NEAL STEPHENSON

235

ings of a febrile two-year-old. Entire sections of them simply cannot be translated-the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modem mind.”

“Like instructions for programming a VCR.”

“There is a great deal of monotonous repetition. There is also a fair amount of what Lagos described as ‘Rotary Club Boosterism’-scribes extolling the superior virtue of their city over some Dther city.”

‘What makes one Sumerian city better than another one? A bigger ziggurat? A better football team?”

“Better me.”

“What are me?”

“Rules or principles that control the operation of society, like a code of laws, but on a more fundamental level.”

“I don’t get it.”

“That is the point. Sumerian myths are not ‘readable’ or ‘enjoyable’ in the same sense that Greek and Hebrew myths are. They reflect a fundamentally different consciousness from ours.”

“I suppose if our culture was based on Sumer, we would find them more interesting,” Hiro says.

“Akkadian myths came after the Sumerian and are clearly based on Sumerian myths to a large extent. It is clear that Akkadian redactors went through the Sumerian myths, edited out the (to us) bizarre and incomprehensible parts, and strung them together into longer works, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Akkadians were Semites-cousins of the Hebrews.”

“What do the Akkadians have to say about her?”

“She is a goddess of the erotic and of fertility. She also has a destructive, vindictive side. In one myth, Kirta, a human king, is made grievously ill by Asherah. Only El, king of the gods, can heal him. El gives certain persons the privilege of nursing at Asherah’s breasts. El and Asherah often adopt human babies and let them nurse on Asherah-in one text, she is wet nurse to seventy divine sons.”

“Spreading that virus,” Hiro says. “Mothers with AIDS can spread the disease to their babies by breast-feeding them. But this is the Akkaclian version, right?”

236