"Victor Pelevin. Babylon (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

that his discovery appeared to him to be quite revolutionary and even
iconoclastic, which set Tatarsky pondering yet again on the vanity of all
human endeavour. He didn't experience even the slightest sense of shock at
the fact that Ashuretilshamersituballistu II had turned out actually to be
Nebuchadnezzar III, and the nameless historian's depth of feeling really
seemed rather laughable. The kings seemed rather laughable too: it wasn't
even known for certain whether they were people or simply slips made by a
scribe on his clay tablets, and the only traces remaining of them were on
those same clay tablets.
The chronological tables were followed by extensive notes on some
unknown text, and there were a lot of photographs of various antiquities
pasted into the folder. The second or third article that Tatarsky came
across was entitled: 'Babylon: The Three Chaldean Riddles'. Beneath the
letter '0' in the word 'Babylon' he could make out a letter 'E' that had
been whited out and corrected - it was nothing more than a typing error, but
the sight of it threw Tatarsky into a state of agitation. The name he'd been
given at birth and had rejected on reaching the age of maturity had returned
to haunt him just at the moment when he'd completely forgotten the story
he'd told his childhood friends about the part the secret lore of Babylon
was to play in his life.
Below the heading there was a photograph of the impression of a seal -
a gate of iron bars on the top of either a mountain or a stepped pyramid,
and standing beside it a man with a beard dressed in a skirt, with something
that looked like a shawl thown over his shoulders. It seemed to Tatarsky
that the man was holding two severed heads by their thin plaits of hair; but
one of the heads had no facial features, while the second was smiling
happily. Tatarsky read the inscription under the drawing: 'A Chaldean with a
mask and a mirror on a zig-gurat'. He squatted on a pile of books removed
from the closet and began reading the text beneath the photograph.
P. 123. The mirror and the mask are the ritual requisites oflshtar. The
canonical representation, which expresses the sacramental symbolism of her
cult more fully, is oflshtar in a gold mask, gazing into a mirror. Gold is
the body of the goddess and its negative projection is the light of the
stars. This has led several researchers to assume that the third ritual
requisite of the goddess is the fly-agaric mushroom, the cap of which is a
natural map of the starry sky. If this is so, then we must regard the
fly-agaric as the 'heavenly mushroom' referred to in various texts. This
assumption is indirectly confirmed by the details of the myth of the three
great ages, the ages of the red, blue and yellow skies. The red fly-agaric
connects the Chaldean with the past; it provides access to the wisdom and
strength of the age of the red sky. The brown fly-agaric ('brown' and
'yellow' were designated by the same word in Accadian), on the other hand,
provides a link with the future and a means of taking possession all of its
inexhaustible energy.
Turning over a few pages at random, Tatarsky came across the word
'fly-agaric' again.
P. 145. The three Chaldean riddles (the Three Riddles oflshtar).
According to the tradition of the Chaldean riddles, any inhabitant of
Babylon could become the goddess's husband. In order to do this he had to
drink a special beverage and ascend her ziggurat. It is not clear whether by