Which is obvious when you know what to look for—but for someone like Cora, whose knowledge of the language is as rudimentary as an Anevrai schoolboy’s, spotting that is a tremendous achievement! Especially with two of them so badly damaged (may the sun burn whoever is responsible for that!). And all of them of course have text on both sides, but only mark the numerals at the beginning of the obverse and end of the reverse, with no other feature to tell you which side is which. A quick look even showed me two places where the reverse side begins with a numeral or the obverse ends with one, but simply as a normal part of the text, not as a sequencing aid. “Yes,” Cora said when I pointed those out. “They gave me a lot of difficulty for a while.”
“I have never seen this before,” I marveled, scribbling down some hasty notes. (Never mind the translation; I suspect I could spend the rest of my life writing journal articles and monographs about other aspects of these tablets.) “None of the Draconean texts I’ve examined have used this method of ordering. And it’s so odd that there’s no colophon—they used those on just about everything that wasn’t a throwaway document, because it was the only way to sort their libraries. I mean, this is clearly a very old text, so perhaps they hadn’t developed those techniques yet. But still.”
“How can you tell it’s old?” Cora reclaimed her notes and put them away in a leather folder. “All Draconean texts are old. But you mean it’s older still, don’t you?”
Hunching over the row of tablets had made my back stiff; I stretched it, blessing my Utalu mother for never seeing the point of Anthiopean corsets, even before they started going out of fashion. “Because of the orthography—the way it’s written. Early texts tend to have defective double consonants, meaning that the scribe didn’t write them both; you just have to work out whether it ought to be double or single. That’s why you had ‘slept’ instead of ‘planted’ in your translation, by the way; you didn’t know that the scribe had meant a geminated M in the verb. And these tablets are so archaic that they use triconsonantal root signs, which might stand in for any one of a dozen nouns or verbs built from that root.”
Cora looked puzzled. “How are you supposed to know which one it is?”
I shrugged. “You guess.”
Puzzlement turned to outright offense. My hand to the sun: I have never in my life seen someone so outraged by orthography. “Draconean is like that,” I said, as if further explanation would mollify her. “Sometimes you’re supposed to read a given character as its word meaning, like galbu for ‘heart.’ Sometimes you’re supposed to read it for its syllabic value instead, lal. And sometimes it’s a determinative—meaning you don’t pronounce it at all; it’s just there to tell you something about the next bit. The heart determinative means that whatever follows is a person or people, even if it doesn’t look like it. ‘Three heart reeds’ is actually ‘three peoples,’ in the sense of races or nationalities.”
Cora’s mouth opened and shut a few times as she sputtered. Finally she said, “How does anybody read this language?”
“With great difficulty,” I said, shrugging. “Now you know why I can’t just pick the tablets up and read them off like a menu in a Thiessois restaurant.”
“Yes, but how did they read it? The ancient Draconeans?”
I laughed. “The same way we do. One of the first texts Grandpapa translated in full turned out to be a letter from a young Anevrai scribe to the priest of his home village, complaining about how much he hates learning determinatives and how mercilessly his teacher beats him when he misses a geminated consonant in his reading.”
“It’s completely irrational,” Cora said, fuming. “There must be so many ways to get the meaning wrong.”
“Yes, but generally you realize after a while that you have got it wrong. We’d make fewer errors if we spoke the language fluently, like the ancients did, but of course we’re also having to work out the vocabulary at the same time. We’ve come a long way since the Cataract Stone, mind you—we can read quite a bit now. But it’s still slow going.”
I don’t think I convinced her of anything, though to be honest, I’m not sure there’s anything to convince her of. Draconean writing is really quite irrational, when you get down to it. But it was the first time anyone had invented writing, anywhere in the world, and we can’t really fault them for not doing a very good job on the first try.
And when you think about it, they did a good enough job that their texts have survived for millennia and we can still read them today—albeit with a lot of effort. I’ll be lucky if anything I do lasts a thousandth as long!
The opening invocation said something about a male Draconean who was “the first to record speech in clay.” If this is a mythic narrative, it may describe how writing and other things were created. I wonder how much the stories will be like the ones remembered today?
Tablet II: “The Creation Tablet”
translated by Audrey Camherst
Before cities, before fields, before iron, before time, the three came together, the three called Ever-Moving, Ever-Standing, and Light of the World, the three called Source of Wind, Foundation of All, and Maker of Above and Below.
Together they crafted the world; together they made the sky and the earth, the rains and the rivers, and all that flies or crawls or digs in the ground. They made these things, but they were still lonely. They said to each other, “Who is there that is capable of knowing us? Who shall sing our names and give us praise? Who looks upon what we have made and recognizes its beauty?”
So they came together at the highest point, at the place where Ever-Standing meets Ever-Moving and the Light of the World smiles down, at the place where the mountain breathes smoke to the sky,1 the place named the Censer of Heaven. The Source of Wind spoke first, saying, “I will make a creature that knows the glories of the sky. From on high it will see everything; it will look upon what we have made and recognize its beauty.”
It took the wind and braided it, many strands of breeze and gale, with rain to give it substance, and set its creation free. The first issur2 soared through the sky, and the Ever-Moving was glad. From on high its creation saw everything, looking upon what the three had made.
But the creation of the Ever-Moving was flawed. It looked, but did not recognize. It did not know the three. It did not sing their names and give them praise. Though it was a thing of beauty, it lacked the capacity to recognize beauty. It lacked a mind.
And so the Foundation of All said, “I will make something better. I will sculpt a creature that knows the bounty of the earth. From the ground it will experience everything; it will explore what we have made and appreciate its beauty.”
It took the soil and shaped it, dirt and stone, with the roots of growing things binding it together, and set its creation free. The first āmu3 walked the earth, and the Ever-Standing was glad. From the ground it experienced everything, exploring what the three had made.
But the creation of the Ever-Standing was flawed. It experienced, but it did not appreciate. It knew the three, but in its arrogance it did not sing their names, it did not give them praise. Though it was a thing of understanding, it lacked the humility to acknowledge the three.