Re: VMs: MULLER AND POLARIA

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2 Nov 2004, Jacques Guy wrote:
> Of course not: the Babylonian tablets were written by the Great
> Ancients. And they all say "ph'nglui mglw'nafh cthulhu r'lyeh wagh'nagl
> fhtagn" in various ciphers.

Ssh!  Ssh!  You're not supposed to express that in Latin character!  Do
you want to destroy the Universe as We Know It!

With this reminder I now wonder if Lovecraft was the innovator of the
apostrophe as a marker in science fiction and fantasy for exotic
languages?  The practice is fairly widespread, appearing in, e.g., the
work of C.J. Cherryh.

Humor aside, as far as what they all say, Akkadian is fortunate in that a
fair amount of what is preserved actually says something of historical or
literary interest, as of course all of you know already.  However, the
bulk of ancient written records say something like "Received (or
disbursed), 20 measures of wheat, 15 and 1/2 of barley, and 2 quarts of
beer from/to X. (Repeat ad infinitum.)  Sum, 103 1/2 measures of wheat,
215 1/4 measures of barley, and 40 quarts of beer."  Occasionally the
arithmentic has errors.  I believe the current theory is that writing was
invented - in the Near East anyway - to facilitate accounting, and, more
importantly, to make it possible to sign the bursae in which counters and
later inscribed tablets reporting counters or abacuses were sealed, in
order to guarantee their authorship and show that the accounts were
untampered with.  So writing was originally an ancient equivalent of a
Public Key Infrastructure, or so it seems, and most documents were signed
and sealed calculator tapes or spreadsheets or whatever.

> All the Assyriologists, those so-called experts, have shamefully missed
> it.

I sometimes imagine that all the real Voynichologists have decyphered the
document and just hang around the list for the amusement of watching the
progress of the uninitiated.  (Indeed, One Who Knows often lets slip
hints.)  Thus we see that the VMs is conducive not only to obsession, but
also to paraonoia.

> "Postulated" is not the word. "Demonstrated" is. Elementary, my dear
> Nyarlathotep.

Or maybe pustulated, in keeping with the Lovecraftian theme.
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