Ghyll:Ziggurat Scrolls

The Ziggurat Scrolls are a trove of ancient documents perportedly discovered by the famous archeologist Sir Rumsfeld Tiggerwort near the Dagger Seas in -7 EC. The scrolls primarily concern the mythological figure the Budgerigar Master, although their exact interpretation is currently a subject of scholarly debate.

Content of the Scrolls

The Ziggurat Scrolls recount a series of epic poems about the Budgerigar Master and his role in Nitenmangreian society. The scrolls are considered unprecedented becaused they describe the Budgerigar Master not as the mythological figure he is generally presumed to be, but as a historical figure and founder of the long-lived Society of Traveling Budgerigars. This was a stealth-guild supposed to be prevalent among the Nitenmangrey from circa -2000 EC to the culture's extinction in around -900 EC. According to the scrolls, the Budgerigar Master was the head `scribe' in the Nitenmangrey court during the reign of the apocryphical king Oldellus -1. He trained his budgerigars to memorize all speeches and conversations that took place in their presence, and then recite relevant fragments, in song, on command. When the speech of the more than one person was relevant, each of the Master's ten budgerigars took on the role of a different participant in the conversation. In this way, it was unneccesary to keep written records of court proceedings. The birds seemed to have unlimited memory capacity, but unfortunately, only the Budgerigar Master himself was able to communicate with them.

Upon the demise of the Budgerigar Master, his budgerigars were released into the wild, as it was thought that their records were useless and inaccesible after the death of the only person able to talk to them. However, the poems claim, this was to prove otherwise. It seemed that the birds only communicated with the Master simply because they desired no other human contact at the time. After their release, each budgerigar flew to a different Nitenmangrian village and aprenticed herself to a small child. These children, known as the "Ten-from-one," recorded the songs of the birds and were each separately inspired to travel and spread their songs and stories throughout Nitenmangrey. After some years of wandering individually, the Ten-from-one finally united to form the Society of the Traveling Budgerigars, with the Budgerigar Master as the honorary founder. Each member of the Society was required to train at least one new budgerigar in the art of scribery, and upon the member's death, the bird was released to choose a new member to replace him or her. In this way, the Society remained active, although always semi-secret, for more than a thousand years, only dying off with the general demise of Nitenmangreian culture.

The poems themselves claim to be a factual retelling of the origin of the Society of Traveling Budgerigars and appear to have been recited, in their full 2617 stanzas, at the triannual general meetings of the Society.

Finding of the scrolls

Sir Rumsfeld Tiggerwort claims to have discovered the Ziggurat Scrolls while on a cuttlefishing expedition to the Segundus Dagger Sea. He was pulled out of the boat as he wrestled to land a particularly strong cuttlefish, and eventually washed up on a small island shaped like a ziggurat. On the highest level of the ziggurat, he discovered the mouth of a cave that had been sealed with seabird guano. Inside, he found the 23 rolls of parchment that were the scrolls. These he removed and wrapped in an acid-free plastic bag, which he just happened to have with him, and then, carrying his precious cargo on his head, swam to the mainland. Sir Rumsfeld has since refused to pinpoint the location of the ziggurat island, claiming that "that's for me to know and you to find out." However, their are some who doubt Sir Rumsfeld's knowledge of the island's whereabouts as well as their own.

Script and Translation

The Ziggurat Scrolls were written in a variation of ternary script known as 2.5ary script. This script, which appears to be a degenerate form of the ternary script adopted by lazy scribes who refused to count "all the way up to three?! You've got to be splakking!" It was first interpreted to core script by the scholar Blivingdel, and to this day, he and Sir Rumsfeld Tiggerwort are the only Ghyllians able to read it.

The first interpretation of the Ziggurat Scrolls was published by Sir Rumsfeld himself in -6 EC and sparked a Ghyll-wide controversy over the true identity of the Budgerigar Master. Blivindel published a much revised interpretation two year later. Since then, many other scholars have examined the Scrolls, but as none are familiar 2.5ary script, their publications have been less than enlightening.