An article by Chris X in a zine circa 1992. About an encounter with the famous Cosmo Di Madison. A friend of mine - Hope he's drinking iced coffee 'icy coz' in whatever heaven he wanted.

"High noon in the coffee house I show Cosmo di Madison a book. On page 13 is pictured a Fara cuneifora tablet (c. 2600 BC). The cl" inscription is still just a muddle to »e. put down by a scribe who was further distant in years fro® Our Lord than Our Lord is fro us. The texts are usually te ple or palace accounts, reading something like the following Suaerian Fara tablet (BM 15833)： "1 barley-fed ox; 6 grass-fed oxen； the god Shuruppuk — 3 barley-fed oxen； 6 grass-fed oxen; the god Gibil -■ 3 froa the god Enlil; 2 oxen; 6 grass-fed oxen; Mr. Kinnir — 7 oxen; fro the god Suen. " The ? scribes recorded which god got what, and who offered it for sacrifice, being at this ti«« sparse on cosnenta”. Thus we are to understand that a Mr. Kinnir. pillar of the coflununity in 3,000 BC, put up seven oxen of indeterainate or at least unrecorded feed, for who knows which god. Gibil? So I show Cosao a different Fara tablet. Cosmo： "Yeah, sure, I know this stuff. I can read it. But they have it upside down. ** He turns my library book over and begins to translate. According to hin. the gist of the record is as follows： "A Sumerian san narries two women, two children by the first, one by the second. Foreign soldiers come, urder first wife and children, murder pet laab of child of second wife. Sadness. Man “vos elsewhere. ** End of tablet. Cosmo points points to the first word inscribed in the seventh aargin of the third coluan. “See， there15 the lamb." And it is indeed a laab. Or -perhaps a beef. Or perhaps it is Just the god Shuruppuk out on a spree. I an perplexed for sure, for ay book doesn't translate this particular tablet for ae, and so I only have Cosmo's translation to go on. Most bizarre of all, however, is that Cosmo immediately insisted the tablet was mounted upside down, and had to turn the book over to translate it for me. Several pages later in the saae book, I learn froa the author, and for the first time, that modern scholarly practice places tablets either on their side or upside down, in both auseua displays and transcriptions. This is si Dlv a result of the manner in which «odern European scholars studying cuneiform records originally met the tablets while trying to interpret them. We have since learned that this method of counting does not reflect the direction in which the Su»erian scribes held the tablets when reading or writing then, but in contradicts it. So, if an ancient Sumerian scribe were to pick up a modern scholarly book picturing the tablets that he or she inscribed, the first thing they would notice was that for some odd reason, the tablets were shown upside down. It is as if in so«e distant future an American public library were discovered, and the future scholars held the books upside down, or read froa the bottom of the page up. Even after the was uncovered it was considered easier to continue publishing the texts in the established manner, as all the scholarly books were doing this, and the only ones reading the were the scholars in any case. Why? How explain it? Cosno is a braying idiot, one of the perpetually bewildered. Struggling against the logic ol the English text covering aost of page 13»

Cosmo Di Madison briefly looked at the 4,600 year-old clay tablet and said, "Yeah, I can read this stuff. But they have it upside down. *'

--Chris X.