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