ECGE4005T-1
Forward to the translation of the Nachash tablet by Professor Alcyone K. Arents D.Phil.
What follows is a direct translation of the infamous Nachash tablet, discovered in 2019 by exploratory cave diver Lyric Little, in what has come to be known as the Chamber of Bones, beneath the lava flow that seals the Northern waterway from Van Gölü, in the shadow of Süphan Dağı in the Adilcevaz district of the Armenian Plateau, Turkey.
Testing by the University of Manchester, of a clay chip discovered nearby in the Chamber and matched to a larger crack in the tablet, using innovative moisture recombination techniques, contrasted with traditional luminescence analysis, demonstrated irrefutably that the tablet had been fired within the last 66 years. Regardless of an acknowledged margin of error for the proximity of lava flow, the last eruption of Süphan Dağı took place over 600,000 years ago and would therefore date the tablet far too early for the cuneiform in question.
Combined with the obvious anachronisms revealed in translation, there can be no question that the tablet is a modern forgery, despite some of the wilder articles currently circulating on the internet. The identity of the hoaxer and method of transport to an undiscovered chamber, accessible only via over a mile of flooded crawlspace, is currently unknown.
The skill of construction and understanding of early Sumerian pictograms is impressive. The placement of such an accomplished forgery in a location which may never have been found, certainly adds to the mystery surrounding this artifact, but short of an acceptance of authorship by an immortal antediluvian dragon, the modern hoax hypothesis is unquestionable.
I am publishing this translation, to make the text available to a wider readership, and to demonstrate the scriptural anachronisms and heretical ideas therein, in order to counter some of the pseudo-scientific articles which have circulated and caused so much controversy and distress for religious scholars.
The appellative cuneiform 𒈲𒄭𒄊 (MUŠ.ḪUS) usually refers to Mušmaḫḫū, the mythological-hybrid offspring of Tiamat, as described in the Enūma Eliš. However, in this case I have contextualised the translation as the Hebraic נָחָשׁ (Transliteration nāḥāš – commonly rendered as Leviathan-Nahash or Nachash), since this appears to have been the author’s intent.
Although the tablet employs a stanzaic form similar to “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta”, I have made no attempt to preserve the meter, favouring instead clarity of language, with a resultant prosaic presentation. I have retained the stanza breaks for authenticity.
The cuneiform pictograms on the actual tablet are of an early style, which, if genuine, would have suggested an age of some 5000 years, rather than the Segoe UI Historic font used above for ease of scholarly recognition and software compatibility. Some names and words have been ‘double-pressed’ in the clay for emphasis: I have capitalised these words in translation.
A.K. Arents, 21st November 2021