Tuppi šīmāti

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished.

How those two events were connected, the physics of it, seemed an incomprehensible enigma. Did universal principles or laws even exist once she dematerialized?

Can you draw me a word picture?

I can try, but it's a little difficult to talk about it.

That's alright, no hurry ... take all the time you need.

Sorry, I don't even know where to begin.

How about at the beginning, like once upon a time?

She stares at me benignly, not at all like the others, kindlier somehow, but still professional, her eyes engaging mine frankly. I don't know if she is joking and I'm too nervous to laugh. Pretty sure they’re recording our session.

It began at the British Museum. But that seems so long ago. A year before? A decade? Longer still? I've somehow lost the concept of time since my return.

Jesus, I'm jabbering like a perfect idiot. Focus on the facts, not feelings!

You see, I was a post-graduate student studying Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy and Astrology working to align the omens in the Enuma Anu Enlil An Ki with real world astrological phenomenon.

Can you translate the title for me?

'When Anu and Enlil separated heaven and earth.' They were the Akkadian founding gods of creation.

Did you translate it, yourself?

No. The British Museum provided me with a translator's unpublished notebook. On the bottom of the extract page was written - 'The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished.' with the notation - tablet K 6177 + 8869.

My curiosity aroused; I requested access to the tablet so I could read the cuneiform for myself. I assumed that using the text notations from the translator, I could quickly determine for myself the astrological phenomenon that triggered the strange omen in the note.

Long story short, tablet K6177+8869 had nothing whatsoever to do with the Enuma Anu Enlil An Ki. In fact, it was Sumerian cuneiform script, not Akkadian and it took me three weeks to translate the tablet and finally find the referenced quote 'The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished.'

And she's not just any queen, but the Queen of heaven - the Sumerian goddess Nin-Anna, Queen with a capital Q, better known to you and I as the planet Venus.

But there's more. K6177+8869 is the Tuppi šīmāti - the Tablet of destinies.

The British Museum's collection has roughly one hundred thousand Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, the great majority of them untranslated. Incredibly, the notation led me to the one tablet in the whole of its collection with greater worth than the all the others combined save, perhaps, the Code of Hammurabi and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

How did that make you feel?

My skin pulsing with electric feeling, I literally wept for joy. It hurt so good that it actually gave me a migraine. My hand shakes a little even now at the memory of it.

So ... what is the Tablet of destinies?

A talisman granting authority to its bearer to rule over creation and time. Without the Tuppi šīmāti, the gods have no powers at all. I did not understand the significance of my discovery, at least not at first.

In the Tuppi šīmāti, rivers do not merely reverse direction, they return to their headwaters, their muddy bottoms becoming arid deserts. Clouds that once fretted the skies with glory vanish and the sun brightens a thousandfold, its molten surface catapulting flames into the heavens like some terrifying celestial monster.

Do you mean like solar flares?

Far worse than that, I fear. The seas boil from the terrifying heat, the earth belching fire and smoke. The sun sets instead of rising, time beginning to turn backward, the earth torn apart as if by the monstrous tusks of a behemoth colossus, every green and living thing cast into the smoking abyss rising like Hell from the depths below.

Formerly great cities fall while the earth shakes like the latter days, the oceans breaching the gates with which some elder god had formerly enclosed them, millions vanishing from every city and nation.

And still the sun sets instead of rising, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, a thousand ages of humanity relived and then just as quickly expunged, their earthly dominion now little more than the dream of some forgotten god.

On and on the sun continues to set instead of rising, epochs unwinding like an elephantine spool of thread, tyrant lizards thundering once more upon the earth while volcanoes flame and spew deadly ash and rivers of molten rock.

She stares at me with wet eyes and for a moment I wonder if she believes, a sudden piercing in my guts reminding me how badly I need her to do so.

But I do not tell her what happened when I rested my hand on the tablet and felt its terrible power catch me up into the heavens where I suddenly stood before the Mother of monsters, Tamtu, the deadly omen in the Tuppi šīmāti coming to life before my horrified gaze.

I witnessed Venus disappear in the heavens when the warning triggered the prophesied cataclysm. I bore witness to the terrifying sun setting ten thousand times ten thousand times and I died each time it slipped below the far horizon.

Well ... that's all the time we have for today.

She slowly stands my heart pounding in terror.

Please wait ... you don't understand.

I'm sorry, I really need to go.

She begins to walk to the door while my mind freezes in panic. Stop her, stop her, stop her, you idiot!

Look to the night sky! Look to the Queen before she disappears!

I'm yelling now, tears of anguish streaming down my face.

Turning, she pauses, her hand on the door, her frank gaze regarding mine. This time I clearly see the tears gliding down her cheeks.