Changed the speech in their mouths, put contention into it,
Into the speech of man that had been one.
That is Kramer's translation."
"That's a story," Hiro says. "I thought a nam-shub was an incantation."
"The nam-shub of Enki is both a story and an incantation," the Librarian says. "A self-fulfilling fiction. Lagos believed that in its original form, which this translation only hints at, it actually did what it describes."
"You mean, changed the speech in men's mouths."
"Yes," the Librarian says.
"This is a Babel story, isn't it?" Hiro says. "Everyone was speaking the same language, and then Enki changed their speech so that they could no longer understand each other. This must be the basis for the Tower of Babel stuff in the Bible."
"This room contains a number of cards tracing that connection," the Librarian says.
"You mentioned before that at one point, everyone spoke Sumerian. Then, nobody did. It just vanished, like the dinosaurs. And there's no genocide to explain how that happened. Which is consistent with the Tower of Babel story, and the nam-shub of Enki. Did Lagos think that Babel really happened?"
"He was sure of it. He was quite concerned about the vast number of human languages. He felt there were simply too many of them."
"How many?"
"Tens of thousands. In many parts of the world, you will find people of the same ethnic group, living a few miles apart in similar valleys under similar conditions, speaking languages that have absolutely nothing in common with each other. This sort of thing is not an oddity - it is ubiquitous. Many linguists have tried to understand Babel, the question of why human language tends to fragment, rather than converging on a common tongue."
"Has anyone come up with an answer yet?"
"The question is difficult and profound," the Librarian says. "Lagos had a theory."
"Yes?"
"He believed that Babel was an actual historical event. That it happened in a particular time and place, coinciding with the disappearance of the Sumerian language. That prior to Babel/Infocalypse, languages tended to converge. And that afterward, languages have always had an innate tendency to diverge and become mutually incomprehensible - that this tendency is, as he put it, coiled like a serpent around the human brainstem."
"The only thing that could explain that is - "
Hiro stops, not wanting to say it.
"Yes?" the Librarian says.
"If there was some phenomenon that moved through the population, altering their minds in such a way that they couldn't process the Sumerian language anymore. Kind of in the same way that a virus moves from one computer to another, damaging each computer in the same way. Coiling around the brainstem."
"Lagos devoted much time and effort to this idea," the Librarian says. "He felt that the nam-shub of Enki was a neurolinguistic virus."
"And that this Enki character was a real personage?"
"Possibly."
"And that Enki invented this virus and spread it throughout Sumer, using tablets like this one?"
"Yes. A tablet has been discovered containing a letter to Enki, in which the writer complains about it."
"A letter to a god?"
"Yes. It is from Sin-samuh, the Scribe. He begins by praising Enki and emphasizing his devotion to him. Then he complains:
'Like a young … (line broken)
I am paralyzed at the wrist.
Like a wagon on the road when its yoke has split,
I stand immobile on the road.
I lay on a bed called "O! and O No!"
I let out a wail.
My graceful figure is stretched neck to ground,
I am paralyzed of foot.
My … has been carried off into the earth.
My frame has changed.
At night I cannot sleep,
my strength has been struck down,
my life is ebbing away.
The bright day is made a dark day for me.
I have slipped into my own grave.
I, a writer who knows many things, am made a fool.
My hand has stopped writing
There is no talk in my mouth.'
"After more description of his woes, the scribe ends with,
'My god, it is you I fear.
I have written you a letter.