Expectations: Horror/Fantasy vs. Reality

[dragoness_e]

Imagine you were a character in a fantasy or horror novel or RPG and you found this mysterious stone:



..engraved with ancient script, strange monsters, altars, and mysterious symbols. You would suspect that the ancient text might be dark rituals to summon the monsters, or a cryptic warning against some demonic horror.

In actuality, the stone is a kudurru or boundary stone from ancient Mesopotamia. It's a real estate charter, detailing surveyed farm land granted to someone, with all the witnesses and officials involved. The monsters and altars? They represent the gods and demons who are invoked to curse anyone who moves or hides the boundary stone, tries to appropriate the land, or deny the rights of the legal owners.

1. Legal contracts in those days were a lot more interesting.
2. Most ancient writings are pretty mundane.

Comments

[seawasp]

But in a horror or fantasy novel, you wouldn't FIND the mundane stone.

Or if you did, because it was in fact moved from the original location, you'd be the subject of the gods' and demons' curses.

[dragoness-e.livejournal.com]

Considering that the stone depicted is the Michaux Stone, which was picked up by the French botanist André Michaux and lugged all the way back to Paris.... I'd say it was moved from the original location.

*plays Twilight Zone music*

He died of a fever, too, and disease is one of the many curses.

Mundanely speaking, that was in 1800 in Madagascar, which is a great place to get tropical diseases and a bad time for decent medical care.

[lunatron.livejournal.com]

Some Greek pots, which were pretty cheap and mass-produced, will say things like 'a curse on he who steals me from my owner'.

[raisedbymoogles.livejournal.com]

Man, imagine if we drew curses on legal documents nowadays.

"A plague of boils upon he who removeth this tag from this mattress!"

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Lawyers, demons, same thing ...

[nightwind69.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I remember when I used to be able to sort of read cuneiform here and there. Ah, the good old days. :)

The Ancient Near East was fun! OK, so it's fun looking back on it. Definitely wouldn't have wanted to live there then. Or now, for that matter... ;)