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Difference between revisions of "Besokian Cosmogony (text)"
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The narrative as a whole is relatively broad and does not give as many details as, for example, the Olgish account, but most common elements are present, so ''Sen'' ‘the tall one’, the first mountain that the divine sisters rest upon before creating life. Shênûrish, the fire deity, is said to have travelled to ''Manârishen'' ‘heat-land’ to light Kôhêrûn’s torch, similar to how Delgor is said to have lit the sun from Dóiteán in Olgish mythology. Once the Divine Sequence is completed and the Kônôwîs and Kôdâlon descend from the Sen, the myth of the Three Hills is given in a formal almost identical to that in the Lonsorigi; as this text precedes the latter by almost 3000 years, the ''Hêrûn'', possibly in the form of a Soskish descendant, is generally presumed to have influenced the Olgish account. All three hills are named in the Besokian text, making it one of only a few to mention all three locations by name, as ''Kâmârod'', ''Nishûnâc'', and ''Nôrashet''. Nishûnâc is identified as ''enâc'' ‘here’, suggesting it was already the name used for the complex the text was found in. Kâmârod is placed vaguely ‘in the west’, while the location of Nôrashet is left unspecified. Neither hill appears on the Old Besokian World Map, possibly implying that they were not seen as geographical locations but rather as ethereal places, possibly worlds before life and after death, taking earthly life at Nishûnâc in their centre, or three distinct ages, then placing Nishûnâc between them as an ‘intermediate’, rather than the Olgish ‘Last Age’. | The narrative as a whole is relatively broad and does not give as many details as, for example, the Olgish account, but most common elements are present, so ''Sen'' ‘the tall one’, the first mountain that the divine sisters rest upon before creating life. Shênûrish, the fire deity, is said to have travelled to ''Manârishen'' ‘heat-land’ to light Kôhêrûn’s torch, similar to how Delgor is said to have lit the sun from Dóiteán in Olgish mythology. Once the Divine Sequence is completed and the Kônôwîs and Kôdâlon descend from the Sen, the myth of the Three Hills is given in a formal almost identical to that in the Lonsorigi; as this text precedes the latter by almost 3000 years, the ''Hêrûn'', possibly in the form of a Soskish descendant, is generally presumed to have influenced the Olgish account. All three hills are named in the Besokian text, making it one of only a few to mention all three locations by name, as ''Kâmârod'', ''Nishûnâc'', and ''Nôrashet''. Nishûnâc is identified as ''enâc'' ‘here’, suggesting it was already the name used for the complex the text was found in. Kâmârod is placed vaguely ‘in the west’, while the location of Nôrashet is left unspecified. Neither hill appears on the Old Besokian World Map, possibly implying that they were not seen as geographical locations but rather as ethereal places, possibly worlds before life and after death, taking earthly life at Nishûnâc in their centre, or three distinct ages, then placing Nishûnâc between them as an ‘intermediate’, rather than the Olgish ‘Last Age’. | ||
Unlike in some other portrayals of the Three Hills myth, the central acts of creation are committed entirely in Kâmârod, where all non-human life and the first group of humans are said to originate. It is likely that this was initially intended to suggest an origin of life outside the mundane world but was later reinterpreted to place Kâmârod in the literal west of Elondor. Possibly drawing from a pre-existing overlap in mythologies, the hill might have identified with Ortûlék after the fact, yielding the creation account in the Lonsorigi, which is focussed almost entirely on Ortûlék and only briefly mentions the subsequent hills. A minor difference, the ''Hêrûn'' mentions 13 guardians being created while the Lonsorigi reduce this number to ten. | Unlike in some other portrayals of the Three-Hills myth, the central acts of creation are committed entirely in Kâmârod, where all non-human life and the first group of humans are said to originate. It is likely that this was initially intended to suggest an origin of life outside the mundane world but was later reinterpreted to place Kâmârod in the literal west of Elondor. Possibly drawing from a pre-existing overlap in mythologies, the hill might have identified with Ortûlék after the fact, yielding the creation account in the Lonsorigi, which is focussed almost entirely on Ortûlék and only briefly mentions the subsequent hills. A minor difference, the ''Hêrûn'' mentions 13 guardians being created while the Lonsorigi reduce this number to ten. | ||
As almost universally the case with Three-Hills stories, the subsequent creation of humans at the three hills is taken as the basis for three races or ethnicities. While the Lonsorigi suggest that all three groups were created from haws harvested at Ortûlék, in the Besokian text, only the people of the First Hill are created in this fashion. The people of the Second Hill, the Besokians themselves, are said to be made of light; the people of the Third Hill, later identified with the Armundians, are said to be made of earth. | |||
===List of names and places mentioned=== | ===List of names and places mentioned=== | ||