon narrates the Lamanites' taking prisoners from the tower of Sherrizah. This, he argues, reflects the ancient Mesoamerican practice of fleeing to the tower/pyramid (the two are used interchangeably in the Bible and thus reasonably so in the Book of Mormon) as places of last defense and surrender. While he may have additional evidence for this practice, the only evidence he cites is the fact that broken or burning pyramids are a symbol of a city's conquest in Mesoamerican art and iconography, which is vaguer than the specific convergence being cited. More importantly, however, the notion of the tower as a place of last refuge is present in the Bible and thus directly available to Joseph Smith:

(Judges 9:50-52)  Then Abimelech went to Thebez and encamped against Thebez and captured it. But there was a strong tower within the city, and all the men and women and all the leaders of the city fled to it and shut themselves in, and they went up to the roof of the tower. And Abimelech came to the tower and fought against it and drew near to the door of the tower to burn it with fire.

While Abimelech is then unexpectedly killed, the story closely resembles the story in Moroni 9, where women and children had apparently fled to a tower at which they were defeated and captured. Since this textual feature was available to Joseph Smith, it cannot provide evidence for an unexpected convergence with Mesoamerican civilization at a point which diverges from Joseph's time and place.

8. Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism

Clark briefly mentions human sacrifice and cannibalism as a convergence between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. This is true, but both were also present among the North American Indians with whom Joseph and his contemporaries were familiar. North American Indians were often especially reviled because of the exquisite ritual torture exacted by some tribes upon captured European settlers. Likewise, while the evidence for cannibalism among North American Indians has been controversial, there is no question that Europeans who encountered them believed them to have practiced cannibalism, as is documented among early Jesuit encounters with the Iroquois. As above, then, since the feature is present both in ancient Mesoamerica and in Joseph Smith's world, it cannot provide an argument for either as the source of the Book of Mormon.

9. Large Troop Numbers

Both the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica featured large battles, but such large battles were also believed necessary to explain the heaps of human bones found throughout North America, so the presence of large armies in the Book of Mormon provides no specific evidence for either time period as the Book's production context.

10. Large Structures Such as Temples and Palaces

This was discussed in #4 above. Far from being "foreign to the gossip along the Erie Canal" as Dr. Clark suggests, the known presence of an advanced civilization in ancient North America was the foundation for popular speculation about the Mound Builders which forms the nonbelieving production model for the Book of Mormon.

11. Cement Buildings in the Land Northward

Here, Dr. Clark refers to the presence of cement buildings mentioned once in Helaman and states that the notion of cement buildings was "considered ridiculous" in 1830. Actually, cement plaster had been discovered in the aforementioned North American mounds and thus forms a part of the most pertinent background for the production model of a non-historical Book of Mormon. The Spalding manuscript (which I again present only as an example of what was present in Joseph Smith's cultural world, not as a literary source for the Book of Mormon) also refers to the working of stone to build walls and other stone implements.

The description in Helaman 3 is the only place where cement is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, and the specific content of the reference is highly problematic. First, it states that the use of cement to build houses came about because of the lack of timber in the land, suggesting it was a novelty. However, in Mesoamerica, the use of cement was relatively common before the time of Helaman 3. Second, Teotihuacan did suffer from deforestation, but the deforestation occurred as a result of the use of cement, which requires the burning of timber. To attribute the rise of cement buildings to a lack of timber reverses the order of causation and makes little sense in itself.

Brant Gardner suggests that Mormon has unintentionally anachronized his abridgment and has projected the deforestation he knew onto Helaman's time. If one were already persuaded of Book of Mormon historicity, then this is a potential explanatory route, but for the person who is not persuaded, the fact that this kind of textual massaging is necessary appears to undermine the utility of the parallel as an argument for the Book's authenticity. Moreover, the text reports that Mormon was working with far more extended sources, so that if he were making a specific explanatory connection, one would assume that it had a basis in the sources he was abridging.

As a general parallel, then, cement appears in both the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. But since its presence was known among the Mound Builders, it cannot be used as an argument for an ancient Mesoamerican setting over and against a modern setting in the genre of Mound Builder myths. Moreover, the specifics of the parallel are problematic for an ancient Mesoamerican setting, suggesting a 19th century Mound Builder origin as a cleaner and simpler model, at least in this respect.

12. Kings

Dr. Clark suggests that Joseph's own context provides no basis for inferring kings among ancient American tribes. This is another instance where I find his claim mystifying. Kings among Native Americans were known from the historical memory of European settlers, who remembered "King Philip's War" and the "Four Mohawk Kings" to pick two examples almost at random. The Spalding Manuscript (again, just as an example of what was circulating at the time, not a literary source) also has Fabius immediately encounter a Native American king. It would be more surprising if the Book of Mormon did not mention Native American kings than if it did, and this is certainly not an argument for an ancient Mesoamerican production context.

13. Coriantumr's Stone

Here, I'm willing to grant a slight advantage to the proponents of historicity. The text in Omni 1 describing Coriantumr's stone fits very well with Mesoamerican royal stelas where the history of a particular king or dynasty was engraved iconographically on a large stone. Given other considerations, this argument is relatively minor, but this is a good match.

Nevertheless, one can find enough analogues to plausibly situate this in Joseph Smith's context. The Spalding Manuscript (above qualifications holding) describes engravings and art on stones among the Native peoples encountered by Fabius. Petroglyphs of North American Indians were also known (to the best of my knowledge) in Joseph Smith's day. A closer analogue is perhaps the stone box in which the record is sealed, which as described in #1, was a feature of Joseph's cultural background. This also fits with the overall literary themes of the Book of Mormon. Additionally, the idea of writing on stones is analogous to writing appearing on seerstones, which is directly described in King Mosiah's translation of this very stela and of course is present to Joseph Smith in his use of a seerstone. Writing appearing on the Liahona runs in the same vein. As a nonbeliever in BoM historicity, I find the link between Mosiah reading the translation in stones and Coriantumr engraving his record in stones to be the probable explanation for this textual feature. That the stone is "large" likely relates to Coriantumr and the Jaredites being "large."

14. King Benjamin's Labors

Clark states that a king "laboring with his own hands" as is recorded of Benjamin was a remarkable thing to claim. I'm not sure what the argument is, since Clark doesn't cite a Mesoamerican parallel, though perhaps he meant to. But the remarkable nature of this work is part of the point of King Benjamin's speech- that he was not a king who lorded his power over his subjects. Additionally, this is part of the larger literary theme in the Book of Mormon which presents relative economic egalitarianism as the ideal to which societies should confirm. This was a common theme in Restorationist movements of Joseph Smith's time, and one which the early Latter-day Saints attempted to put into practice with the "United Order", where all things were held in common. The inspiration for this is in Acts, where the apostolic Church is said to have "held all things in common." So this motif was directly available to Smith in his own world.

15. Riplakish's Throne and Olmec Thrones

Dr. Clark suggests that the Book of Mormon's description of Riplakish's "exceedingly beautiful throne" in Ether 10 presents a remarkable convergence with what is known of Olmec culture, which produced elaborate stone thrones. Remember that the key in determining Book of Mormon authenticity is to present features of the Book of Mormon text which would be unexpected to someone like Joseph Smith but are confirmed in ancient Mesoamerica. However, in this case, biblical parallelism is sufficient to explain the presence of the throne of Riplakish. As described in the methodological discussion above, the description of the building of the throne is concordant with what is known of the Olmec, but it is also perfectly concordant with what one would expect to see from a biblically-based narrative of a covenant civilization in America. As such, the throne is consistent with both models but alone points in neither direction.

Moreover, the parallel is not specific enough to alone indicate a connection with the Olmec people, and the story of Riplakish is linked in a number of respects with the story of King Noah, who is polygamous, gathers up precious metals, and erects a beautiful throne. King Noah comes long after the end of Olmec civilization, and while one might suggest that he represents a remnant of Jaredite culture, the presence of these features in his story as well decreases the specificity of a proposed link with Olmec culture. Along these same lines, were this derived from Olmec civilization, one might expect the "exceedingly beautiful throne" to be a staple of the Jaredite history rather than something mentioned only in connection with one king. This is, of course, intelligible in light of the fact that Ether is identified as an abridgment of a very extensive history, but it reduces the value of the throne as a specific parallel which would stand out as a sign of connection with Olmec peoples. All we are told of the throne is that it is "exceedingly beautiful", a description which could be applied to most royal thrones. Thus, the convergence with Olmec civilization is simply that Riplakish constructs a throne as the Olmec constructed thrones. This is consistent with Book of Mormon historicity but is far too vague to be indicative of it.

Can one find a more specific explanation for the presence of the throne in the narratives of Kings Riplakish and Noah in Joseph Smith's background? I believe we can, in 1 Kings. All commentators on the Book of Mormon, believing or not, agree that the KJV Bible was available to Joseph Smith, known prominently in his time, and formed an influence upon the text. To be clear, I do not think typological resemblances are arguments against historicity, a fallacious argument made by a number of critics of the Book of Mormon. What we seek is a model which is sufficient to explain the specific features of the Book of Mormon text. The specific links with the story of King Solomon are not incompatible with historicity, but they seriously weaken the usefulness of the "throne" as an argument for the setting of the Book of Mormon in ancient Mesoamerica. Both ancient and modern authorship are sufficient to explain the presence of this textual feature, and it cannot be used to advantage one model over the other. Joseph (or Solomon Spalding, or Sidney Rigdon, or whoever) could be creating a fictional narrative based on the biblical Solomon just as easily as Mormon and Moroni could be telling the stories of Kings Noah and Riplakish in such a way as to echo the biblical Solomon narrative.

Note the multiple connections with the story of King Solomon. Riplakish has many wives and concubines, as does Solomon:

(Ether 10:5) And it came to pass that Riplakish did not do that which was right in the sight of the Lord, for he did have many wives and concubines...

(1 Kings 11:3)  He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.

Riplakish taxes the people heavily and uses the funds to build great buildings, as Solomon:

(Ether 10:5) ...and did lay that upon men's shoulders which was grievous to be borne; yea, he did tax them with heavy taxes; and with the taxes he did build many spacious buildings.

(1 Kings 9:15-19)  And this is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon drafted to build the house of the Lord and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer (Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer and burned it with fire, and had killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and had given it as dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife; so Solomon rebuilt Gezer) and Lower Beth-horon and Baalath and Tamar in the wilderness, in the land of Judah, and all the store cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion.

Riplakish is especially interested in precious metals, which are similarly abundant in the time of Solomon:

(Ether 10:7)  Wherefore he did obtain all his fine work, yea, even his fine gold he did cause to be refined in prison, and all manner of fine workmanship he did cause to be wrought in prison. And it came to pass that he did afflict the people with his whoredoms and abominations.

(1 Kings 10:21)  All King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. None were of silver; silver was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon.

And after a reign of about forty years (42 in the case of Riplakish, 40 in the case of Solomon) the heavy draft of forced labor causes a rebellion which tears apart the kingdom and instigates a civil war:

(Ether 10:8) And when he had reigned for the space of forty and two years the people did rise up in rebellion against him; and there began to be war again in the land, insomuch that Riplakish was killed, and his descendants were driven out of the land.

(1 Kings 12:1-4)  Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. And as soon as Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from Egypt. And they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, "Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you."

(1 Kings 15:6)  Now there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life.

Given the multiple links between the story of Solomon and the story of Riplakish which exist already, it is reasonable to look for the source of the "exceedingly beautiful throne" in this context. And indeed, it is in the immediate context of all of these parallels that one finds the most detailed description of any human throne in the Bible:

(1 Kings 10:18-20)  The king also made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with the finest gold. The throne had six steps, and at the back of the throne was a calf's head, and on each side of the seat were armrests and two lions standing beside the armrests, while twelve lions stood there, one on each end of a step on the six steps. The like of it was never made in any kingdom.

As a sidenote, additional links with this story are found in Morianton, who is the eventual successor of Riplakish. Morianton is said to have gained power over all the land by easing the burdens of the Jaredite people (Ether 10:9) so that the people themselves anoint him as king (Ether 10:10). This matches quite closely the story of Jeroboam, who gains power over all the tribes except Judah after he promises to ease their burden of forced labor. Like Morianton, the people themselves gather and crown Jeroboam as king (1 Kings 12:20). Morianton, like Jeroboam, is said to be faithful in easing the burdens of the people but unfaithful to the Lord. This additional set of textual links reinforces the argument made above that the biblical story is sufficient to explain the distinctive features of the Book of Mormon text.

16. Trees Growing from Hearts

Next, Dr. Clark points to the metaphor of a tree growing from the heart in Alma 32, comparing it to an image from the Dresden Codex of a tree growing out of the heart of the Maize God. Perhaps a closer connection, though not mentioned here, is in Piedras Negras Stela 11, where a plant is seen growing from the heart of a sacrificial victim. Alma 32:28 describes a seed as a symbol of "the word" of God. The growth of this seed into a tree is likened to the growth of faith in the believer. Is there a reasonable explanation from Joseph Smith's context? Yes- as with much of the above, the KJV Bible provides a sufficient source for the language of the Book of Mormon.

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the sower, where the sower sows seed upon different sorts of soil so that the seed grows with different strengths. Jesus, like Alma, identifies the seed as a symbol of the word of God. The soil symbolizes the heart of the hearer. In Matthew 13:19, Jesus describes the seed as having been "sown in the heart." In the same context (Matthew 13:31-32), Jesus likens the kingdom of God to a "mustard seed" which then "becometh a tree." The literary dependence of Alma 32 on Matthew 13 is also indicated by the phrase "good seed" in Alma 32:28 and Matthew 13:24 and the comparison of an unprepared recipient of the word with barren ground in Alma 32:39 and Matthew 13:5. Additionally, given the literary link between the mustard seed-tree relation in Matthew 13 and Alma 32, it is notable that in Matthew 17 the mustard seed is itself the symbol of faith, the growth of which is the principal subject of the parable of Alma 32.

In ancient Mesoamerica, by contrast, the tree growing out of the heart is an image of human sacrifice, which is patterned after the cosmic offering of the gods to give life to the world. In the Dresden Codex cited by Clark, the heart depicted belongs to the Maize God, whose sacrificial death gives birth to the renewal of the agricultural year, symbolized by a tree growing from his heart, the focal point of Mesoamerican sacrifice. In the Piedras Negras Stela 11 which I cited above as a potentially closer parallel, the tree grows from the heart for basically the same reason: human sacrifice, focused on the heart, is what sustains the world in existence and secures a good harvest, the primary concern of all agrarian societies.

Thus, the interpretive matrix wherein the parable of Alma 32 is intelligible is found in what is perhaps the most well-known parable of Jesus, which is present to Joseph Smith in KJV Matthew 13. Matthew 13 alone describes a seed representing "the word" sown in "the heart", unable to grow in barren soil, and growing into an enormous tree. An innertextual echo from Matthew 17 links the seed with faith, thus accounting for each of the symbols in Alma's parable. By contrast, the Mesoamerican images of a tree growing from man's heart, while superficially resembling Alma 32, is intelligible in a symbolic matrix unrelated to Alma 32 except in a marginal way- the proponent of the BoM as a Mesoamerican codex might link the human sacrifice with the heart of faith by reading the former through the sacrifice of Jesus in which one is called to believe. But these connections are extraneous to the actual text of Alma 32. While such a connection might provide new light on the text for a person who is convinced of the Book of Mormon's ancient pedigree on other grounds, the imagery of Alma 32 itself provides no argument for situating the Book of Mormon in an ancient Mesoamerican setting.

In light of the methodology described at the beginning, the features of Alma 32 are sufficiently explained from Joseph Smith's own background and do not require anything else. While they do not rule out a Mesoamerican background, the sufficiency of Joseph's background undermines this image as an argument for an ancient production context.

17. 400 Years as a Significant Block of Time

Dr. Clark notes that 400 years was a Mesoamerican "baktun", one of the most important blocks of time on the Mesoamerican calendar. He connects this to the repeated prophecy of Nephite destruction "four hundred years" from the coming of Christ. The difficulty is that there is no evidence (at least not here or that I've seen) for the use of twenty as a base number or the use of four hundred as a number which is intrinsically significant. What explains the 400 year prophecy? First, note that the 400 year prophecy is mentioned three times: Alma 45, Helaman 13, and Mormon 8. The first two are prophetic, the last records the year when the 400 year prophecy is fulfilled. But equally significant to the Book of Mormon is the 600 year prophecy, marking the time from Lehi's exodus to the coming of Christ. This is mentioned four times: 1 Nephi 10, 1 Nephi 19, 2 Nephi 25, and 3 Nephi 1. The first three are prophetic, the last records the year when the 600 year timeline is completed.

Even though the 600 year prophecy is mentioned once more (and we can say that it's about equally significant to the Book of Mormon's prophetic calendar), Dr. Clark doesn't mention it, because it is not a specially significant number in the Mesoamerican calendar, and even if it was, the prophecy originated in a Near Eastern context. What about the 400, then? Why 400? If Joseph was to make up a text, why not 300 years, or 500 years? The answer seems to me to be simple. The roughly 600 year timespan between Lehi and Christ is fixed by the date of the exile at around 600 BC and the coming of Christ at around 1 AD. So the 600 year prophecy is locked in, as it were. Then, a millennium is one of the most significant timespans in biblical prophecy, especially in a millennarian environment, in which Joseph moved. So if Lehi leaves Jerusalem on the eve of its destruction and the whole story is to take place over a millennium, 400 years is the consequence.

While I doubt that the following passage was a literary source for the 400 year prophecy in the Book of Mormon, it is useful to show how a 400 year prophecy exists biblically in a context uncorrelated with the Mesoamerican calendar:

(Genesis 15:13-14)  Then the Lord said to Abram, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

This is cited in Acts 7:6 as well. If one wanted to suggest a literary parallel, the 400 year timespan in both Genesis 15 and the Book of Mormon is completed with a cataclysmic national judgment. But I'm not suggesting a literary parallel.

Since a 400 year timespan is only used in these three instances in the Book of Mormon, and since it can be neatly explained in terms of the necessary result of a millennium long history combined with the known historical date of the exile in relation to Christ's birth, this cannot be considered a remarkable connection between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerican calendrical cycles.

---

For those who have read this, thanks a lot. I initially meant this to be a relatively brief comment only touching on one or two of the issues raised in the video. However, after I accidentally hit the back button and deleted the entire thing, I decided to turn it into an extended essay. Dr. Clark is a good scholar, certainly not a hack. He thus provides a good test case to see how well the best defenses of setting the Book of Mormon's production in ancient Mesoamerica can hold up. My intent has not been to pick holes here and there with Dr. Clark's arguments. Rather, it has been to demonstrate a series of systemic failures which explain what I take to be the failure of LDS defenses of the Book more generally. The flaws are fundamentally joined to each other in that they seek convergences between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica without really engaging with a detailed portrait of Joseph Smith's own time and place. My intent has been to show that the Book of Mormon is better explained in terms of the 19th century Mound Builder mythos than as an ancient Mesoamerican document. Far from being "crazy" or "unheard of", again and again, specific features and details of the Book of Mormon narrative are exactly what one would expect to somebody like Joseph Smith, who was immersed in that world. Were it a Mesoamerican scholar of 1830 producing the Book of Mormon, I would not expect the text that we have. But nobody thinks that a Mesoamerican scholar of 1830 produced the Book of Mormon. Instead of comparing the expectations of such a scholar to the text of the Book and modern archaeological knowledge, one should compare the expectations of someone like Joseph Smith to the text. While the narrative diverges from an academic understanding of ancient America as it was conceived in 1830, it strongly converges with a popular understanding of the North American Heartland in 1830. While the connections with Mesoamerican civilization are at times tenuous, where those connections do exist, they almost always simultaneously exist in Joseph Smith's background, and so cannot be used as an argument for or against either model. What differentiates the two models is those instances (which I would argue are frequent) where the text converges with the 19th century and diverges from ancient Mesoamerica. I have focused on the former in this piece, but I have also touched on the latter.

Thanks again for reading!

[perahn]

Codex Entry #6

… the darkness roils, lightning forking within it and splitting it into pieces. They ring around me, amorphous save for the reaching tendrils. Lightning flashes through them again, slow-arcing light congealing into masks and ribbons. One shape holds out a rose to the Silent. My tongue is silver and heavy in my mouth; I cannot warn him. He takes it, and the darkness surges forward and swallows him. The darkness spirals closer. A shape holds out a pebble to the Erratic. My hands are golden and heavy at the ends of my wrists; I cannot stop her. She takes it, and the darkness wraps itself around her. She’s gone. One shape holds out a potion to the Thirsty. My eyes are stone and heavy in their sockets; I cannot see whether she takes it. I hear laughter in the thunder, the darkness curling icy around me. The book is taken from my hands –

I recognise the tome, the pebble and the potion, of course, and the silver masks. The conjunction of rose, darkness, and the Silent is familiar, but I can’t remember the details, which suggests a long-ago and infrequent dream. All in all, this dream was far clearer than most I’ve had recently, which is a pleasant change… but I hardly needed divination to tell me we’re deeply embroiled in drow affairs and that I feel powerless.

I hadn’t expected to make use of the spells I learned during my last visit to the Arcane Library so soon, or to quite so dramatic an end. I have always doubted that Jarnath would render any further payment for the death of his target, given that, in smaller matters, he has twice promised what he could not deliver. I do consider myself somewhat in his debt for guiding us to Philock, but such qualms could be easily ignored. In any case, Sending to him requesting assurance that he could pay gained only the answer ‘not now’. I attempted to scry him (classically the signature spell of the experienced diviner; casting it gave me a satisfying sensation of legitimacy), using the blood from the ship as a focus. Not Jarnath’s blood, as it proved; Dwynnej’s text described the effect of casting with a mismatch between target and focus very accurately. Fortunately both subjects were in close proximity. It appeared that our erstwhile guide was being hunted by the drow whose blood had been shed. I’ve rarely seen fear carved so plainly into a face.

I believe the entire race is insane. Even their half-breed children inherit the madness.

I am getting ahead of myself.

It was decided that we would return to Skullport as quickly as possible – which meant from the Arcane Library, via their teleportation services, to the Enclave circle. I expected to be delayed there, and indeed we were; the new mistress of the Enclave, one Eshmira Abbar, summoned us to her office. (Aside: possibly a conjuration specialist, given her affinity for teleportation and the efreet that initially greeted us.)

My mind has been fossilising ever since I left home; a few more months out here and there will be nothing left rattling between my ears but a small coprolite. When I explained the circumstances of Metoth Zurn’s death, Eshmira Abbar asked if I were completely certain of what I’d seen. I missed the screamingly obvious cue – she was much less interested in the involvement of the drow than in my discretion regarding the exact circumstances of her promotion. I was able to reassure her on that point, once I understood her concern. A reputation for inconvenient hallucinations is much easier to work with than what the Academy thought of me after Khaizri…

And she promoted me to nishkir (Both a Red Wizard rank and a job description. The exact duties of the nishkir are difficult to define, although both ‘monster-hunters’ and ‘elite field operatives’ have been suggested. It can be said with certainty that it is a position of some authority, and considerable danger. Nishkiri usually work outside Thay and with little support, with the curious corollary that they are perhaps the least likely of all Red Wizards to die at the hands of their fellows. If one encounters a Red Wizard in an abandoned ruin, or halfway up a mountain, or deep underwater, or in any such hostile environment, one can probably greet them as nishkir without great risk of error). I understand her move, of course. I am not yet so stupid. It is both a bribe and a leash. If I should behave, if I should survive, she has gained a useful asset. If she believes my knowledge of Zurn’s demise renders me a liability, it would be the simplest matter in the world to assign me elsewhere, or to a task I have no chance of completing – even simpler than disposing of me herself. Nobody would be surprised at the death of an ill-trained and unready nishkir.

And that is exactly what I am. I was released from my apprenticeship barely a week before I left Thay, and only because Mistress Kharzura was as intrigued as I by my dreams of Skullport. Under other conditions, I would have remained by her side for several years more, gathering knowledge and strength, until we were both ready. I am – I was – a somewhat slow-witted and quiet alakir (A novice, more or less: a Red Wizard who has completed her training but not yet achieved any particular rank). Nothing less like the intensive and comprehensive training of a proper nishkir could be imagined.

And I am a diviner, to boot! Field work really is better left to the evokers and the conjurers – I did not even contribute greatly to the death of my predecessor! I was drained by rendering us all nondetectable, and everyone else proved more useful in that battle. It was Harper’s arrow which split the nishkir’s skull (how many times have I dreamt that arrow? I can almost feel it now). Me, a nishkir? It’s one of the poorest jests I’ve ever heard.

But it’s been made, and the only thing to do is prepare to survive the punchline.

After leaving the Enclave, we ran into Aunrae, a half-drow friend of Harper’s – at least, that is what he said she was. I admit I have no idea of his network or contacts, but I’ve never seen her before, and much of the encounter that followed remains inexplicable – or, at any rate, unexplained. She was demanding entrance to the house of the illithid Grotana (who still apparently believes that Katy is a pirate sorceress queen and the rest of us are her slaves, despite the many details obviously wrong with this).

Using Katy’s invitation as a pretext, then, we got Aunrae into the illithid’s home, whereupon she started demanding the location of a third party. The illithid was almost grovelling in fear – not quite the fearsome devourer of brains most texts depict – when the drow who had warned us away from Jarnath appeared.

A most confusing scene ensued. Harper was there to assist Aunrae. The drow, Valas Daevin, is her father, which was why she intended to kill him. I’ve rarely heard such purpose or such hatred in a mind. The half-drow slave of the illithid’s – also sired by Valas – interposed himself. Harper argued Aunrae out of killing Valas, further demonstrating exactly how dangerous he becomes the moment he opens his mouth.

He was there ostensibly to help her achieve her goals, as he says he is for me. However, in the crucial instant, he prevented her from killing her quarry - no. That’s inaccurate. He prevented her from attempting it. I am not certain of the relative power levels involved – I’ve seen the Gladiator in action, but both Valas and Aunrae are complete unknowns – but it is quite possible that, even if Harper, Shay, Katy and I had assisted Aunrae, she would still have failed and we would be dead. It is also possible that Valas would have been slain. Perhaps Harper had relevant information. If so, he did not share it.

The way he persuaded her also requires thought. There appeared to be something about the situation that resonated with him – “you’re not the only one with an asshole father”, and the implication that family was a limited commodity. Linked, perhaps, with whatever the full version of his ‘family business’ might be. Well. I hope that one day, I find the right questions or magic to learn more of that matter.

Valas Daevin gave us a location where he believed we might find Jarnath. As it turned out, he was entirely correct. It also appears that when I had Scried Jarnath, we witnessed not a lethal hunt, but drow foreplay.

Lovely.

We briefly made the acquaintance of the paramour in question – one Rylfein by name – before another drow came crashing through the window to demand the location of some money. Both appeared to match the description of the drow who burned down the Pick and Lantern, which demonstrates exactly how well-spent all our effort on the subject was. The latter also had a small companion clinging to his back – quite one of the oddest creatures I’ve ever seen. We mostly left the matter there, and were ambushed on our way back to the house by hirelings of the Mandible.

Despite their spell-caster summoning a Fomorian (an unusual feat, and certainly not a conventional choice; giants are not easily bound, as I understand it, and neither as biddable or as predictable as undead or fiends), our assailants were quickly subdued. The spell-caster is down in the cellar at present. Harper’s bindings appear secure – even disturbingly so. He would not have made the same errors Khaseth did.  

-

An old dream returned again last night – the Erratic and the Silent. The thing which accompanies the Erratic was once again shaped like a toad of stone, with burning eyes. Her chest was a wet, scarlet ruin. The Silent seized the thing and tried to tear it free, but he didn’t see how it had wrapped its claws around her heart. She screamed for mercy, but the Silent was inexorable, and slowly he got the thing away from her. It laughed wildly as he threw it away, kissing her heart and lavishing endearments upon it, while the Silent knelt beside the dying Erratic, blood dripping from the hole in his chest to the hole in hers.

I would gladly sacrifice clear warnings for cryptic guidance. It is maddening, to be so lost, to dream nothing that I do not already know with a waking mind… to feel the storm coming and have no idea how to weather it.

Enough.

Harper and I interrogated the spell-caster separately. I am uncertain exactly what methods Harper might have used, but she apparently told Harper that her ambush had been the Mandible’s audition process. False, according to my detect thoughts; she had been hired by the Mandible to kill us. She was quite indignant about the whole process, which was not without its amusement value. She was also poorly educated; she had a description of me, and still failed recognise a Red Wizard of Thay.

…I am rambling, committing all kinds of useless minutiae to this journal, which was originally intended to record only what was important – another symptom of how sloppy and stupid I am becoming. It may very well be that I eventually fall into so many poor habits that I would not survive returning home… but that seems a distant concern at present. Survive the scorpion in your mouth before worrying about the serpent at your boot, as Master Xobek used to say in Combat Applications…

Szass Tam’s balls, I hope Mistress Kharzura has killed him by the time I return…

Rambling. Again. What is wrong with me?

In the marketplace, we encountered the individuals who crashed through Jarnath’s window. The drow male – one Adinaun by name – has a proposition to discuss with us. The female – Twinkle – is patently not human, judging by her slitted pupils and tail. She may be fiendish in heritage, given how she could apparently see ‘Bob’ when Katy had not summoned him into visibility.

 We met with Tansia Neverember – given her name, a member of the same House as the current Open Lord of Waterdeep, or at least posing as one – of the Mandible. She shrugged off the attack upon us as a trifling matter. As Harper had expressed an interest in working with or for the Mandible, she also gave us a missive to deliver to one Malakuth Tabuirr at the temple of Vhaeraun.

I checked it for magic, at Harper’s request, and found none, but I did not have clairvoyance prepared to actually ascertain its contents. I will tomorrow.

We found Adinaun and Twinkle at the High Tide. On closer observation, their manner is very much that of master and slave – a very possessive master, for he’d performed something like a fatal peotomy on an overly familiar halfling. I don’t have enough for a full threat assessment of either of them as yet, but in brief: he appears to be extremely dangerous, armed with a ridiculous amount of weapons and with sufficient scars to denote an experienced survivalist. She appears to have unusual modes of perception, an ingenuous manner, and is enough of a spell-caster to purify their food and drink. Given her demonstrated proficiency with the lyre, I shall tentatively class her as a bard.

Adinaun claims to have worked with Jarnath on a heist. Unsurprisingly, Jarnath orchestrated events that placed him in possession of the entire amount of gold and saw him leave Adinaun for dead. Obviously, Adinaun is now seeking both revenge and the treasure. If we discover its hiding place, he offers fifty percent of the remaining gold. It’s a prospect not without its attraction, not least because Jarnath is an irritant, and – at least here, I will confess it – because Adinaun seems relatively straightforward and pleasant to deal with. Nonetheless, I believe we will need to discuss this matter further.

Shay and Harper released our captive spell-caster that evening, while Katy and I sat down for our first lesson. Eventually. I must have misspoken to some degree when I first explained the exercise, for we were at cross-purposes for some time. Even once I made myself clear and we sat down, it took some time before we got anywhere at all. She remains easily distracted and lacking in discipline, and the fact that Harper joined in did not help (aside: why did he? Simply to guard his wastet-le and be certain of what I was teaching? Or did he expect to make some use of it himself? Simply because it amused him?). Still, we made some progress.

If we continue at this rate, she may be able to safely cast a cantrip about the time my eyebrows turn entirely white.

Later, Katy came up to my room to ask some questions. I think it’s safe to assume her intention was as transparent as it seemed – she wished to ascertain the ties that bind Shay to her order and how they could be broken. As I told her, I have already offered to turn my attention to this matter should Shay wish it, but she has never stated her desire to leave. She is my wastet-le, not my slave; these choices are for her to make.  Katy made the point – a surprisingly insightful one – that Shay has been trained to accept and obey, not to question or to hold preferences. It may no longer be possible for her to want to leave.

I will have to think more on this, although I maintain that a) I will not force Shay to any such action against her will, and b) I will not aid Katy to storm the Long Death Monastery. It is patently suicidal, and I will not be the Red Wizard who breaks our treaty with the monks.

Katy’s motivation in this matter is less clear. It’s long been clear that she is emotionally driven (as is Harper, although it manifests differently), that she attaches primary importance to how she feels about people. It’s entirely reasonable that she should be attached to Shay – I am, and I am not controlled by emotions – and should wish to remove her from a situation that is both painful and not of her choosing. Nevertheless, she was quite insistent on the point. There is a significant difference between ‘Why don’t you just leave the Red Wizards, Khem?’ and ‘How can we get Shay free?’, which may or not be entirely attributable to Shay’s more personable demeanour… but I am speculating without sufficient evidence.

… I dreamed the Thirsty, carved from clouded blue ice. She bent her head to mine, frost to skin, and her thoughts flowed with the bitter cold that radiated from her. I saw her in the arena, small and fragile, a spider-webbing of cracks over her surface. She screamed defiance, both within her thoughts and in the voice of wind from the mountains. Deep under her ice, she began to fill with black smoke, boiling out from the cracks between her fingers, pouring from her eyes and her mouth. The ice could not hold it, and she burst apart. I bled from a thousand cuts, and she was gone – leaving only black smoke and ice, flesh and blood.

This, again. As if I didn’t already know.

Yesterday was an… interesting day. Productive, I hope, but it is so difficult to tell.

Shay was practising her alchemy. I gave her the recipe for hair and iris dye I found in the Arcane Library, and briefly apprised her of the questions Katy had asked. She seemed mildly surprised that Katy had brought it to me instead of her – which is fair, it’s never pleasant to be the subject of furtive discussion (which is, of course, why I informed her) – but she confirmed that Katy has brought this up with her as well. It is another reason I need to watch my student very carefully.

I cast clairvoyance for Harper to ascertain the contents of the letter we were to deliver to Malakuth Tabuirr. It read only ‘I know’. Not as informative as I could have hoped, but suggestive. On one hand, we have Tansia, who intimated her role as leader of the Mandible was to prevent severe upsets of the balance of power in Skullport. On the other, we have a known associate – probably worshipper, certainly patron – of the temple of Vhaeraun, as well as a quantity of Vhaeraunite drow crawling out of the mushrooms, who could support whatever ploy he might have in mind. Certainly at least one drow is plotting a move that will have repercussions for the powerscape of Waterdeep, to which Skullport is linked. At the moment, there is nothing to suggest that Jarnath has support among the other followers of his god, but it’s not impossible.

There are so many unknown quantities as to make me long for home, where I knew all my peers and how they thought, and the resources at their command, and their potential allies and enemies. Still, my initial training must be some help here, and it is… reassuring to have a better idea of our positioning. We are deeply entangled with others’ schemes, of course, but these players have always been on the field, their plans and the currents of their powers already in motion. Now that we are aware of them, we have a much better chance of negotiating them successfully.

We delivered the letter as instructed. I saw the drow who killed Metoth Zurn speaking with the priest there – after sufficient bribery, the priest stated his name was Ahmryr Yhauntyr (I am uncertain of the correct Common spelling), a courier and caravanner. Not particularly informative, but I wasn’t expecting to see him again at all. Nor did I wish to appear too curious; I have no desire to be destroyed as Zurn was. More of this shortly.

The priest to whom we gave the letter did not share his name – I consider it quite likely that he was Tabuirr himself, but I have no real evidence – and was pleased to share information about his deity to potential converts. So, despite being primarily a drow god, it seems Vhaeraun has no particular dislike for the worship of other races (but is that about preference, or only about power?). He would appear to have some agenda beyond the acquisition of wealth and patronage of thieves (freedom? From Lloth? They would appear to exist in opposition, if Jarnath’s hatred of spiders is indicative). He has been silent in the past, but has recently begun to speak to his priests again. I wonder about the time involved - whether Jarnath is a recent convert or lasted through the interregnum... if he deserted while the god was silent, and Valas did not, it might possibly explain the latter’s description of the former’s faith as ‘impure’...

Adinaun and Twinkle were also at the temple. That makes three Vhaearaunite drow in our immediate acquaintance – and one of whatever she might be.

When it appeared we would not gain anything further, we left the temple. Shay and Katy returned to the house, while Harper and I continued on to the Mandible. Tansia appeared reasonably content with the letter’s delivery, if somewhat less so with Harper’s insinuation that the death of the Tyrran high priestess might be a boon to the Mandible’s interests as well, and therefore Tansia should pay him for the assassination. Not so different to my desire to speak with Eshmira Abbar or Anishta Daraam about the matter, save that I am already a Red Wizard, and he is (as far as I know) still proving himself to the Mandible. In any case, she agreed – provided the matter was discreetly handled, and that she was given the priestess’s holy symbol as proof of death.

I suspect Harper has taken this approach because he believes, as I do, that trying to collect payment from Jarnath is unlikely to go smoothly. It’s a shrewd play, assuming Katy’s scruples on the proposed activity can be overcome. If they cannot, I doubt Harper will proceed at all. Where that might leave me – and Shay, for that matter – is another question entirely.

Well. I cast tongues on Harper, so he could understand the conversation at the Enclave – for the first time in his three visits there – and I made Mistress Eshmira aware that I had seen the drow who slew her predecessor at the temple of Vhaeraun, and of the meagre details I had gained. It’s hers to pursue, if she is interested in the involvement of the drow in Red Wizard affairs. If, on the other hand, she hired him herself… well, I might have been less than tactful, but I believe I made my position clear enough. I don’t intend to investigate this further myself, and I hardly care if she did have outside help; I don’t aspire to the Skullport Enclave.

She declined to discuss any Waterdhavian matters; it seems I must seek out Anishta Daraam.

After leaving the Enclave, Harper and I had the usual wrangle. He doesn’t understand why I would remain with my order ‘to be shat upon’; I didn’t understand why he would use that term to describe what had been a perfectly courteous conversation. I admit that the Red Wizard’s path is demanding, and my superiors rarely have my best interests at heart – but that’s as it has to be. The disagreement expanded onto other, only semi-related topics: why he insists on offering me his arm, and why I dislike touching others and resist being touched… which culminated in him insisting on walking three steps behind me the entire way back to the house.

I hated it, of course. There are few things more uncomfortable than someone at your back, where you can’t see them or what they’re doing – and every time I try to stress his position, or to pay him due respect as ahk-veleth, he does something like this… I was sorely tempted to polymorph myself into some winged creature and leave him behind entirely. But Skullport isn’t really safe, and if these unpleasant little games truly amuse him so much, I can let him mock me.

I have had considerable practice in the matter, after all, and he isn’t as vicious as most.

Shay had made a Thayan dessert when we returned. It’s almost disconcerting, how something so little can summon up all that I miss most of home. It’s a weakness, I suppose, to be longing so deeply for a place and time, instead of focusing on what I must do here, but the memories keep returning. The library, warm and cosy on a winter’s day, with the grey rain falling into the lake. The aromatic soups in the refectories, the chatter of my peers, the fierce pleasure of competition… Certainty. Sense. Knowing where I belonged, and seeing a clear path before me.

We discussed our options and choices for a time without reaching a conclusion, partially because we were distracted by the matter of Bob. I believe Katy sees, now, some of the ways in which it seeks to manipulate her, and that it has not always been honest with her. She was quite alarmed when she understood that it was always with her, listening, whether or not she has summoned or can see it, and she retired to bed so that we could discuss more freely. I appreciate the sentiment, although I doubt the creature’s so closely tethered to her that it cannot eavesdrop on a conversation happening downstairs. On the other hand, I’m not sure just how interested it is in anything beyond Katy. If I could identify it properly, perhaps I could get a better idea. Next time I’m in Waterdeep, perhaps…

After she left, I made Harper aware of the possibility that Katy had made a warlock pact with Bob, or whatever entity Bob answers to, and what that might entail. He seemed concerned, if somewhat overloaded with information. He also threatened me: he will not tolerate any attempt on my part to harm Katy, whatever might be asked of her by her putative patron. I was rather taken off-guard. She is not only one of the recurring, but my wastet-le, my student, and I take those responsibilities seriously. Even if I did not, I have clearly stated I do not wish to make an enemy of him: anyone with eyes can see how he values her, and I have never meddled with another’s wastet-le in any case.

It was not an auspicious start to the evening, and it got worse. Between that threat and the accusation of discourtesy, and the earlier irritants – including that Harper had received my letter, but didn’t know what to do about it, and apparently he didn’t comprehend that I was willing to answer his question but did not want to, which is not that fine a distinction! – my patience and defences were worn a great deal thinner than I had realised. When he made some remark about me loving him – quite mild fare, really – I lost control. I let him see exactly how much I disliked his innuendo, and I fled. Thankfully, I retained enough self-discipline to attempt to give the impression of an offended retreat, rather than a defeated rout, but I doubt he was fooled.

My peers would have laughed themselves sick at such a display, and then attempted to goad me further, into rash, self-destructive action. Harper… apologised, and promised to attempt to restrain himself (at which he was not entirely successful, but as I told him, I am reasonably convinced he doesn’t mean anything by it, and I have heard worse). I am certain he does not have the full tale – anyone from my Academy would be delighted to share it, of course, but I doubt he can reach so far as Thay, and we haven’t met anyone out here from home – which is some small comfort. What he will do with the information he does have, however, remains to be seen.

Well. After Harper had done with that subject, he poured me a drink, and he asked for the answer my letter had promised him. Mindful both of the way alcohol affects me, and of the fact he has indicated he finds me more agreeable when I’m drinking, I made judicious use of it while I explained to him exactly what an oneiric diviner is, how my dreams guide and alter my life, exactly who the recurring are – in short, exactly why he matters to me. There were several aspects of his reaction that I note here, in no particular order, for further thought/investigation.

- He never expressed doubt or mockery. The concept was unfamiliar to him – as most aspects of magical theory seem to be – but he has queried other things that I have told him I could do, and this is a more unusual and rarer manifestation of magic.

- He recognised the dream I related to him. I was not carefully monitoring his reaction while I was describing it – an oversight – but I did retain the impression it shook him profoundly. By that I can conclude, I think, that it relates to some aspect of the past he guards so well. I wonder if the other figures represented forces, abstractions, or people, and whether I dare ask him about it. The Silent has so often appeared with a hole or wound, and he has spoken of unpleasant memories…

- “It seems like a cruel thing to do to yourself.” Cruel? That’s not a usual reaction at all. Counter-productive, useless or insane, according to the non-oneiric diviners; impossible or insane, according to the ill-educated. But cruel? I assume he’s judging by his own measure – that is, such dreams are something he would not want for himself. Why would he not want additional warnings, knowledge, insight and guidance? I admit I have dreamed death or torment frequently – but it’s not real (unless and until it is) and it’s a small price to pay. Surely he wouldn’t be scared of that? Possibly linked: does he struggle with common nightmares? Is that why he sleeps so poorly? (If so, is it possible that some of the exercises Mistress Kharzura first set me would help him? I believe this may be worth pursuing.)

- He seemed to understand just how momentous – and staggering – it was to find the recurring in reality. I don’t know what to make of this, except that he has shown flashes of insight on other occasions. I just hadn’t anticipated just how disconcerting it would be to have him understand me that easily, particularly when we seem so often to be completely alien to each other.

- “How much did you see?” That, at least, was unmistakeable and completely understandable. He reacted almost exactly as I would have, if someone had told me they had witnessed some of my more difficult or painful moments. I tried to offer him some reassurance without speaking falsely – most of my dreams are highly allegorical, and difficult to comprehend without more context than I usually possess. I have seen a great deal… but I don’t necessarily know what it means, or where it fits. However, given that he recognised that dream, it seems logical that it referred to something in the past, and, probably, so do most of the other dreams in which the Silent was the masked ash-rabbit, or where the crowned vulture or the ocean-eyed serpent appeared.

- He disliked the idea of dreams in which he’d harmed me, saying that he felt at fault. He also asked how much control I had over my dreams, whether I could just stop them, or some of them, and expressed his wish that I did not dream of him that night. Perhaps I failed to make clear the precise ways that the dreams and reality interact – that it isn’t an exact correlation. There are warnings, there are allegories, there are possibilities. The number of dreams that directly portended something that later occurred is relatively small… In any case, why should he feel responsible for what the Silent does in my dreams? One could make an argument that he would prefer I was not experiencing oneiric fore-echoes of the moment when he does strike against me, but that doesn’t ring true. Mistress Kharzura would fault that conclusion – I have no strong evident or reasoning to support it – but I do not have to defend my reasoning at present, and as long as I don’t allow it to pull me off-guard, I may entertain it if I wish. 

- He asked if we could begin again, and held out his hand for me to take. The angle was exactly the same as when I dreamed it, but if that was truly the moment it presaged, everything else was different. I was terrified. Almost anything else would have been easier than giving him my hand - after all my training and so many dreams... but I conquered my fear, and no ill came out of it.

There is more I should write, I believe, but even the small amount of alcohol I consumed has rendered some aspects of the conversation unclear in my recollection. I will record that Harper began to offer me his assistance in reaching my bed – as far as I can tell – but stopped himself before he reached the end of the sentence, and offered to wake Shay instead. Perhaps he will genuinely try to avoid the innuendo. What a relief it would be, to let those memories rest…

Alcohol disordered my dreams, again, blurring ordinary memory and nightmare with divinatory dreaming, so that the Silent was Khaseth, and I was myself and that elven spell-caster. He did as Khaseth did and as he would have, and I did not escape him.

My hand is cramping, and I have been forced to resort to simpler ciphers in order to complete this entry more quickly. I can hear Katy’s voice from downstairs, enthusing over breakfast as usual; it is more than time I descended.

I am… somewhat anxious at the prospect of facing Harper again, having shared so much. I suspect, from elements of last night, that he may be equally ill-at-ease. It’s not a particularly comforting thought – but why should I expect or desire comfort?

#writing #khemuret xul #d&d #beware #it's a long one #khem has a lot of thoughts #feelings is a dirty word #but possibly she has those too

[kyndaris]

Reading Between the Lines

Secret messages and ciphers have always proven to be an intriguing concept. Even as I’ve grown older, shirking the dreams of yesteryear where I might someday be a world renowned spy in the vein of James Bond, the idea of discovering a message hidden in plain sight is a tantalising fantasy. Nowadays, though, our exposure to such concepts means we are forever over analysing every little tweet or text message. Perhaps if we learned to appreciate the face value of the words we use, there would be little need to obfuscate the truth. As it is, every conversation is dripping with allusions and double entendres. It can be a minefield, trying to sift through it all (as anyone who has ever played a Telltale game would be aware).

How different would life be if there was no need to be deceitful? Albeit, it might not be as interesting, but at the very least there would not be the need to beat around the bush or to read between the lines. Sometimes navigating through the social mores we now have in place can be exceedingly taxing (you only need be reminded that the correct pronoun in addressing someone as ‘they’ or ‘them’ to throw your arms up at the constant need for political correctness) that it might be better if we gave up any forms of communication altogether.

Assuming, of course, that the silence we used to greet certain statements won’t won’t then be construed as an offensive gesture.

Given our current political climate, however, it might be a long time coming before we might be able to freely use the words that have been listed as ‘undesirable.’ For the time being, though, I will have to entertain myself by bending over backwards in the hopes that I successfully managed to embed a secret message throughout this post.

Keen-eyed readers might be able to glean the message I have hidden in the previous passage. While I cheated by adding extra tidbits of information with the form of brackets, I can still proudly say that I managed to string along a coherent subject matter. Let me tell you: it is not easy. 

Yes, it might be shorter than I had hoped but even something as simple as the one I used can still pose quite a challenge.

Might you be up for the challenge? Let’s see if you can decipher what I’ve strung together. Even then, the meaning behind the words could still elude you without the proper context.

Communication is an art. One, sadly, that is losing its lustre as we turn towards our smart phones and sending out short messages with only the use of 140 characters. The written word is fast becoming a thing of the past. But without it, where would the great stories be? In any case, it’s much harder to hide these messages in spoken conversation. Just as it is harder to do long division without pen and paper, the same can be said of trying to visually imagine the words - and knowing exactly when a person stops to put in the commas and periods.

Now...where did I put down my codex. I’ll need it for when next I try to baffle you dear readers with cryptic remarks. Or for my stagnated Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Whichever one comes first. 

[babymilkaction]

IBFAN at WHO's Executive Board: tackling commercialisation of health care systems

IBFAN with the People’s Health Movement Watchers who take notes of the whole meeting.  Bravo!  From the left for PHM: Maninder Pal Singh, Gargeya Telakapalli, Alexexandre Gajardo, Anna Peiris, Sarai Keestra. IBFANers Patti, Fedora Bernard and Alessia Bigi. PHM again: Stuti Pant, Giulia Loffreda, and Damir Martinovi.

Alessia Bigi, Speaking on Item 5.6 Climate Change

Patti Rundall speaking on Anti Microbial Resistance Item 5.8

Good article in Health Policy Watch

            24th January – 1st February

I’ve been at the WHO Executive Board meeting since 24th January –  joining IBFAN GIFA colleagues Alessia Bigi and Fedora Bernard and partner NGOs (members of the G2H2 Geneva Hub):  People’s Health Movement, Third World Network, IOGT, Medicins sans Frontieres, Medicus Mundi, Wemos, Oxfam, Knowledge Ecology International and Drugs for Neglected Diseases.

Its been a long complex meeting with big transformational cross-cutting issues on the agenda and enormous health challenges. All the documents, NGO statement and live webcasts are available from this link

IBFAN and many of the NGOs are warning WHO of the risks of getting too close to corporations and the need for WHO to develop a sound Conflicts of Interest (COI) policy that will address WHO’s own institutional COI.

Here are some of the items we covered:

Agenda 5.5  Universal Health Coverage:

B144_12-en B144_13-en    IBFAN UHC Statement

Agenda 5.6 Health Environment and Climate Change:

B144_15-en   IBFAN Climate Change Statement

Agenda 5.8 Anti Microbial Resistance:

144_19-en.    IBFAN AMR Statement

Agenda 5.8 Prevention and Control of Non Communicable Disease B144_20-en  IBFAN NCD Statement

Agenda 7.3 Engagement with Non State Actors  FENSA1B144_36-en FENSA2B144   IBFAN FENSA Statement

  TEXTS

Agenda Item 5.5. Universal Health Coverage   

As one of WHO’s longest-standing public interest partners IBFAN strongly supports the principle of publicly funded UHC and welcomes WHO’s acknowledgement that primary health care is its foundation. 

However, that so little attention is paid to the need for conflict of Interest safeguards is worrying. WHO’s keenness to involve the corporations and its fear of being seen as ‘risk averse’ now seems more evident than its concern about being seen as cavalier, even negligent. 

Of course WHO cannot police what happens at country level, however it does have an obligation to warn Member States of the risks of inappropriate commercial involvement in health care services.  If it doesn’t the public might surely question its independence, integrity and trustworthiness.

There are countless examples of patient being misled and health being harmed because of such involvement.   To take just one – baby food company phone apps that advise mothers how to feed their babies.  If WHO does not want to be seen as endorsing such things it needs to repeatedly warn of the risks of  inappropriate sponsorship.

Innovation that can genuinely advance health is to be welcomed –  but corporations do not have a monopoly on innovative ideas.  Unless their interventions are carefully screened and monitored by truly independent bodies, their risks to health and increased costs to services can sabotage public health goals.

If corporations are involved in monitoring and reporting – as they might be in a Public Private Partnership – the benefits of interventions are likely to be promoted above the risks. Companies are soon  trusted to help with health care planning, given access to personal data and everything else they need to expand their markets.

Meanwhile the publicly funded health care systems that exist in many countries are under attack from those pushing privatised systems.

This is a slippery slope that needs to be navigated very carefully and WHO has a key role to play in getting it right. Thank you

_______________________________

Agenda Item EB 5.6: Health, environment and climate change (CCB144_15-en)

IBFAN welcomes the opportunity to comment on the draft strategy that suggests new approaches to change the “the way we manage our environment with respect to health and well-being”.

In the case of breastfeeding much more should be done to protect, promote and support it.  Breastfeeding, a practice that has no carbon footprint, contributes to water conservation and helps in the reduction of air pollution is all too often ignored by conservationists.

While we are calling for the reduction of avoidable environmental risks, global sales of breastmilk substitutes (BMS) increase rapidly every year, boosted by sophisticated marketing against which breastfeeding cannot compete. These products are, of course, necessary for babies who are not breastfed, but the fact is they need energy to manufacture, materials for packaging, fuel for transport distribution and water, fuel and cleaning agents for daily preparation and use and generate Green House Gases.

More than 4000 litres of water are estimated to be needed along the production pathway to produce just 1 kg of formula powder.

If breastfeeding was considered a public health intervention for climate change prevention and mitigation perhaps more would be done to end misleading marketing of baby food companies and to support women who want to breastfeed.

Climate change is linked to extreme weather conditions and environmental health emergencies: breastfeeding is a lifeline in emergencies but it needs positive action by governments to be protected

At the very minimum all governments should fully implement the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and relevant WHA Resolutions. Goal 12 of the draft strategy,[1] on Governance, should also include the requirement that national and local governments set up proper safeguards against conflicts of interest and commercial influence when facilitating “cross-sectorial cooperation”.  Thank you

IBFAN’s 6-country study of the impact of formula production on GHG emissions

[1] 12. Governance. National and local governments (for example, of cities) have mechanisms in place that facilitate cross-sectoral cooperation and integrate health in all relevant policies and ensure that they fulfil their obligations to provide safe environments for their citizens.

_________________________

Agenda Item 5.8. Non Communicable Diseases

IBFAN has worked with WHO on NCDs since 2003 and knows that the threat to public health cannot be solved by national policies alone. It needs an international solution to tackle the power of multinational food corporations – who all share the same tactics as the tobacco industry.

WHO’s courage to continue its work on baby food code, tackling conflicts of interest and integrating the Code and WHA Resolutions into Codex trading standards,  is an important model to follow that continues to save many lives. Thank you.

Sadly,  WHO’s work on NCD’s has in many ways been derailed and is now becoming unsustainable. WHO’s  “fresh working relationship” with the food and related industries seems to be promoting the Public Private Partnership model – without the resources to identify and manage the risks. Without such scrutiny WHO’s name is being misused and its health goals undermined.

WHO should be working with governments, small farmers, social movements and others to prevent soil depletion, deforestation and land-grabbing. It must encourage the healthy, biodiverse and culturally appropriate food that is best for humans and the planet. Instead WHO seems transfixed with persuading food corporations to produce slightly less harmful – but still highly processed products and risky technological fixes.

IBFAN has sat on the European Commission’s Diet Platform for over 10 years and has seen its risks and limitations.  Sound ideas are displaced by voluntary, here today, gone tomorrow promises and effective regulatory action is delayed.

Governments must be in the driver’s seat and have access to hard data.  Asking them to put ‘engagement’ before risk assessment is asking for trouble.  We strongly urge a rethink on WHO’s strategy on NCDs.  Thank you

______________

Agenda Item 5.8. Anti-Microbial resistance  

As an NGO that has attended Codex meetings for more than 20 years, IBFAN is pleased that WHO is providing evidence to support the strengthening of Codex trading standards and texts to minimize and contain antimicrobial resistance throughout the animal and food chain, including through processing.  We hope that all Member States will recognize that this is a threat to global health security that no country can eliminate on its own and that there are inevitable implications for global trade. Codex is a difficult fora that is dominated by powerful corporations and industrialised countries that protect their interests. WHO needs to be there and strong to protect the global health goal in these complex negotiations

Among the many factors that increase the risk of AMR are poor animal husbandry and crop management, pharmaceutical promotion and over the counter sales that encourage inappropriate use of anti-biotics. We note that only 64 countries have limited the use of critically important antimicrobials (human and animal) for growth promotion in animal food production.

Strong health care systems, cross agency action, surveillance and regulation of all the industries involved is clearly essential.  However,  care must be taken to ensure that any public private collaborations do not muddy the waters, slow everything down and lead to weaker controls and action.   There is evidence that a higher dependence on the private health sector and higher density of private health clinics is associated with increased AMR due to frequent overuse of antibiotics.

Lastly, we support the efforts to promote WASH components within National Action Plans to reduce the incidence of infections. WASH, alongside stricter marketing regulations will protect breastfeeding – a practice that is critically important in reducing the incidence of infections in infants and young children. Thank you

___________________

Agenda item  7.3. Engagement with non-State actors (FENSA).

We were asked to limit statements to one minute:

IBFAN supports Medicus Mundi’s highlighting of the extent of private funding of NSAs. It is essential that genuine civil society participation in governing body meetings is not undermined. Tobacco is not the only risk!

The lack of transparency caused by the term NSA could be helped with different coloured badges, distinguishing civil society NGOs from businesses.

Good that an evaluation of FENSA will be carried out in 2019.  Please can this be a thorough, public and transparent review involving conflict of interest experts and critical civil society organisations.

Most urgently please correct the definition of what a Conflict of Interest is and develop a comprehensive policy that addresses WHO’s own institutional COI.

Without it FENSA is transformed into a framework that legitimizes and encourages undue entanglements and funding opportunity to replace the untied funding from assessed contributions that WHO so urgently needs.  Thank you

        IBFAN at WHO’s Executive Board: tackling commercialisation of health care systems was originally published on Baby Milk Action

#breastfeeding #infant formula #Nestle

[humansoulsarg]

Monopoly, Travel Monopoly, Tutorials, Emojis, Colors and Sprites oh my! Solve

A lot of content dropped at the same time and we struggled to make sense of it for a while. But eventually a solution was discovered. These are the continuing voyages of the Solves Tumblr attempting to boldly go where no archival blog has gone before to find the connections between Monopoly themed images, Binary Grid Tutorials, Emojis and Colors. It’s a fun ride, but your mileage may vary.

Travel Monopoly 3D Penguin Egg and Gangow http://pangenttechnologies.tumblr.com/post/159325493042/ Binary Grid Tutorial http://pangenttechnologies.tumblr.com/post/159330094012/ HTML Tutorial http://pangenttechnologies.tumblr.com/post/159331548762/ Emoji/Color Puzzle http://pangenttechnologies.tumblr.com/post/159331695072 Monopoly Sprites Puzzle http://pangenttechnologies.tumblr.com/post/159333829137

Those are the five posts which contribute to the complete story of this solve. We will go through them in order and hopefully by the end, some semblance of understanding will be had.

The first revealed that Monopoly would be introducing three new game pieces, the Penguin, Egg, and Gangow to replace the thimble, flatiron and cotton gin. The accuracy of this information is not in question as we have photographic evidence of the new pieces (what do you mean you don’t remember the cotton gin?)

The artists rendering of the Travel version of Monopoly was found to have binary grids hidden in the Blue channel on several of the properties. The blue channel, level adjusted to bring out the contrast is as shown:

These grids were decoded as binary ASCII which decoded to:

Baltic Avenue IPNrJYAvZY

Tennessee Avenue 15wgdw3573

Kentucky Avenue KxuxekWOvW

Indiana Avenue jMaIQFTrkQ

Illinois Avenue 13ifvfhi7x

Park Place 145uot0zh1

These strings were interesting as they were all 10-characters long which is not a valid ID for YouTube (those are 11) or IMGUR (7) or Pastebin (8) or Mediafire (15). There is mixed case letters with no digits in some and all lowercase letters and digits in others. puzzling, indeed. Not knowing what to do with them at this time, and having plenty of new content to work with, we moved on.

Next up is the binary grid tutorial. This is a response to an ask about how to create the binary grids that were just used to encode those mysterious strings in the Monopoly game. The tutorial is very educational and informative and this editor will for sure be attempting to recreate the process in GIMP somehow, completely ignoring the nudges to move away from that tool.

The two binary grids presented in the tutorial can again be decoded as ASCII text and yield:

11a4xtejcf and 12ok826qrv

These are very similar to the strings from Monopoly’s grids that begin with digits and only have lowercase letters or digits, and there even appears to possibly be a pattern in the first two digits forming some sort of a countdown as we have 15, 14, 13, 12, and 11. But still no idea what to do with them.

Next up is the HTML tutorial, with a bit of a shout out to the Sister Location Christmas Puzzle, providing a method of creating pictorial puzzles from text based encodings. The text of this post is very clear that this is not a puzzle, so we will not try to solve it here.

Then, we are met with an Emoji/color post. This post uses the now-standard Pangent colors and emoji codes given below:

In the first images, the colors and emojis match, so there is just one code presented, and the decoded values can be interpreted as ASCII hex values which become:

nYoYHBeIrp and nucdJRivgq

Hooray for more indecipherable 10-character strings!

The next five color/emoji grids have different values for the colors and emojis and do not directly translate as ASCII hex values. So they provide the next chapter in our 10-character string mystery quest:

Third photo Emoji solve: 39C4EF9058 Color solve: 73E1F76A8A   Fourth photo Emoji solve: 74DC3D636A Color solve: 39F23BEC0C Fifth photo Emoji solve: 39E3330F90   Color solve: 75CCB61365 Sixth photo Emoji solve: 7651ADD18A Color solve: 390A2226D8 Seventh photo Emoji solve: 329134D77B Color solve: D73BC1904D

There’s still new content, so these codes were tabled again while the Monopoly Sprites post was examined.

In this post, we see two sets of sprites from the SNES Monopoly game (played by Pangent and players via a livestream the night before. Suspiciously, Pangent won the game with timescape, Taurtini, Codex, and Majora going bankrupt in that order. Even with the computer handling all the calculations, it was still a long game) with the pieces and players presented in what sure appears to be a coded fashion. There are eight pieces and eight players. The players were found in an online copy of the manual which does not contain the pieces.

Noticing patterns in the image sequences, since there are 8 players and 8 pieces, octal is suggested (even though Rich Uncle Pennybags is added to both sets, making 9 symbols) In octal, we usually group the characters by threes and each of these sequences have 30 symbols, which would play nicely with our 10-character theme that has been established.

Dividing the characters in that manner, it is seen that the 3-character groups of the pieces always begin with either Uncle Pennybags or the dog, while the player grids always begin with either Uncle Pennybags or Elizabeth. In looking up an online Let’s Play version of SNES monopoly, a possible ordering of the pieces was found, and it was also noted that the players were in a slightly different order with Amanda and Paulie swapped.

Since Octal triads begin with either 0 or 1 it was assumed Uncle Pennybags would be 0 and the dog and Elizabeth would be 1. That makes the mapping as shown:

Thus the sprite strings could be created and decoded as valid ASCII Octal:

First people 060 062 144 157 166 153 066 152 071 152 02dovk6j9j First pieces 060 065 152 143 151 062 143 171 167 154 05jci2cywl Second Pieces 060 063 066 164 063 064 063 151 061 142 036t343i1b Second People 060 064 066 151 070 151 172 171 165 146 046i8izyuf Third Pieces 060 061 161 065 071 066 067 161 142 150 01q5967qbh

Again we see 10-character strings with only lowercase letters or numbers, with the first two characters being unique and in sequence 01-05.

Now we are out of new content from Pangent, so it’s time to revisit the unsolved portions, which are pretty much everything at this point, but in particualr the Emoji/Color codes which don’t yet decode.

Since we have 01-05 and 11-15, and 5 unknown strings from the Emoji/Color combinations, it was conjectured that those would begin with 06-10. So, how to get them to do so.

During this time, one player was in communication with Pangent, and so we received some hints as to where to focus our attention. We were informed that the Monopoly scenes in between the code pages were intentional, told the emoji and monopoly puzzles went together and asked how many players there were, and other hints I can’t seem to remember like maybe it would help to work backwards from a known destination. One very helpful hint was that the Safeway Monopoly game using paper cutouts that was played during the livestream did NOT have anything to do with this puzzle, so that kept us out of those weeds.

So the next quest was to try and make the Emoji/Color codes begin with 06, 07, 08, 09, and 10.

We noticed that the strings, separated out by Emoji and Color groups, had the following first few characters: #1:39,73 #2:39,74, #3:39,75, #4:39,76, #5:32,D7

That was looking pretty promising for a while but that last one really throws the pattern off. It is possible the transition from 09 to 10 changes a lot of the encoded text, but we were not able to get this to work.

So next, the strings were looked at together, with the Emoji and Color code for each block being processed together rather than separated. This yielded more promising numbers as we got: #1:37,93 #2:37,94 #3:37,95 #4:37,96 #5:3D,27

After further hints that we were playing a game here, a pattern was found where if the Travel-sized Monopoly board had it’s 16 spaces numbered in standard Pangent order, the Emoji/Color block codes coud be interpreted as dice roll values (16-sided die) and the position on the board after each role became the code.

For example, the first sequence of Emojis/Colors by squares translates as 37 93 CE 41 EF F7 96 0A 58 8A which then bemes a roll of 3 to get a 3 followed by a roll of 7 to move to the 0 followed by a roll of 9 to move back to the 3 followed by a roll of 3 to end up on 6. That yields 30 36 for the first four values which when interpreted as hex become the sought after ‘06’. Likewise for the next three groups as they simply increase the fourth roll by 1, we get consecutive numbers, and for the fifth one, We start again with a 3 followed by a D to move around to the 1 then a 2 to get back to the 3 followed by a 7 to move to the 0 yielding 31 30, hex for ‘10’ as we had hoped.

Using this method, the five Emoji/color grids were solved as:

Third photo Emoji solve: 39C4EF9058 Color solve: 73E1F76A8A   Rolls: 30 36 32 67 66 6C 6B 61 6D 61 062gflkama Fourth photo Emoji solve: 74DC3D636A Color solve: 39F23BEC0C Rolls: 30 37 75 74 70 64 39 69 39 61 07utpd9i9a Fifth photo Emoji solve: 39E3330F90   Color solve: 75CCB61365 Rolls: 30 38 74 74 73 6b 67 70 39 38 08ttskgp98 Sixth photo Emoji solve: 7651ADD18A Color solve: 390A2226D8 Rolls: 30 39 38 34 61 31 31 78 6d 61 0984a11xma Seventh photo Emoji solve: 329134D77B Color solve: D73BC1904D Rolls: 31 30 36 73 63 78 6e 6f 7a 75 106scxnozu

So now we have 15 10-character strings which can be indexed by the first two digits that only contain lowercase letters and numbers. What’s 15-characters long and contains only lowercase letters and numbers? That’s right, a mediafire link! So when the strings are arranged in order, the remaining 8 characters create mediafire IDs down the ‘columns’ of the grids.

01q5967qbh 02dovk6j9j 036t343i1b 046i8izyuf 05jci2cywl 062gflkama 07utpd9i9a 08ttskgp98 0984a11xma 106scxnozu 11a4xtejcf 12ok826qrv 13ifvfhi7x 145uot0zh1 15wgdw3573

http://www.mediafire.com/file/qd66j2ut86aoi5w/uMxbx.zip http://www.mediafire.com/file/5oticgtt4s4kfug/UEH7a.zip http://www.mediafire.com/file/9v38ifpsacx8vod/i528u.zip http://www.mediafire.com/file/6k4i2ldk1xt2ftw/IPNrJ.zip http://www.mediafire.com/file/763zck9g1ne6h03/Kxuxe.zip http://www.mediafire.com/file/qjiyyaipxojqiz5/jMaIQ.zip http://www.mediafire.com/file/b91uwm99mzcr7h7/nucdJ.zip http://www.mediafire.com/file/hjbflaa8aufvx13/nYoYH.zip

Each of these mediafire links contains a strangely named ZIP file with one JPG inside of it. However, all is not as it seems…

The JPGs are as follows (numbered with future knowledge :):

#16

#17

#18

#19

#20

#21

#22

#23

These JPGs are interesting enough on their own, some very Pangent themed content with Penguins and Cats and Puzzles, the Dolphins and Unicorns are new but welcome additions. Didn’t see any snails, turtles, frogs or guinea pigs, but what we did find were some reasons for the strange filenames on the JPG images.

Turns out each of the images contains a ZIP archive payload after the end of the JPG data. Some ZIP programs can open this up just by changing the filename of the JPG to *.ZIP instead of *.JPG. Or you can do it manually by taking all the data after the FF D9 bytes which signal the end of the JPG and saving those bytes to a new file. Turns out those ZIP files are password protected and the first few characters of the password are given in the filename.

But where can I find the passwords? Well, remember those other strings that we haven’t used yet? Those 10-character mixed-case letter strings? Use them for five of the passwords, and the others can be found in a solve from a while ago which has been patiently awaiting our return. The Stop Sign Barcodes Solve from November 12, 2016.

Once the files are extracted from the ZIPs, we find that each of these images contains an audio file with spectrogram content indicating a Locker reservation for a new user. They are as follows (images above numbered by Locker):

And with that, this mammoth puzzle trail is solved! Thanks Pangent Technologies!

Locker 16 reserved by Doctah in the name of Rick James.

Locker 17 reserved by Gh0sttrick in the name of Test Solution, Please Ignore.

Locker 18 reserved by Catcat in the name of Felis Margarita and some other cats.

Locker 19 reserved by Digitalis in the name of Dinkies McYankies.

Locker 20 reserved by Diamondpenguin in the name of best girl Megumin.

Locker 21 reserved by Every Song is Worth a Million Words in the name of Phil Collins.

Locker 22 reserved by PoppyJ in the name of Viktor Vaughn.

Locker 23 reserved by Chemical Kid in the name of Caelus Deus.

#puzzle #puzzle solution #human souls arg #submission

[aurelliocheek]

Writing and localization of Ghost Of A Tale

What makes a good tale? Memorable characters you can relate to? Check! Thrilling adventures? Check! A world brimming with stories and legends? Check!

SeithCG‘s »Ghost of a Tale« has it all, and it‘s no wonder the game was critically acclaimed for its writing by gamers and game ciritics alike. But how do you create a world so rich and immersive with a team which can be counted on the fingers of one hand? And how do you make sure your story meets its audience across borders? After all, great tales are famous because most people have heard of them…

In this interview with Lionel Gallat and Paul Gardner, we dive into the writing and localization process of Ghost of a Tale, a stealth-RPG in which players follow Tilo, a mouse minstrel on a quest to find his beloved. From early drafts to last minute font issues, the two creative minds behind the game’s impressive lore look back on a 5-year journey.

Hi, Lionel, thanks a lot for taking the time to tell us about the writing of your game. I know you started working on Ghost of a Tale’s artistic assets back in 2013, but when did you actually start working on the game’s story, world, and characters? LG: I’d been thinking about this world for many years while I was working on all those animated features. But the creation process of Ghost of a Tale is a very holistic one. The art I was creating, the models I was rigging, the technical tests I was doing, all of these were aimed at creating a sort of cushion for what the game would become. I had even written a script several years ago with a friend of mine in hope of maybe pitching it to a movie studio. However, ironically, when I started developing Ghost of a Tale on my own, as a game, the whole story changed and characters disappeared. Only Tilo remained. In older drafts he was younger and not quite the main protagonist. Of course, all of this evolved as Paul got involved in the project.

Magpies alone possess a set of Codex Feathers, concealed beneath their wings, and preened in such a way as to function as a mnemonic system. It’s said the Codex contains the knowledge of their forebears, and the history of all things.

Hi Paul, thanks for joining us. So, how did you get to work with Lionel? PG: We were introduced by Mike Evans, a mutual friend. Mike and I had worked together at Namco, and one day he told me about this guy who was making a game by himself. We met with Lionel on Skype, and we ended up talking for around three hours – it was a really good conversation. I was just really fascinated by his concept, and what he was trying to do. I promised I‘d help in whatever way I could. Initially it was just casual, giving feedback on design and story ideas or whatever, but later Lionel asked me if I would help out with writing and design on a more formal basis. Still, we didn‘t meet in person for more than a year.

Pangeia, the fictional world in which Ghost of a Tale takes place, has a pretty tangible past and hosts myriad animal species. It’s also a relatively dark world, which contrasts with its rather cute inhabitants (for the most part). Where does Ghost of a Tale draw its inspiration from, and what is it fundamentally about? LG: The game is obviously inspired by older animated movies from Disney, and particularly by »The Secret of NIMH« (both the book and the movie). It touches upon several themes, like casual racism, prejudices, and loss, but at the same time it does so very organically, through humor and empathy. We’re not preaching anything: the animals that are the characters in this story are but a mirror to us human beings. And through them we talk about what it means to know the past.

PG: »History is built upon the ruins of the truth.« Tilo is told this by one of the characters he meets in the keep, and for me it summarizes one of the most interesting themes of the game. The decision to make the protagonist a mouse really profoundly influenced the design of the game. It gave us a vulnerable protagonist, not physically strong, which meant he wouldn‘t be using combat as his primary way of interacting with the world. Every other design and story decision started from there. Using animals to tell the story helped us in a lot of ways. It makes what otherwise might be a pretty grim story much more accessible. The established relationships between creatures, the hierarchy between them – who‘s predator and who‘s prey, for example – gave us something to work with, or subvert. There‘s also a level of abstraction that comes from using animal characters, so any parallels between our history and Pangeia‘s history are made less directly. We can write about subjects and themes allegorically, without straying too close to real world events.

Was the story clear in your mind from the start? How much did the lore, characters, and plot of the game change from your initial idea? PG: The heart of the game hasn‘t changed since the time Lionel and I first spoke. Tilo has always been a minstrel, searching for his family. We‘ve just expanded on that core, sort of fleshed it out. I always really loved that we begin with a classic video game scenario – escape from jail, and rescue the princess – and then kind of subvert that over the course of the game. Because we were starting from such a strong foundation, there was actually not that much revision, which is really rare.

Players are given the choice of reading footnotes that provide further information on the lore.

This certainly explains why everything from the game’s world feels so genuine and coherent… Ghost of a Tale was unanimously praised for the richness of its lore and the quality of its writing. What’s your creative process like? How do you ensure everything meets high quality standards? PG: The very first time Lionel and I met in person we spent a few days developing Tilo‘s story and the history of the world, and figuring out where our characters fit into it. From that we wrote a long, exhaustive timeline that became the foundation for everything else. Lionel and I talk through everything in a lot of detail – motivation, tone, meaning, etc. – before I start writing anything. I try to get the dialogue into a state where we can review it in-game as quickly as possible. Once I have a solid draft, Lionel will go through it, giving comments and feedback. It‘s an iterative process.

There’s a lot of humor and poetry in the game, which was both a challenge and a real pleasure for our team to localize, given the great quality of the original material. What’s your secret for writing a moving story and witty dialogue? LG: One thing I said to Paul at the beginning was: we’re treating the game dialogue the same way it would be written for a movie (or TV series) script. Every line needs to be necessary or else it’s out. I personally hate it when, in an RPG, I get three pages of text for something that could have been expressed with two sentences. Also, we paid a lot of attention to characters’ voices. The way they express themselves. Although there are no voice-overs in the game, we made sure the lines could be read aloud by an actor and not feel overly written or fake.

PG: One of the first things we did when we were developing the story was map out a dialogue for Ravik, the Magpie. Looking at it now, it‘s pretty bad, but it let us quickly find out what did and didn‘t work, and helped us find the right tone. We realized brevity was really important to us – avoiding unnecessary dialogue and exposition as much as possible – so the player wouldn‘t be wading through pages of text. Actually the idea of writing footnotes to efficiently incorporate lore into the main text came from creating that first dialogue. Overall we worked hard to make sure the story remained honest, that the characters behaved in an internally consistent way, that things remained simple, and that the tone never got too melodramatic. The jokes are almost all contextual, and come pretty naturally from understanding the characters, and how they‘d respond and react to each other and their situation. We wrote biographies for each of the characters that we could always refer to, to make sure we were never straying too far from who the character was.

»Every voyage I took with a Mouse on board ended in tragedy – and there was always a Mouse on board.« Kerold Redwhiskers

I guess you don’t come up with a game like Ghost of a Tale that has such impressive lore and colorful characters with just a couple of days of writing and sketching. How long did it take to write all the game’s content? PG: We wrote and designed the game in parallel, as much as possible. Ideally the two disciplines should influence and inform each other. In that respect we were writing and designing pretty consistently for around three years. Lionel designed and implemented the dialogue system relatively early in production, which enabled us to start seeing the flow and structure of the dialogue in-game. We did a lot of planning of the game‘s structure and story, first on paper and later in flow diagrams. Every so often we‘d stop for a reality check, and try and rein in our scope a bit. But I think almost everything we cut actually made it into the final game in some form or other.The game‘s content was locked not long before the game was released. Level Up Translation really helped us organize our schedule to give us as much time in test as possible.

You told your fans early on that you wanted to give the game proper localization. Why was it important to localize your game in the first place, and why did you need professional localization? LG: Well, after spending five years carefully developing the game and its lore we were not going to hand it off to a non-professional staff. If players were not going to read our words because they’re not fluent enough in English, then they would get the next best thing. And as you know, that requires professionalism and dedication!

PG: It was, of course, important to localize the game so we could reach as wide an audience as possible. Lionel and I would write in English, and we used a lot of puns and wordplay. Sometimes Lionel would joke, ›The localization team is not going to be happy‹. I‘d worked on a number of games before where that was an issue, but in my experience the best localization teams are creative individuals in their own right. You have to be available to answer any questions they have and give feedback, of course. But if they‘re given the freedom to run with it, a great, professional localization team can create a true adaptation of the story. The wordplay and songs still work in the target language: it’s not just a literal translation.

Fun fact: In the Italian version of the game, Merra (Tilo’s wife) became Marna because »Merra« sounded very similar to an Italian curse word.

How did you decide which languages to localize your game into? PG: We had fans of the game requesting that the game be localized for their region for a long time, and we’re still receiving requests to add new languages. Also, because two-thirds of the core team is French, I always assumed that the game would be localized, at least into French. We found during our initial IndieGoGo campaign, and later during early access on Steam, that so much of our support came from Europe and Russia, so it made sense to do the work to try and reach that audience.

With 80,000 words, Ghost of a Tale is pretty »wordy« for an indie game, which represents quite an expense in terms of localization and a financial risk for a small studio. How did you evaluate the profitability of localizing your game? LG: It simply came down to the fact that we needed to be able to sell a certain amount of copies in a given language in order for it to make sense financially. We simply budgeted for as many languages as we could at the game’s release. Localization is not a cheap process by any means, but we didn’t want the result to be cheap either! So let’s call it a carefully planned gamble, a financial investment based on how many copies we expected to sell in each language. I’m happy to say it all paid off! We always emphasize the importance of keeping localization in mind and including it as early as possible in the development. When did you start preparing your game for localization?

PG: We‘d had some preliminary discussions about the best format to use earlier in development, and decided on using a parallel series of directories – one for each language – each containing localized copies of our text files. A good week before the localization process began we discussed it with Damien at Level Up Translation to test our workflow and make sure we were providing files in an appropriate format.

What was your localization process like? PG: Due to the nature of our dialogue tools we ended up with a lot of individual files – one for each quest, one for each dialogue, one for each book page, etc. Fortunately Level Up Translation‘s tools were able to keep track of each of these files, including any changes we needed to make during localization. Damien had created an exchange folder where I uploaded batches of files that were ready for localization. He would then give me an estimated time for delivery for those files, and I would retrieve them from the exchange folder when they were ready. Whenever the localization team needed further information, they logged a query in an online Q&A file, or Damien would reach out on Skype if anything was urgent or required clarification. Once the translations were ready and implemented into the game, our engineer Cyrille and his partner, who spoke four of our six languages, were our first line of defense when testing the localized files. This was supplemented by bilingual members of our GoaT community forums.

Game development is very much about problem solving, and localization comes with its own share of challenges. Can you tell us about some problems you bumped into? PG: The localization process itself went surprisingly smoothly, thanks to regular communication with Level Up Translation throughout the process. One thing I hadn‘t really considered while writing, though, was the issue of having gendered words in other languages. We have a character that everybody assumes is male, but is later revealed to be female. Originally the reveal of that information was an optional thread in the conversation, but that made localization into some languages impossible. So I had to rewrite that thread, to make the discovery of that information unequivocal. Our dialogue trees were created in a mind-mapping application that Lionel wrote a parser for. The external application gave us a lot of functionality, and made the process really visual and intuitive, but its text editing functionality wasn‘t great and caused some problems during the editing process. In fairness, we were using it for a purpose it wasn‘t intended for, but that‘s something we‘d like to address in the future.We also had a last-minute issue with some of the fonts we used, which were not compatible with Russian and Chinese.

Test your fonts in all languages: A couple of days after release, the team discovered that some of their fonts were not available in Cyrillic.

I know your team actually developed custom tools for Ghost of a Tale. Can you tell us about the documents and tools you created to make the game’s writing and localization easier? LG: I wanted Paul to have all the tools he needed in order to have a fine degree of control over each aspect of the dialogue, so I wrote a fairly simple in-game dialogue system that evolved over the course of the development. Towards the end of development Paul could actually script game logic directly from the dialogue itself. In other words, Paul could work in an unrelated external mapping tool, but everything he did in there was parsed at run-time and translated into game logic. In a sense it was neat, but in the future we’ll eventually have to develop a proper dialogue application that will be integrated into the game’s inner code more tightly.

PG: We provided the localization team with as much information about the game as possible before they started their work. In addition to keys for the game itself, we created a style guide that gave an overview of the story, and provided references that helped give a sense of the spirit and tone of the writing. Since we had branching dialogues, we gave the team PDF copies of the dialogue trees so they could follow the conversation and have a better understanding of context. We also provided the team with our character biographies, and created a lexicon that gave a definition for any unfamiliar or made-up words and names, including the gender of the word.

This is the »1 million copies« question every indie developer asks themselves before taking the leap: was localizing Ghost of a Tale worth it? LG: Yes, without a shadow of a doubt. The return on investment was almost immediate. I can’t share any numbers, but almost half of our sales came from non-English speaking countries.

PG: Absolutely! Many of our reviews came from the European press, and the fact we had localized for those countries meant we received a lot more exposure than we otherwise would have.

If a dev team with a project the scale of Ghost of a Tale came to seek your advice regarding localization, what would you tell them? LG: From a technical point of view, localization is not an afterthought. Right from the beginning of the game we planned to support multiple languages in all of the game’s text elements. At first it felt a bit like overkill; after all, we could have just included the English text and been done with it. But we had heard about the importance of planning early for localization support and I can say it’s one of the best decisions we made at the beginning of the project. It’s a time investment that we recouped MANY times over when the moment came to swap languages.

PG: Start thinking about localization early, even if just at a high level. Talk to the localization team as soon as possible, to establish workflow.Give the localization team as much background information about your game as possible, before you begin – character biographies, a glossary of any names or words unique to your game, etc. Make sure you take time to discuss the style and tone of the game with the localization team. Be available to answer any questions the team has. It will make the project stronger, and allow the translators to move forward with confidence. I really enjoy this part of the project, as you get a good sense of how others see what you‘ve written.

The game’s upcoming release on PS4 and Xbox One should be the last stage of this 5-year journey. Is there anything that didn’t make it to the final product that you regret? LG: The game reflects exactly what we were able to do with our limited budget and (speaking for myself) experience. I’m actually proud that we were able to bring this project to fruition without getting lost on the way. I think we created something special here. And on a more personal note, I got to meet and work with terrific people like Paul, true professionals who dedicated their creative energy to making Ghost of a Tale what it is today simply because they believed in it.

PG: Sure, there are a few game mechanics and enemies that didn‘t make it into the final game, but we told the story that we set out to tell. If you look at what we originally planned, it‘s very close. In that respect this is the happiest I‘ve ever been with any project I‘ve worked on. Working with Lionel has probably been the most fulfilling creative experience I‘ve ever had.

Can we expect a sequel to Tilo’s adventures? PG: Well, we have the rest of Tilo‘s story mapped out. I hope we get the chance to tell it.

LG: It would indeed be wonderful! ;)

Interviewer: Damien Yoccoz www.leveluptranslation.com

Lionel Gallat is Creative Director of Ghost of a Tale

Lionel Gallat’s professional background is in animation. Lionel worked many years for DreamWorks on their first 2D (»The Prince of Egypt«, »The Road to Eldorado«, etc…) and then 3D movies (»Sharktale«, »Flushed Away«). He was also the animation director for movies like »Despicable Me«. And then one day he thought, ›Hey, why don’t I make a game?‹

Paul Gardner is Writer and Designer of Ghost of a Tale

Paul has been writing and designing for games for almost 20 years now, and he has worked on games like »Crash Twinsanity« for Traveller’s Tales, »Afro Samurai«, »Splatterhouse« for Namco, and »Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite« for Capcom. He’s currently based in the Bay Area in California.

The post Writing and localization of Ghost Of A Tale appeared first on Making Games.

Writing and localization of Ghost Of A Tale published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[theblogofforkingpaths]

[Preface] A Retrospective.

A very warm welcome to my lovely little blog for the module known as ‘Digital Textualities & The History of the Book’.

Through this blog I’m hoping to expand upon discussions from tutorials and lectures to dive deeper into the themes presented by the course content... mostly. I’m also hoping to have a little bit of fun by experimenting with the content in my own, sometimes quite abstract, ways. 

I’m not entirely sure what’s about to be created after this post, but I do hope it is both enjoyable to read and at least somewhat challenging to the ideas raised in class. I can’t promise I won’t stray from topic, linger too long on the video game aspect of the module or cover everything -- but I do plan to stick to some key themes and see where they take me. These themes mostly being:

Interactivity: how books encourage, or sometimes instruct us to interact with them in a particular way. whether this be the simple flipping of pages within the codex to the literal manipulation of text in the digital stories later in the module. 

Formal Experimentation: mainly in relation to the three texts focused upon in the module. I’m fascinated to see what implications are given by these new styles which juxtapose our expectations of what a book should be.

Challenging The Norm: very much tying into the last point, I also am interested in how revolution is dealt with in this module. I think in particular how the printing press challenged the scribe and how we are facing a similar war between print and digital now.

Author vs Reader: who is the real author of the book? I want to explore how much authority the author has over the reader and their text against how much the reader has autonomy when approaching literature.

Authority of Text: similar to the previous, there is something to be said about how texts can encourage a reader to make certain decisions such as turning page orientation, googling terms or physically crafting items in the case of grimoires.

Physicality: the book as a thing which exists outside of solely being text. this ranges from discussions on font, form, page setup, line spacing etc etc etc.

Whilst I cannot promise each of these will be explored in the same depth, they are certainly the aspects which have encouraged the greatest response from me over the course of the module and I plan to air my response in the posts to follow.

I am also fortunate enough to largely be blogging in retrospect to the module. I am somewhat of a perfectionist and so a number of my posts have been hiding in drafts throughout the module, which has been useful for the process of redrafting with often content from future weeks being implemented into the earlier weeks material.

A final note I want to make is of the blog’s title: “The Blog of Forking Paths”. There is undeniable inspiration from Borges’ short story, which will be fully explored in week two’s posts, but I felt the need to distinguish its significance now. Whilst there are numerous interpretations of the short story, I believe one of the main concerns is that of infinite stories and infinite possibilities. Whilst I am not saying I will create every single idea on every single topic covered in every single aspect of the module, I would like to note that this blog will take its own forking paths. No posts should be the same, there will undoubtedly be many stories/thoughts/emotions explored throughout my navigation which will contradict/take large side steps/confuse. My main goal is not to complicate, but instead to provide even more avenues, or paths, for the reader to explore.

I look forward to taking the journey with you.

#digital textualities #preface #textual authority

[free-mormons-blog]

Genesis of the Written Word -- Temple and Cosmos Beyond this Ignorant Present -- HUGH NIBLEY 1992

Genesis of the Written Word

The most interesting thing about this article is that, within a month after it was printed, a cover story appeared in the prestigious journal Science recounting the strange achievement of an Apache Indian by the name of Silas John, who not only claimed to have had a whole writing system revealed to him in a dream for holy purposes, but actually produced the system, which turns out to be a highly efficient one; an instant alphabet, not out of nothing, but out of a dream.1 If it could happen in 1904 to a semi-literate Apache, could it not have happened earlier?

Only such evidence could break the vicious circular argument which has long prevented serious investigation into the origins of writing. Many writers in scientific journals have recently deplored the way in which scientific conclusions reached long ago and held as unimpeachable truths turn students away from avenues of research which might well prove most fruitful. The evolutionary rule-of-thumb — convenient, satisfying, universal — is cited as the prime offender. Here is a test of how it works: Ask your students to write a paper on “A Day in the Life of a Primitive Man.” None of them has ever seen a primitive man or ever will, but does that stop them? Before the question is on the board they are off and running and can go on writing at top speed indefinitely. They all know exactly how it should have been; evolution emancipated them from the drudgery of research. And in all of science there never was a more open-and-shut case than the origin of writing: intuitively we know it must have begun with pictures, and traditionally we know it can have developed in only one way — very slowly and gradually from simple to more complex forms, and all that. Some may elaborate on the theme with tree-alphabets, ogams, runes and (as we have) arrow-markings, but if there ever was a hypothesis which enjoyed complete and unquestioning obedience, the origin of writing has been it. Yet the discerning Kipling, taking a hard common-sense look at the official solution, found it simply absurd. It is the same hypothesis that we now dare to question, grateful for the support of the noble Silas John.

We have all grown up in a world nurtured on the comfortable Victorian doctrine of uniformitarianism, the idea that what happens in this world is all just more of the same: what lies ahead is pretty much what lies behind, for the same forces that are at work on the earth today were at work in the same manner, with the same intensity and the same effects at all times past and will go on operating inexorably and irresistibly in just the same way forever hereafter. There is no real cause for alarm in a world where everything is under control beneath the watchful eye of science, as evolution takes its undeviating forward course, steady, reliable, imperceptibly slow and gentle, and gratifyingly predictable. According to an eminent British scholar of the 1920s,

The skies as far as the utmost star are clear of any malignant Intelligences, and even the untoward accidents of life are due to causes comfortably impersonal. . . . The possibility that the Unknown contains Powers deliberately hostile to him is one the ordinary modern man can hardly entertain even in imagination.2

In such a world one needed no longer to run to God for comfort. The matter-of-fact, no-nonsense approach of science had since the days of the Miletian school and the ancient atomists banished all childish fears and consigned the horrendous and spectacular aspects of the human past and future to the realm of myth and fantasy.

Quite recently, however, scientists have noted with a shock that in looking forward not to the distant but to the immediate future what they discern is not just more of the same but something totally different, something for which they confess themselves entirely unprepared, since it is all entirely unexpected.3 The idea that what lies ahead is by no means the simple and predictable projection of our knowledge of the present has, as John Lear points out, reconditioned our minds for another look at the past as well as the future. Since the past is wholly a construction of our own imaginations, we have always found there just what we expected to find, that is, more of the same. But now “future shock” has prepared us for “past shock,” and we find ourselves almost forced to accept a view of the past that is utterly alien to anything in the experience of modern man.4

Antiquity of Writing

Joseph Smith as a prophet also looked both ahead and behind and came up with a picture of both worlds that violently shocked and offended his Victorian contemporaries. He presented his peculiar picture of the past in the most daring possible way, in the form of a number of books which he claimed to be of ancient origin, their contents given to him “by the Spirit.” But his image of the future and the past was not conveyed in mystical utterances in the manner of Swedenborg, Jakob Boehme, or the “Urantia Volume,” whose assertions may be tested only by waiting for history to catch up with them. His story was rather to be found in the pages of ancient books that purportedly existed and either still survived in the world or had left unmistakable marks behind them.

In the first lesson of the current Melchizedek Priesthood manual President Joseph Fielding Smith brings this formidable contribution to our attention:

The Latter-day Saints are doubly blessed with the word of the Lord which has come to light through the restoration of the gospel. We have been given the records of the Nephites and the Jaredites. . . . The Lord restored much that had been originally revealed to Adam and Enoch and Abraham, . . . and it is to their condemnation when members of the Church do not take advantage of their opportunities to read, study, and learn what the records contain.5

Few people realize that in Joseph Smith’s day no really ancient manuscripts were known. Egyptian and Babylonian could not be read; the Greek and Latin classics were the oldest literature available, preserved almost entirely in bad medieval copies no older than the Byzantine and Carolingian periods. The oldest text of the Hebrew Bible was the Ben Asher Codex from the ninth century A.D. Today we have whole libraries of documents more than 4,000 years old — not just their contents, but the actual writings themselves going back to the very beginnings of civilization. It is just as easy to dig back 6,000 years as it is to remove the dust of 5,000 years; and when we do so, what do we find in the way of written documents? Let us consider three main points: (1) what can be inferred from Joseph Smith’s statements as to the nature of the oldest human records, (2) what the ancients themselves have to say about those records, and (3) what the actual condition of the records indicates.

First, if Joseph Smith is right, the written records should be as old as the human race itself, for, he tells us, “a book of remembrance was kept . . . in . . . the language of Adam” (Moses 6:7).6 Now what do the ancients themselves have to say on the subject? Surprisingly, a great deal, of which we can give only a few quotations here.

According to them, the king had access to that divine book which was consulted at the time of the creation of the world: “I am a scribe of the god’s book,” says one of the earliest pharaohs, “who says what is and brings about what is not.”7 A later but still ancient (Thirteenth Dynasty) pharaoh recalls, “My heart yearned to behold the most ancient books of Atum. Open them before me for diligent searching, that I may know god as he really is!”8 Over the lintel of the ancient library of the great temple at Edfu was a relief showing four kneeling figures giving praise to the heavenly book descending to earth; hieroglyphs above their heads show them to represent Sia and Hw, or the Divine Intelligence and the Divine Utterance (the Word) by which the world was created (fig. 59).9 In Egypt every step of the founding of a new temple had to follow the prescriptions given in the heavenly book, since such a founding represented and dramatized the creation of the earth itself.

And what does the actual state of the documents attest? If writing evolved gradually and slowly as everything is supposed to have done, there should be a vast accumulation of transitional scribblings as countless crude and stumbling attempts at writing would leave their marks on stone, bone, clay, and wood over countless millennia of groping trial and error. Only there are no such accumulations of primitive writing anywhere. Primitive writing is as illusive as that primitive language, the existence of which has never been attested. And indeed the very nature of writing precludes anything in the way of a slow, gradual, step-by-step evolution: one either catches on to how it is done or one does not, and once one knows, the whole mystery lies revealed. All the evidence shows that that is the way it actually was. “Suddenly . . . graves in the predynastic cemeteries” display “the art of writing . . . with a fairly long period of development behind it,” writes Engelbach. “In fact it was writing well past the stage of picture writing.”10 Both the long period of development and a primal picture writing must here be assumed, since there is no evidence for them. If writing did evolve in Egypt, the process took only “a few decades,” after which the art remained unchanged “for thousands of years,” according to Capar. 11Alan Gardiner notes the same strange and paradoxical state of affairs: hieroglyphic “was a thing of rapid growth,” but “once established remained immutable for fully 3,000 years.”12 So also A. Scharff assures us that with the First Dynasty “writing was introduced and perfected (ausgebildet) with astounding speed and detail.”13“There is no evidence of a gradual development of script in Egypt,” writes Elise Baumgartel,14 and yet there is no evidence of that script anywhere else. There is something wrong with this evolutionary process by which one and the same people develop a system of writing almost overnight, and then refuse to budge an inch on the way of progress forever after. Stuart Piggott finds that immediately after “ambiguous stammerings . . . on the slate palettes . . . a rapid cursive form of writing with pen and ink” is in evidence.15 Stranger still, on the most famous of those predynastic slate palettes with their ambiguous stammerings that suggest only the dawn of writing we see clearly depicted a king (Narmer) following behind an attendant (tt) who is carrying the classic two inkpots of the Egyptian scribe (fig. 60). The tombs of the First Dynasty “show that they had a well-developed written language, a knowledge of the preparation of papyrus.”16 Inscriptions found on tags and labels of First-Dynasty jars, often regarded because of their crudeness and brevity as primitive attempts at writing, are crude and brief because they were meant to be identification tags and nothing more — not literary compositions; actually, as Sethe points out, “they are written in a sophisticated cursive writing.”17 For though “hieroglyphics appear all at once in the world as an Egyptian invention cir. 3000 B.C.,” hieratic, the cursive writing of the same symbols, was also in use just as early.18

Complexity of Nascent Languages

All of which is most retrograde to tenaciously held theories of the evolution of writing in Egypt. But how about the rest of the world? Wherever we look the earliest systems of writing are somehow connected with the Egyptian and appear suddenly in the same paradoxical way. Though there is “a prehistoric connection with Babylonian cuneiform” and Egyptian, according to Sethe,19 and though J. Friedrich has demonstrated the connection by an impressive catalogue of striking parallels,20 the gap between the two systems is still too wide to allow any thought of deriving the one from the other.21 “The writing which appeared without antecedents at the beginning of the First Dynasty (in Egypt) was by no means primitive,” writes Frankfort. “It has, in fact, a complex structure of . . . precisely the same state of complexity which had been reached in Mesopotamia. . . . To deny . . . that Egyptian and Mesopotamian systems of writing are related amounts to maintaining that Egypt invented independently a complex and very consistent system at the very moment of being influenced in its art and architecture by Mesopotamia where a precisely similar system had just been developed.”22 Not only are these two systems related, but they show remarkable affinities to the earliest Chinese writing,23 as well as the Hittite, proto-Indian,24 and proto-Elamitic scripts.25 P. Mordell insists that the Hebrew alphabet is related to an Egyptian linear writing system, a real alphabet, which “evolved at a date when hieroglyphic writing was unknown, then persisted with a strange vitality, and was never absorbed or ousted.”26 This was that mysterious prehistoric “Mediterranean” alphabet which is said to be older than hieroglyphic,27 and which suddenly spread all over the Near East at the end of the second millennium B.C.28

“Evolved”? Many scholars have pointed out that the alphabet is the miracle of miracles, the greatest of all inventions, by which even the television and jet-planes pale in comparison, and, as such, a thing absolutely unique in time and place; they also agree that it was of Egyptian or West-Semitic origin.29 It is also argued that by the very nature of the thing it can only have been the work of a single inventor.30 “The gulf between the idea and the written word,” writes H. Schmitt, “could only have been bridged once, by a miracle of invention.”31

Dearth of Evolutionary Clues

Given the evolutionary hypothesis, any healthy normal growing boy can describe in convincing detail how long ago “the naive child of nature” everywhere drew crude pictures to convey his simple thoughts,32 and how out of this the process moved “everywhere inexorably . . . towards the final stage, the alphabetic writing.”33 To save our eager high-school student from undue embarrassment, we have just quoted two eminent scholars. But if it really happened that way, then we would find traces of evolving writing “everywhere”; veritable middens of scratched rock and bones and shells would attest the universal groping toward the inexorable final stage over tens of thousands of years, while the clumsy transitional forms should outnumber proper writing by at least a million to one. However, the vast accumulations of attempts at writing simply do not exist; there is no evidence whatever of a worldwide groping towards the goal. Having made his lucid and logical statement, the author of our last quotation observes with perplexity that “it is surprising that the ultimate stage in evolution . . . was only achieved in a very few spots on the globe.”34That is, we do not find a multiplicity of writing systems throughout the world; in fact when we come right down to it there seems to have been only one! We find “only a very few systems of writing,” says David, “. . . and even these are so much alike and so closely related in time and space that their independence appears at least problematical.”35 The vast world-wide corpus of embryonic scribblings that should attest the long ages of slow transition from picture writing to true writing simply is not there, and the innumerable systems of writing which must have resulted from the basic psychological need of men everywhere to express themselves can be counted on the fingers, and most probably on the thumbs, of one hand.

Pictures Not Origin of Writing

People have always drawn pictures, but was that the origin of writing? Was there ever a real picture writing? E. Doblhofer defines “pictorial writing,” which he says is “incredibly ancient,” as “a series of images [which] can possibly be ‘read’ accurately by any spectator.”36 Kurt Sethe would agree: a “pure” picture writing is one which “could be read in any language at sight.”37 And right here the issue is settled: if there ever was a true picture writing it has not yet been discovered. Where on earth is a single inscription to which any and all beholders, scholars or laymen alike, regardless of their own language and culture, would give the identical interpretation? When Sethe sought for a true picture writing to illustrate the process by which hieroglyphic emerged, the only examples he could find in all the world were North American Indian petroglyphs, which no one can “read” or interpret to this day.38 “True picturewriting,” wrote Alan Gardiner, “makes excessive demand upon the skill and ingenuity of the writer, and its results are far from unambiguous.”39 It takes special skill, that is, to execute “true picturewriting” and special skill to read it: which is to say that it is not the simple and uninhibited drawing and viewing of pictures at all. Doblhofer himself confirms this when he assures us that “the most primitive pictorial writings . . . translate . . . abstract ideas with the aid of symbolical signs,” for symbolical signs are not plain pictures but conventional devices which must be learned; that is, even “the most primitive” picture writing is not just picture writing as he defines it.40 In the very earliest Egyptian writing it is impossible to interpret the pictures as such, and there is no evidence of pictograms in Egypt at any time, according to Sethe.41 Also, we must not forget that along with the most “primitive” Egyptian writing in prehistoric times we find a genuine alphabetic writing flourishing most paradoxically.42 Long wrestling with the problem of deriving the alphabet from a syllabic writing, that is, from a system in which the names of things depicted supplied certain sound combinations, has led to the general conclusion that syllabic writing was “a blind alley which could not lead to alphabetic writing.”43

Like the earliest Egyptian documents, the Babylonian tablets bearing “the oldest written signs thus far known” are highly stylized and cannot be read.44 Granted they are picture writing, no two scholars “read” them the same. Mesopotamia offers to date the only chance of presenting the evolutionary sequence of the development of writing by a stratigraphic pattern. Only, alas, it doesn’t work. Though it is assumed, of course, that “the earliest examples of writing in Mesopotamia are pictographs. . . . Very few of these were actually excavated scientifically, so that, from the chronological point of view, there is little help to be obtained from stratigraphic connections,” according to Burton-Brown, who should also have pointed out that the inscriptions which have been scientifically excavated have a way of refuting the expected patterns, since some of the most primitive writing is found in late strata and vice versa.45

The paradox that anything as advanced and sophisticated as writing should come into the world full-blown and all at once is invincibly repugnant to the evolutionary way of thinking. Of recent years the anthropologists have taken a strong stand on the “tool” theory of civilization. The idea is that primitive hominids quite thoughtlessly and accidentally blundered on the use of this or that piece of wood, bone, or rock as a tool, and that “it was the success of the simplest tools that started the whole trend of human evolution and led to the civilizations of today.”46 It is the primitive tool, falling fortuitously into its hands, which draws mankind irresistibly forward to new levels of attainment, for “when men make a tool, they commit themselves, man depends upon his tools for his very humanity.”47 In a word, “social evolution is a consequence of technologic evolution.”48

Some of the scientific speculators, however, take the opposite position, that man “has always had reservoirs of response far more than his devices (tools) asked of him,” and that in “his attempts to transcend his biological limitations” his mind always runs ahead of his tools, not behind them.49 When men need a tool they invent it, not the other way around.50 Men themselves decide what tools they will have, so that one evolutionist notes with perplexity that “one of the most puzzling aspects of the culture” of the “Cavemen” is “their heavy dependence on tools whose use is now a complete mystery.”51 Carleton S. Coon observed that “for the simple reason that human beings are not equipped by nature to live without tools,” we must suppose that they always had all the tools they needed for survival even in Pliocene.52Petrie, in a significant and neglected study, pointed out that instead of eagerly adopting a superior tool as soon as it was made known to them, human beings have shown “a resistance of almost 100 percent” to any new tool coming from the outside.53 Though all the neighbors of the Egyptians knew about their superior axe forms for thousands of years, the only other ancient people to adopt them were of all things the South Americans.54 Petrie knows of seventeen Egyptian tools and weapons, some of unsurpassed efficiency, which are over the centuries never found outside of Egypt, and, he observes, “the converse is equally true.”55

Writing: A Gift from Heaven

Then whatever induced one people to adopt writing from another? The interesting thing here is that though the idea quickly caught on, each people in adopting it insisted on making it its own exclusive possession and devised from the first a native style that set it off from all the others. Both the popularity and the variety of ancient writing is to be explained by its religious nature. E. von Mülinen has noted that new scripts invariably appear as the vehicles of new religions,56 while Jürgen Smolian points out that all of man’s greatest inventions or discoveries seem to have the primary purpose of putting him into communication with the other world.57 If Joseph Smith was right, books and writing are a gift to man from heaven, “for it was given unto as many as called upon God to write by the spirit of inspiration” (Moses 6:7). The art of writing was a special dispensation, an inestimable boon, enabling the righteous to retain the memory of divine visitations and communications ever fresh before them, and assisting them in coordinating their earthly activities with the heavenly order: “The immediate will of heaven is contained in the Scriptures,” said the Prophet Joseph.58

The earliest records of the race have much to say “about the miracle of writing, which the Ancients regarded as a gift from heaven.”59 The Egyptians believed that writing was a sacred trust given to the king as “high-priest and scribe” to keep him and his people ever in touch with the mind and will of heaven.60 Thus the Book of the Foundation of Temples was thought to have been sent down from heaven to the immortal genius Imhotep, the Vizier of King Djoser of the Third Dynasty and the greatest builder of all time (cf. fig. 51A, p. 390), after which the book “was taken away to heaven at the time the gods left the earth,” but was sent down again by Imhotep at a later time, when he “caused it to fall from heaven at the place north of Memphis” (cf. fig. 55, p. 413).61 In Babylonia

the King is the Sent One. He has ascended to heaven to receive . . . the tablets of destiny and to get his commission. Then he is sent out, i.e., he descends again. . . . And so the knowledge is communicated to the king, it is of a mysterious character, bearing upon the great mysteries of heaven and earth, the hidden things, and is a revelation of the hidden knowledge by the gods (the god). Can we style it “primordial revelation”?62

The idea of a primordial revelation is that a complete knowledge of the world from its beginning to its end is already written down and has been vouchsafed to certain chosen spirits from time to time, a doctrine familiar to Latter-day Saints.63 The heavenly origin of writing is constantly referred to anciently in the doctrine that writing and the symbols of writing are derived from the starry heavens (fig. 61). The Tablets of Destiny which contain all knowledge and impart all authority “are the divination of the world, the stars and constellations form the writing.”64 As Clement of Alexandria observed, both in Egypt and Chaldaea, “Writing and a knowledge of the heavens necessarily go together.”65 How this is can be seen if one considers where all of the oldest writings of the race are found.

If we turn from ancient doctrine to concrete discovery we are soon made aware that the oldest writings are always found in temples. “It is in these temples that we find the first signs of writing. . . . The script appears from the first as a system of conventional signs . . . such as might have been introduced all at once. We are confronted with a true invention, not with an adaption of pictorial art.”66 For Egypt, Steindorff maintained that “the birthplace of this ‘hieroglyphic system’ of writing was the sacerdotal school of Heliopolis.”67 In Babylonia, according to Hrozný, it was in the Uruk period, 3200 B.C., that “there originated . . . from the records of business transaction in the temple enclosure, the picture writing which in later times developed into cuneiform writing.”68 Though these symbols cannot be read (i.e., they were not picture writings, but “a collection of abstract tokens eked out with pictograms”),69 it is apparent that they “were for the most part lists of commodities supplied to or delivered by officials and others concerned with the administration of the Temple.”70

Here we have a combination of business and religion which has given rise to the discussion of the rivalry of Kultschrift (cultic or religious writing) and Gebrauchschrift (practical business writing). Actually no rivalry exists between them: the consensus is that the oldest written symbols are property marks, such as arrow markings and cattle brands (fig. 62), and in order to be respected as such they have to be sacrosanct, holy symbols duly registered in the temple.71 If the oldest writing is used for business, it is always temple business, and the writing is also used for other — far more important — purposes. Examining the claims of the two, Helmut Arntz concluded that the holy or cultic writing has clear priority.72 One can, like old Commodore Vanderbilt, carry on business in a state of total illiteracy, and indeed men of affairs have always viewed men of letters with suspicion: “Writing is an art despised by the Roman businessman,” wrote Cornelius Nepos, “who have all their writing done for them by hirelings.”73 But one cannot carry on the holy business of the temple without the divine gift of writing.74 “Hieroglyphic is correctly named,” Sethe observed, being devised “only for the walls of temples. . . . It is a survival from prehistoric times.”75 It is no accident that temple architecture and writing appear suddenly together.76 The templum is, as we have shown elsewhere, an observatory, where one takes one’s bearings on the universe.77 There the heavens are carefully observed, and to be of value those observations must be recorded. Alphabet, calendar, and temple naturally go together, all devised for handling messages from the stars and planets.78 “We may think of the stars as letters inscribed on the heavens,” said Plotinus, and we may think of the heavens as a great book which men copy and project on tangible materials at the holy places.79 Recent studies by Gerald Hawkins, Peter Tompkins, Giorgio de Santillana, and others have given vivid reality to the heretofore vaguely surmised existence of ritual complexes of great antiquity where men observed the heavens and acquired an astonishing amount of knowledge about them, which, in order to use, they faithfully committed to their books.

From first to last, ancient writing remains in the hands not of businessmen but of priests; it is a holy and a secret thing, imparted only to the elect and zealously withheld from all others. “He who divulges it,” we read of a typical holy book, “dies a sudden death and an immediate cutting-off. Thou shalt keep very far away from it. It is to be read only by a scribe in the workshop, whose name has been duly registered in the House of Life.”80 “Only the prophets may read and understand the holy books” is the rule.81 Each system of writing itself is an effective seal on the holy books, a cryptogram, “a secret formula which the profane do not know.”82 The key to power and priesthood lies “in the midst of the Sea of Coptos, in a box of iron, the box of iron being (in) a box (of bronze, the box of bronze) in a box of kete-wood in a box of ivory and ebony, the box of ivory and ebony in a (box of silver, and the box) of silver in a box of gold, wherein is the book.”83 The idea of the holy book that is taken away from the earth and restored from time to time, or is handed down secretly from father to son for generations, or hidden up in the earth, preserved by ingenious methods of storage with precious imperishable materials, to be brought forth in a later and more righteous generation (i.e., Moses 1:41), is becoming increasingly familiar with the discovery and publication of ever more ancient apocryphal works, Jewish, Christian, and others.84 But nowhere does the idea find clearer or completer expression than in the pages of the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price.

What is perhaps the oldest religious book known, the so-called Shabako Stone, instead of the primitive mumbo jumbo one might expect, contains a story strangely familiar to Latter-day Saints (cf. fig. 43, pp. 180-81). It is the text of a ritual drama enacted in the temple to celebrate the founding of the First Dynasty of Egypt, and it depicts the council in heaven, the creation of the world, the fall of man, and the means by which he may achieve resurrection and be reinstated in his primal glory. The book, on a scroll, was hidden up in the wall of that same temple of Ptah of Memphis, founded by Menes, the first Pharaoh, and was discovered by a later king, Shabako, who followed the same text in the rites establishing his own (Twenty-fifth) Dynasty.85

Another king reports that “when His Majesty settled the lands . . . he mounted the throne of Horus. . . . He spoke to his noble ones, the Smrw of his immediate presence, the faithful writers-down of the divine words, who were in charge of all the secrets.”86 Writing, here shared only with his intimates, is par excellence “the King’s Secret,” which gives him all advantage over his fellows and the ability to rule them. The technique of writing is the foundation of empire, for only the written document can overcome the limitations of space and carry a ruler’s word and authority out of sight and beyond the hills, and even defeat the inroads of time on human memory by preserving the words of command and judgement for unlimited numbers of years.87 The king describes himself as the mediator and scribe of the god in heaven in the administration of his empire: “I sit before him, I open his boxes, I break open his edicts, I seal his dispatches, I send out messengers.”88 In Mesopotamia also “the supreme sovereignty of the universe connected with the tablets of destiny is thus identical with the casting of the oracles of lots,” the possession of which could give even a robber “possession of the rulership of the world.”89 The Pharaoh was authorized to rule only when “the master of the house of the divine books” had inscribed his royal names” on the true records deposited in the heavenly archives” (fig. 63).90 The archives were known in Egypt as the House of Life (cf. fig. 1, p. 12), housing the writings upon which the life of all things ultimately depended.91 It was a powerhouse humming with vital electricity, transmitting cosmic forces from heaven to earth, a place of deadly peril to any mortal not holding the necessary priestly credentials.92 Wherever the heavenly book is mentioned, the heavenly scribe appears as king, priest, and mediator, in early Jewish and Christian as well as older traditions.93 Pharaoh is preeminently “He who knows, being in possession of the divine book.”94 Like the Egyptian Thoth, the Babylonian Nabu, the prophet and scribe writes all things down in the “unalterable tablets” of destiny which determine all that happens upon the earth.95 In the earthly as in the heavenly court, everything was written down, not only to follow the divine example but to coordinate earthly with celestial proceedings. In Persia, for example,

the entire administration, as was customary from the earliest times in the Orient, was carried on by written documents, as it was in the courts of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria. . . . Everything is carefully written down; even in battle the King’s secretary is beside him taking notes; every royal remark is written down and then gathered into “Daybooks” or “Memoranda books,” such as have been found in the archives of Suza, Babylonia, Ecbatana, etc.96

The Myth of Irra, one of the oldest stories in existence, shows “that Mesopotamian theologians were not ignorant of the concept of a ‘sacred book,’ that is, of a divinely inspired, even dictated text, which contains the only correct and valid account of the ‘story’ of deity.”97 In Egypt it is “the King who is over the spirits, who unites hearts — so says He who is in charge of wisdom, being great, and who bears the god’s book, even Sia [‘the personification of intelligence and understanding’ — Faulkner] who is at the right hand of Re.”98 The relief, mentioned above (cf. fig. 59, p. 455), from the temple library of Dendera shows us the scribe’s palette, the Egyptian symbol of writing and all that it implies, descending from heaven; it is supported by two figures who strike the pose signifying “eternity” and who face each other, denoting “from eternity to eternity,” while four other figures are in the attitude of adoration; hieroglyphic symbols above the head of each show them to represent the ear that hears, the eye that sees, the mind or intelligence (Sia) which conceives, and the word of power (Hw) which consummates the creation of all things.99

The books were consulted on every occasion: “Copy thy fathers who have gone before thee. . . . Behold, their words are recorded in writing. Open and read and copy.”100 When King Djoser away back in the Third Dynasty asked his all-wise minister Imhotep to explain a seven-years’ famine, the latter “begged permission ‘that I may enter into the Mansion of Life, and may open the books and may seek guidance from them.’ “101 Interestingly enough, the most important of all writings were genealogical records, and Gardiner concluded not only that the House of Life was, properly speaking, nothing more or less than the genealogical archives, but that the Great Pyramid itself was built to contain the royal genealogical records.102 The astonishing mass and charge of ancient book making may be attributed to the basic doctrine that everything must be written down: “The Babylonian conception of Canonicity, . . . that the sum of revealed knowledge was given once for all by the antediluvian sages,” necessarily posits the existence of the Primordial Book that contains everything that was, is, and is to come, and presents “a remarkable parallel to the Rabbinic view that God’s revelation in its entirety is contained in the Torah,” according to W. G. K. Lambert.103

Knowledge: A Gift from Heaven

This is consistent with the marvelous function of writing as the great synthesizer. To write is to synthesize. The basic idea of writing is that symbols represent sounds and that smaller units make up larger units—not compounds or composites, but true units. Thus a letter by itself is without significance; there must be a reference to something which goes beyond it—other letters making a word or a name. A single letter, heraldic mark, tally, crest, or wasm has no meaning without reference to the official heraldic list of such and the names they represent. The word in turn is also meaningless without reference to other words; even a one-word sentence such as “Alas!” takes its meaning from other unspoken words. The meaning of every sentence also depends on its larger context; even a short aphorism must be understood in its cultural context. For the ancients, any self-contained message was a book. They were not disturbed by the extreme brevity of many “books,” because they regarded every book also as part of a larger context—for the Egyptians the “Hermetic” books. Every proper Arabic book, regardless of its subject, still opens with a paragraph praising God for his creation and the place in it which this particular writing occupies. Ancient records come to us not in single books but in whole libraries. These are not mere collections but organic entities, as the archaic Egyptian sign of the Book-lady Seshat attests: her seven-pointed star goes with her seven books, representing every department of human knowledge, being let down from the opened heavens (cf. fig. 46B, p. 229).104

The House of Life where the books were copied and studied had from the earliest times the aspect of a university, a super graduate-school;105 “there it was that all questions relating to . . . learned matters were settled.”106 The place was always part of the temple, and the books contain the earliest poetry, for poiema means “creation” and the business of the Muses at the temple was to sing the Creation song with the Morning stars;107 naturally the hymn was sung to music, and some scholars would derive the first writing from musical notation.108 It was performed in a sacred circle or chorus, so that poetry, music, and the dance go out to the world from the temple, called by the Greeks the museon, or shrine of the Muses (cf. fig. 6, p. 24). The creation hymn was part of the great dramatic presentation that took place yearly at the temple, dealing with the fall and redemption of man, represented by various forms of combat, making the place the scene of the ritual athletic contests sanctified throughout the world. The victor in the contest was the father of the race, the priestking himself, whose triumphant procession, coronation, and marriage took place on the occasion, making this the seat and source of government (the king was always crowned in the temple rather than the palace).109 Since the entire race was expected to be present for the event, a busy exchange of goods from various distant regions took place, the booths of pilgrims serving as the market booths for great fairs, while the necessity of converting various and bizarre forms of wealth into acceptable offerings for the temple led to an active banking and exchange in the temple courts; the earliest “money,” from the shrine of Juno Moneta at Rome, is temple money (cf. fig. 7, p. 24). Since the place began as an observatory, and all things were tied to the calendar and the stars, mathematics flourished and astronomy was a Muse. History was another Muse, for the rites were meant for the dead as well as the living, and memorials to former great ones (believed to be in attendance) encouraged the production of a marvelous art of portraiture, of sculpture and painting, which would have flourished anyway as architectural adornments, since the design and measurements (the middot) of the temple structure itself as a sort of scale model of the universe and cosmic computer were all-important; the architecture of the hierocentric structure was of primary concern. And since from that central point all the earth was measured and all the lands distributed, geometry was essential: “In the Beginning the One God promised Horus that he should inherit the land of Egypt, which was written in the Books by order of the Lord of All. . . . At the Division of the Lands it was decreed in writing.”110

The writings produced and copied in the House of Life were also discussed there, giving rise to philosophy, but concerned largely with cosmology and natural science. In short, there is no aspect of our civilization that does not have its rise in the temple, thanks to the power of the written word. In the all-embracing relationships of the Divine Book everything is relevant. Nothing is really dead or forgotten; every detail belongs in the picture, which would be incomplete without it. Lacking such a synthesizing principle, our present-day knowledge becomes ever more fragmented, and our universities and libraries crumble and disintegrate as they expand. Where the temple that gave it birth is missing, civilization itself becomes a hollow shell.

A Necessary Addition

In the short compass of a single lecture one always raises more questions than can be answered or discussed. The true origin of writing must remain, as Siegfried Schott observes, a subject of the purest speculation for a long time to come, and possibly forever.111 The fact that all the scholars are merely guessing should not deter us from the fascinating game, for as Karl Popper puts it, it is only by guessing and discussing that any science makes any progress.

Some years ago there was a consensus among students that Egypt was the ultimate home of the alphabet. The decisive study was that of Kurt Sethe, who tried to follow a strictly evolutionary line, with writing evolving inevitably from everyday human needs throughout the world as if by natural law,112 “gradually and imperceptibly,” culminating in a full-blown alphabet in Egypt.113 In the beginning, he avers, humans everywhere communicated by pictures, and to prove this he cites cases in which the white man astounded the Indians by communicating in writing without pictures; he then furnishes as a classical example of Indian picture writing the headstone of a famous chief on which three short vertical strokes represent three seriously wounded warriors while sixteen short horizontal strokes denote sixteen war-parties.114 And this is picture writing? Well might the white man have been astounded that the Indians could thus communicate without letters. None, in fact, of the more than a dozen reproductions of Indian picture writing supplied by Sethe can be read as pictures, and Sethe himself concludes that all these examples are nothing but “mnemotechnical aids” to help the writer fix things in his own mind rather than convey them to others; most of the sketches are so reduced and stylized as to be entirely symbolic, with no attempt at realism, reduced cues that mean nothing to those who have not already experienced what they depict (fig. 64; cf. fig. 58, pp. 422-23).115

This, however, is not true picture writing, according to Sethe, that being a foolproof system in which “every single element of the thought process has its own picture.”116 But if Sethe’s examples of primitive picture writing (of which he could find none in Egypt) were inadequate and even irrelevant, his examples of true picture writing leave even more to be desired—there are none. All his evidence he must find embedded in later hieroglyphic writing.117 In true picture writing, he says, every concept has its picture, so that the writing can be read by anybody anywhere in the world.118 As an example he gives the sign of the cross, which accompanying a name signifies a dead person, forgetting that it only does so as a purely abstract and highly conventionalized symbol, and not as a picture.119 But since “man thinks in words,” according to Sethe, everywhere the true picture writing was “automatically” and “very early converted to phonetic writing.”120 But if men were thinking in words all the time they were drawing pictures, how long would it take them to associate the two? Why does there have to be a gap at all? The evolutionary rule requires it: true writing, being purely phonetic, must necessarily be the last step in the long evolutionary process.121 Again the evidence is missing: all known picture writings in the Old World, according to Sethe, had already become phonetic scripts before their earliest appearance, so that we can only infer the existence of the previous primitive—and true picture writing—systems from indications discovered in the known systems.122 The only clear evidence that Sethe can find for the evolutionary process is the existence of independent systems of writing, all of which, according to him, must have emerged in the same way from primitive picture writing; he lists ten such systems, of which only three had been deciphered in his time.123 Since then the list has been extended, and in the process the independence of the various systems from each other has been brought under serious questioning. Since alphabetic writing is the ultimate perfection in the chain of evolution, it is disturbing that Sethe must conclude that the less efficient, clumsier, and more primitive syllabic writing was evolved from the more perfect alphabetic writing, and not the other way around.124

Sethe’s thesis is that the Egyptians, beginning with a true picture writing containing “originally a countless multitude of symbols”125 (which strangely enough have never turned up anywhere), through a series of inevitable and “purely mechanical” steps, “quite unconsciously and without intention” produced an alphabet of twenty-four letters, all consonants,126 from which all the alphabets of the world were eventually derived.127 The crucial step was the adoption of these characters to their own language by the Hebrews in Sinai—possibly by Moses himself.128 For Sethe, the “missing link” was supplied by Petrie’s discovery of the Siniatic script in 1905.129 From first to last “the entire developmental process of writing from pictures to letters can be viewed in the framework of natural science” (fig. 65).130

To Sethe’s famous study (based on a series of lectures, 1916-1934), Schott added an appendage in 1964. He notes that certain conclusions of Sethe are necessarily premature: the Sinai script has not yet been read with certainty.131 And he cites the later study of Hans Bauer, who, while agreeing that “the Egyptian origin of alphabetic writing is by no means in doubt” and that “anything as rare and marvelous . . . can hardly have originated twice,”132 sees the all-important transition to the standard Semitic alphabet taking place not in Sinai but in Canaan to the north.133 The split between the northern and southern schools still maintains simply because of a lack of evidence.134 Schott wonders if it is necessary to go through all that rigamarole about the various stages of picture writing, for which no rigorous test is possible.135 If we are dealing with a “rare and marvelous” invention, where must we draw the line as to the inventor’s inspiration—can he not have invented the whole thing? The trouble with the evolutionary concept in Egyptian writing, Schott observes, is that the process unfortunately runs backwards.136 The only way to account for the total lack of evidence for all the necessary long transitional phases, according to Schott, is the assumption that everything in those days was written on perishable material, a proposition which he finds untenable.137

And this is where we come in—without apologies, since everything is pretty much up in the air, and there is much to be said that has not been said. Since it is admittedly poverty of evidence that leaves us all in a box canyon, one would think that the scholars, if only in desperation, would venture to consider all of the evidence and not only that which comes under the heading of natural science. With all other ways blocked, it might be a good idea to try some of the neglected passages and ask some of the unasked questions. Here are a few:

1. How are we to account for yawning gaps in the evolutionary record, the complete absence of those transitional documents which should, according to the theory, be exceedingly numerous?

2. What about the sudden emergence first of hieroglyphic writing and then of the Semitic alphabet, each in its perfectly developed form? Why in the case of admitted human inventions, the work of obvious genius, must we still assume long periods of gradual, accidental, unconscious development if no evidence for such development exists outside of the theory itself?

3. The oldest writing appears side by side with the oldest legends about writing. Wouldn’t normal curiosity suggest a hearing of those legends? Greek tradition attributing the origin of the alphabet to Phoenicians has been thoroughly vindicated; no scholar denies that. Then why not examine other legends seriously, at least until something better turns up?

4. Why is it that the ancients are unanimous in attributing the origins of writing, including the alphabet, to a heavenly source?

5. Why are the earliest written documents always found in temples? Why do they always deal with religious matters?

6. Whence the unfailing identification of reading and writing with divination, that is, with interpreting the will of heaven?

7. “There is in the very nature of writing something marvelous and mysterious, which at all times has exercised a powerful attraction on thoughful minds,” writes Sethe.138 Why, then, does he insist that the first true writing, the process of an unconscious, mindless, “automatic” process “can contain only very trivial matters”?139Could anything so “Wunderbares und Geheimnisvolles” (wonderful and mysterious)140 have been invented in a humdrum way for purely humdrum purposes?

8. The supernatural power of the written symbol is as old as the marking of arrows. How can one comprehend the nature of the earliest writing without considering the miraculous or magical powers it exercised over man and beast?141

9. The first writing appears full-blown with the founding of the First Dynasty of Egypt, and in a form far too well-knit and consistent to have evolved, according to Schott.142 What is the significance of writing as “the King’s secret,” the indispensable implement to government and authority?

10. Why is writing always a mystery, a guild secret, a kingly and priestly monopoly? “The really marvelous things that writing does, the astounding feats of thought-stimulation, thought-preservation, and thought-transmission . . . are of no interest to practical people: business records, private letters, school exercises, and the like are periodically consigned to the incinerator by clerks and merchants to whom eternal preservation and limitless transmission mean nothing.”143 Why must the latter be given the credit for inventing writing?

Let these ten questions suffice to justify our own speculations. Schott rejects Sethe’s main thesis, that the Egyptians had a true alphabet, on the grounds that they mingled their alphabetic signs with syllabic and picture writing (the ideograms or determinatives that come at the end of words; cf. fig. 44, p. 218). But whereas the scribes make constant use of the twenty-four letters or single-consonant symbols and could not write without them, they often omit the other signs and seem to be playing with them. Schott maintains that only the Phoenician genius suddenly realized the possibility of doing without the syllabic and pictographic elements entirely; yet for ages the Egyptian scribes freely dispensed with them, now in one word and now in another—they knew it could be done. Pictures? Hieratic is as old as hieroglyphic, yet it contains no recognizable pictures, and demotic is anything but picture writing. Why retain pictures in such systems, since no one can recognize them? To an Egyptian who spoke the language, the alphabetic signs would be enough, just as the same signs, without vowels, are quite adequate for the reading of Semitic lanugages. Granted that some of the other signs are necessary, why is the whole massive and awkward machinery of both picture writing and syllabic writing retained to clutter up an economical and efficient alphabet? I would like to suggest that those who employed the “holy engravings” (for that is what hieroglyphic means) had not only their own people in mind but were thinking of others as well. One need only think of countless early funeral-steles, consciously addressed to distant generations yet unborn. Without ideograms any learned Egyptian scribe could still read a text, but we today could never understand Egyptian without those pictures. Can it be that they are put in there for our benefit or the benefit of others like us? Likewise the eking out of the alphabetic signs with syllabic forms suggests a patient repetition and emphasis for the benefit of stumbling children. If Egyptian writing, because of its compound nature, is absolutely unique, perhaps its intention was also unique—to communicate more widely than the other languages. There is a good deal of evidence to support this theory, but we cannot go into it here. For many years learned men guessed at the meaning of hieroglyphics, and when some of them, like Horapollo, Kircher, or Seiffert, made some happy strikes, it was the pictographs that enabled them to do so and which could have put them on the right track had they properly pursued them. In the 1880s Egyptologists of a number of lands, under the leadership of Professor Samuel Birch of Oxford, collected and interpreted all the available hypocephali of that time, and came up with a surprising unity of views, based on the symbolism alone. Today, as many experts are pointing out, it is doubtful whether anyone really understands any Egyptian religious text; there is still a long way to go, though much progress has been made. But the point is that the evidence is all there before our eyes and that the Egyptians have perhaps consciously supplied us with an overload of material, a safety factor to make sure that in the end the message would get across.

As for the Semitic alphabet and our own, derived from the Egyptian and often called the greatest of all inventions, the most wonderful thing about it is that it seems to have been devised for the express purpose of recording the scriptures—our scriptures. The objection today to Sethe’s suggestion that Moses himself may well have been the inventor is that the alphabet is older than Moses and seems to have been at home at an earlier time up north—in Canaan. Sethe does not apologize for citing a Jewish writer, Eupolemos, in support of the claims put in for Moses,144 and so it seems only fair to point out that by far the overwhelming authority of Jewish tradition favors not Moses but Abraham as the inventor of the alphabet, though some say he inherited it from Enoch. Of recent years a number of new alphabets have turned up in the Near East, dating to 2000-1500 B.C. and all “clearly the inventions of individuals.”145 Well, why not? Once one knows it can be done, one is free to invent one’s own alphabet; the Deseret Alphabet is an impressive demonstration of that (fig. 66). But it would seem that “the Canaanitic alphabet, which has conquered the world,” is the oldest of all, and as such is “a witness to the ancient origin of the Torah.”146 Some think it may be as old as or even older than hieroglyphic itself.147

By the most cautious estimate of the situation, it is safe to say that the scriptures are not to be taken lightly. When scholars who pride themselves on their freedom from any religious commitment are found seriously considering the genesis of the written word not only in holy writings but specifically in our own scriptures, it behooves us to pay attention. Whoever reads the Standard Works today has before him the words of God to men from the beginning, in witness of which the very letters on the page are but slightly conventionalized forms of the original symbols in which the message was conveyed. Merely as a cultural phenomenon the possibility is awe-inspiring, but that it should all go back to Israel and Egypt is too much to hope for. As members of the human race we are bound to approach the scriptures with new feelings of reverence and respect. They are the nearest approach and the best clue thus far discovered to the genesis of the written word.

Notes

*

This was first delivered as the Commissioner’s Lecture in 1972 and was published by BYU Press in 1973. It was later reprinted (without the complete footnotes) in

New Era

3 (September 1973): 38-50, and in

Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless

(Provo, Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center, 1978), 101-27, with the preface included above.

1. This note appeared at the end of the New Era version, p. 50: Since these reflections first appeared in the Commissioner’s Lecture Series, an important study on the subject has emerged in a feature article by K. H. Basso and Ned Anderson, “A Western Apache Writing System: The Symbols of Silas John,” Science 180, no. 4090 (8 June 1973): 1013-22. The authors begin by deploring the strange indifference and neglect shown by scientists in the past toward the study of “so-called ‘primitive’ writing systems,” as a result of which the present-day world is almost completely in the dark on the subject. “Under these circumstances,” they write, “it is with considerable enthusiasm” that they call attention to an authentic Western Apache writing system that is still in use. The system is ingenious, original, and highly efficient, and is entirely the invention of one man, Silas John Edwards, who produced it in 1904, insisting that the whole thing was given to him in a “dream from God, . . . at one time in one dream,” for the sole purpose of recording certain ritual prayers and ordinances that have since been faithfully perpetuated among his people. Since the value of the writing was the power to preserve the divine instructions unaltered through time, the knowledge of the system has been “restricted to a small band of elite ritual specialists” (1015). Of course, Silas John knew about alphabetic writing, yet his system is a “totally unique cultural form . . . among the significant intellectual achievements of an American Indian during the 20th century” (1013).

The thing to notice here is that Silas John was a plain, simple, but deeply religious Indian, while the system of writing he produced suddenly in 1904 was not only highly sophisticated but has proven perfectly functional. No long ages of evolution were necessary to its emergence; the thing was given, he always maintained, in a single vision, for the express purpose of instructing men in the will of heaven and keeping them faithfully observant of it; it has never been used for anything else. Here in a leading scientific journal is a scientific description of how a system of writing actually came into being among a “primitive” people, and it confirms our own suspicions at every point.

2. Edwyn Bevan, Hellenism and Christianity (London: Allen and Unwin, 1921), 81.

3. John Lear, “The Star-Fixed Ages of Man,” Saturday Review 10 (January 1970): 99, speaking in particular of population and pollution problems.

4. “What is happening now is . . . an abandonment of Renaissance-inspired approaches. . . . The new approach is quite different in spirit and in method. It begins with a clear acknowledgment of the impossibility of reconstructing the original order of things human,” William D. Stahlman, “Global Myths Record Their Passage,” in ibid., 101.

5. Joseph Fielding Smith, Selections from Answers to Gospel Questions (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1972), 4.

6. Early Jewish apocrypha emphasize the close association between Adam and the art of writing, a theme which cannot be handled in the scope of this paper. He is called “the four-lettered Adam” in the Sibylline Oracles 3:24, referring to the well-known Jewish doctrine that all things were created out of letters in the first place, the theme of the Sefer Yetzira.

7. Raymond O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), no. 510:1146.

8. That this Atum is to be identified with Adam has been suggested by leading Egyptologists: Eugene Lefebure, “Le cham et l’adam égyptiens,” Biblical Archaeological Society Proceedings 9 (1893): 174-81; Alexandre Moret, Histoire de l’Orient, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1945), 1:209.

9. Jean Capart, “L’exaltation du Livre,” Chronique d’Egypte 22 (1946): 25.

10. R. Englebach, “An Essay on the Advent of the Dynastic Race in Egypt and Its Consequences,” ASAE 42 (1942): 197-98.

11. Jean Capart, “Thème religieux ou fantaisie,” Egyptian Religion 1 (1933): 117.

12. Alan H. Gardiner, “The Nature and Development of the Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing,” JEA 2 (1915): 62.

13. Alexander Scharff and Anton Moortgat, Aegypten und Vorderasien im Altertum (Munich: Bruckmann, 1950), 22.

14. Elise Baumgartel, Prehistoric Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), 48.

15. Stuart Piggott, The Dawn of Civilization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 127.

16. Walter B. Emery, “The Tombs of the First Pharoahs,” Scientific American 197 (July 1957): 112.

17. Kurt Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben: Die Entstehungsgeschichte der Schrift, vol. 12 of Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Aegyptens (Hildesheim: Olms, 1964), 27-28.

18. Scharff and Moortgat, Aegypten und Vorderasien im Altertum, 46.

19. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 20.

20. Johannes Friedrich, “Schriftsysteme und Schrifterfindungen im alten Orient und bei modernen Naturvölkern,” Archiv Orientalni 19 (1951): 251-52.

21. Henri Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (London: Williams and Norgate, 1954), 110.

22. Ibid., 106-7.

23. Antal Dávid, “Remarques sur l’origine de l’écriture sumérienne,” Archiv Orientalni 18/2 (1950): 51-54.

24. Bedrich Hrozný, Ancient History of Western Asia, India, and Crete (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953), 116-17.

25. J. Jordan, “Ausgrabungen in Warka,” Archiv für Orientforschung 6 (1930-31): 318.

26. Phineas Mordell, “The Origin of Letters and Numerals According to Sefer Yesirah,” JQR 2 (1911-12): 575.

27. Émile Massoulard, Préhistoire et Protohistoire d’Égypte (Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie, 1950), 323-24.

28. Naphtali H. Tur-Sinai, “The Origin of the Alphabet,” JQR 41 (1950-51): 296.

29. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 20; Friedrich, “Schriftsysteme und Schrifterfindungen,” 259; Hrozný, Ancient History of Western Asia, 166-72, looks for the place of origin in northern Syria, northwestern Mesopotamia, or eastern Asia Minor.

30. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 45-47.

31. A. Schmitt, cited in Helmut Arntz, “Zur Geschichte der Schrift,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gessellschaft 97 (1947): 82-83.

32. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 10.

33. Ernst Doblhofer, Voices in Stone, tr. Mervyn Savill (New York: Viking, 1961), 33.

34. Ibid.

35. Dávid, “Remarques sur l’origine,” 49.

36. Doblhofer, Voices in Stone, 22.

37. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 24-25.

38. Ibid., 9.

39. Gardiner, “Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing,” 64.

40. Doblhofer, Voices in Stone, 28 (emphasis added).

41. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 28.

42. Ibid., 18.

43. William F. Edgerton, “On the Theory of Writing,” JNES 11 (1953): 287-90.

44. Heinrich J. Lanzen, “New Discoveries at Warka in Southern Iraq,” Archaeology 17 (1964): 125.

45. T. Burton-Brown, Studies in Third Millennium History (London: Luzac, 1946), 66-67.

46. Sherwood L. Washburn, “Tools and Human Evolution,” Scientific American 203 (September 1960): 63.

47. James K. Feibleman, “Philosophy of Tools,” Social Forces 45 (1967): 331-37. See also Kenneth P. Oakley, “Dating the Emergence of Man,” Advancement of Science 18 (1948): 422. Lewis Mumford, “Man the Finder,” Technology and Culture 6 (1965): 375-81.

48. Leslie A. White, “Energy and the Evolution of Culture,” American Anthropologist 45 (1943): 338, 347.

49. “Cybernation and Man,” Man on Earth 1/4 (1965): 6.

50. Amélia Hertz, “L’histoire de l’outil en fer d’après les documents égyptiens hittites, et assyro-babyloniens,” L’Anthropologie 35 (1925): 75-95.

51. Jean Hiernaux, “How Man Will Evolve,” Science Digest 58 (August 1965): 93.

52. Carleton S. Coon, The Story of Man (New York: Knopf, 1962), 64. The Leakeys would concur with his verdict.

53. William F. Petrie, “History in Tools,” Smithsonian Institution Annual Report (1918): 568.

54. Ibid., 568-69.

55. Ibid., 570.

56. E. von Mülinen, “Sprachen und Schriften des vorderen Orients im Verhältnis zu den Religionen und Kulturkreisen,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen-Palästina-Vereins 47 (1924): 88, 90.

57. Jürgen Smolian, “Vehicula Religiosa: Wagen in Mythos, Ritus, Kultus und Mysterium,” Numen 10 (1963): 203, citing as examples fire, wheels, wagons, architecture, and ships.

58. Joseph Fielding Smith, ed., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1947), 54 (emphasis added).

59. Naphtali H. Tur-Sinai, “Sitir Samê, die Himmelsschrift,” Archiv Orientalni 17 (1949): 433.

60. Hermes Trismegistus, 1, cited in Theodor Hopfner, Fontes Historiae Religionis Aegyptiacae (Bonn: Marcus and Weber, 1922-24), 393.

61. Henri Brugsch, “Bau und Maasse des Tempels von Edfu,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 10 (1872): 3-4.

62. Geo Widengren, The Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book (Uppsala: Boktryckeri, 1950), 21.

63. Smith, Selections from Answers to Gospel Questions, 5; Moses 7:67.

64. Alfred Jeremias, Das alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916), 51.

65. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata V, 4, in PG 9:44.

66. Frankfort, Birth of Civilization, 55-56.

67. George Steindorff, Egypt (New York: Augustin, 1943), 24.

68. Hrozný, Ancient History of Western Asia, India, and Crete, 36-37.

69. Frankfort, Birth of Civilization, 56, n. 1.

70. Piggott, Dawn of Civilization, 90.

71. See Hugh W. Nibley, “The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State,” WPQ 2/3 (1949): 329-39; reprinted in CWHN 10:2-15; Hugh W. Nibley, “Controlling the Past: Part V,” IE 58 (May 1955): 307-8; reprinted in CWHN 4:245-47.

72. Arntz, “Zur Geschichte der Schrift,” 76.

73. Cornelius Nepos, On the Great Generals of Foreign Nations XVIII, Eumenes I, 5.

74. Nibley, “Controlling the Past: Part V,” 307-8; reprinted in CWHN 4:245-53.

75. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 20-21.

76. Siegfried Schott, Mythe und Mythenbildung im alten Aegypten, vol. 15 of Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Aegyptens (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1945), 10-11.

77. See Hugh W. Nibley, “Tenting, Toll, and Taxing,” WPQ 19 (December 1966): 603-7; reprinted in CWHN 10:41-43; see also Hugh W. Nibley, “The Hierocentric State,” WPQ 4/2 (1951): 235-38; reprinted in CWHN 10:110-14.

78. Scharff and Moortgat, Aegypten und Vorderasien im Altertum, 3; there is a striking passage in Syncellus, cited in Hopfner, Fontes Historiae Religionis Aegyptiacae, 74.

79. Plotinus, Enneads II, 3, On Whether the Stars Are Causes 7.

80. Papyrus Salt 825A, in Alan H. Gardiner, “The House of Life,” JEA 24 (1938): 167.

81. Heliodorus, Aethiopica (Ethiopians) II, 28, 2.

82. Étienne Drioton, L’écriture énigmatique du livre du jour et de la nuit (Cairo: l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1942), 86.

83. Francis L. Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1900), 21-22.

84. Leo Koep, Das himmlische Buch in Antike und Christentum (Bonn: Hanstein, 1952); Widengren, Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book.

85. Kurt H. Sethe, Dramatische Texte zu altaegyptischen Mysterienspielen, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1928), 1:5, 8.

86. Max Pieper, Die grosse Inschrift des Königs Neferhotep (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1929), 6-11.

87. Moret, Histoire de l’Orient, 1:96-107.

88. Pyramid Text (PT) 309:490-91.

89. Widengren, Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book, 11, 10.

90. Alexandre Moret, Du caractère religieux de la royauté pharaonique (Paris: Leroux, 1902), 102.

91. Winfried Barta, “Bemerkungen zur Darstellung der Jahreszeiten im Grabe des Mrr-wj-k3.j,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 97 (1971): 7.

92. Gardiner, “The House of Life,” 76.

93. Heinrich Zimmern, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament (Berlin: Reuther & Richard, 1903), 405.

94. PT 250:267.

95. Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1927), 2:124-25.

96. Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1910-58), 1:42-44.

97. A. Leo Oppenheim, “Mesopotamian Mythology III,” Orientalia 19 (1950): 155.

98. PT 250:267.

99. Capart, “L’exaltation du Livre,” 25-27.

100. Alan H. Gardiner, “New Literary Works from Ancient Egypt,” JEA 1 (1914): 25.

101. Gardiner, “The House of Life,” 166.

102. Alan H. Gardiner, “The Secret Chambers of the Sanctuary of Thoth,” JEA 11 (1925): 4.

103. W. K. G. Lambert, “Ancestors, Authors, and Canonicity,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 11 (1957): 9.

104. Heinrich Schäfer, “Mousa bei Horapollo II, 29 und die Göttin Ss3-t,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 42 (1905): 72-75.

105. Siegried Schott, in “Nachwort,” to Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 81.

106. Gardiner, “The House of Life,” 159; cf. 174-79.

107. Walter Otto, Die Musen und der göttliche Ursprung des Singens und Sagens (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961).

108. Fritz M. Heichelheim, “The Earliest Musical Notations of Mankind and the Invention of Our Alphabet,” Epigraphica rivista italiana di epigrafia 12 (1950): 111-15.

109. We have treated the overall theme in “Hierocentric State,” 226-53; in CWHN 10:99-147.

110. Siegfried Schott, Das Buch vom Sieg über Seth (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1929), 16.

111. Schott, in “Nachwort,” to Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 83.

112. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 2-3; the only motivating force was immediate practical need, 41, 66.

113. Ibid., 32, speaking of Egyptian linear writing; ibid., 39, speaking of the Egyptian alphabet.

114. Ibid., 4-5; fig. 2.

115. Ibid., 6, 11, 14-17.

116. Ibid., 17.

117. Ibid., 18-19.

118. Ibid., 24-25.

119. Ibid., 25-26.

120. Ibid., 26.

121. Ibid., 27.

122. Ibid., 28.

123. Ibid., 20.

124. Ibid., 29.

125. Ibid., 34.

126. Ibid., 38.

127. Ibid., 45-63.

128. Ibid., 55-56.

129. Ibid., 57-59.

130. Ibid., 66.

131. Ibid., 73.

132. Bauer, Alte Orient, 12-13; citing Schott, in “Nachwort,” to Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 75.

133. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 74.

134. Ibid., 75.

135. Ibid., 76.

136. Ibid., 80.

137. Ibid., 81.

138. Ibid., 1.

139. Ibid., 73.

140. Ibid., 1.

141. See Nibley, “The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State,” 328-44; in CWHN 10:1-32.

142. Schott, in Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 81.

143. Nibley, “Controlling the Past: Part V,” 307-8; reprinted in CWHN 4:245-47.

144. Sethe, Vom Bilde zum Buchstaben, 55.

145. Alfred Jirku, “Der Kult des Mondgottes im alter Palästina-Syrien,”

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 100 (1950): 520.

146. Tur-Sinai, “The Origin of the Alphabet,” 296.

147. Mordell, “Letters and Numerals According to Sefer Yesirah,” 575.