1. YANTRIC SYMBOL
At the apex of the sculpture there is a carved Yantra made up of interlocking triangles.
2. MINOAN ‘LINEAR A’ SYMBOLS
A selection of symbols from this undeciphered writing system.
3. VINČA SYMBOLS
Neolithic south-eastern European ‘Vinča’ symbols.
A selection of symbols from this proto-writing system.
4. ‘INDUS’ SCRIPT SYMBOLS
A selection of symbols from this undeciphered writing system.
5. CYRILLIC
Excerpt from Slavic myth the “Bird Gamayun”.
“In the very beginning The World was in Darkness. Later the Gold Egg appeared. There was Rod inside it. Rod is Creator of our Universe. Rod gave birth to Love-Lada. The strength of love destroyed the Egg and created the Universe – an innumerable quantity of worlds and also our World. The Sun came out of His face; the light Moon came out of His breast; thick stars came out of His brows; dark nights came out of His thoughts; wild storms came out of His breath. Rod created the Nature and divided our World into Nav’, Yav’ and Prav’. Rod created the World Ocean.”
6. MORSE CODE
Line from ‘Endgame’ by Samuel Beckett
‘The end is in the beginning, and yet you go on’
(permission kindly granted courtesy of the Estate of Samuel Beckett)
7. DEVANAGARI (SANSKRIT)
Rig Veda, Mandala 10, Hymn 129:
‘Then even nothingness was not, nor existence,
There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In those keeping
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?
Then there was neither death nor immortality
Nor was there then the torch of night and day.
The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other.
At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only unillumined water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
Arose at last, born of the power of heat.
In the beginning desire descended on it –
That was the primal seed, born of the mind.
The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom
Know that which is kin to that which is not.
And they have stretched their cord across the void,
And know what was above, and what below.
Seminal powers made fertile mighty forces.
Below was strength, and over it was impulse.
But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
So who know truly whence it has arisen?
Whence all creation had its origin,
He, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
He, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
He knows – or maybe even he does not know.’
8a. ETRUSCAN
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a right to left direction.
8b. DEMOTIC (CURSIVE)
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a right to left direction.
8c. N’KO
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a right to left direction.
8d. CARPATHIAN ROVAS BASIN
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a right to left direction.
8e. KHAROSTHI
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a right to left direction.
8f. KHAZARIAN BASIN
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a right to left direction.
9. CLASSICAL CHINESE
Lines from Dao De Jing:
‘There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted)! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Dao (the Way or Course). Making an effort (further) to give it a name I call it The Great. Great, it passes on (in constant flow). Passing on, it becomes remote. Having become remote, it returns. Therefore, the Dao is great; Heaven is great; Earth is great; and the (sage) king is also great. In the universe there are four that are great, and the (sage) king is one of them. Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Dao. The law of the Dao being what it is.’
10. CHINESE
Excerpt from Pangu myth:
‘The sky and the earth were chaotic, Pangu was born in it. Nine times did he transform daily, he became more spiritual than the sky, more saintly than the earth, more powerful than the sky and earth. The sky grew one ‘zhang’ higher every day, the earth grew one ‘zhang’ thicker every day, Pangu also grew one ‘zhang’ bigger every day. 18,000 years passed like this, and afterwards the sky and earth got separated. Pangu had a dragon body and a human head. His head reached the edge of the east-west direction, his legs reached the edge of the east-west direction, his left hand reached up to the southernmost end, his right hand reached up to the northernmost end. When he opened his eyes, it was summer, when he breathed in, it was winter. The air he blew became wind and clouds, his shouting voice became thunder. When Pangu died, his head became the ‘jia’, his throat became the ‘yi’, his shoulders became the ‘bing’, his heart became the ‘ding’, his bladder became the ‘wu’, his spleen became the ‘ji’, his ribs became the ‘geng’, his lungs became the ‘xin’, his kidney became the ‘ren’, his feet became the ‘gui’. His eyes became the sun and moon, his beard became the stars and constellations, his brow became the pole of the Big Dipper, the nine holes became the nine continents, his chest became the Kunlun (mountain), his knee became the southern mountain, his thigh became the Taishan, his buttocks became fish and tortoises, his hands became flying birds, his claws became turtles and dragons, his bones became gold and silver, his hair became grasses and trees, his hair on his body became mallards and ducks, his teeth became gems and rocks, his sweat became rain and water, his large intestines became the Huai and the Si rivers, his blisters became the hundred rivers, his face became the Dongting lake.’
11. DOGON TRIBE
Cosmogonic symbol in pictorial form; arranged within a small circle amid the vertical lines of texts.
12. NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN APACHE
Vertical line of seven cosmogonic symbols.
13. JAPANESE
Excerpt from Kojiki:
‘The names of the deities that were born in the Plain of High Heaven when the Heaven and Earth began were the deity Master-of-the-August-Center-of-Heaven; next, the High-August-Producing-Wondrous deity; next, the Divine-Producing-Wondrous deity. These three deities were all deities born alone, and hid their persons. The names of the deities that were born next from a thing that sprouted up like unto a reed-shoot when the earth, young and like unto floating oil, drifted about medusa-like, were the Pleasant-Reed-Shoot-Prince-Elder deity, next the Heavenly-Eternally-Standing deity. These two deities were likewise born alone, and hid their persons.’
14. OGHAM IRISH SCRIPT
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’.
15. JAPANESE
Excerpt from Kojiki – continued:
“Hereupon all the Heavenly deities commanded the two deities His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites and Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites, ordering them to “make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land.” Granting to them a heavenly jeweled spear, they thus deigned to charge them. So the two deities, standing upon the Floating Bridge of Heaven pushed down the jeweled spear and stirred with it, whereupon, when they had stirred the brine till it went curdle-curdle, and drew the spear up, the brine that dripped down from the end of the spear was piled up and became an island. This is the Island of Onogoro.”
16. KOREAN
Excerpt from the ‘Simu-ga’ cantos:
‘As to whether or not form and formlessness are two things / To discuss the intricacies of delusion / With basic entity the same as primordial void, original tranquility / To debate [the nature of] life and lifelessness / Things which have no in or out, no centre.’
17. MONGOLIAN ORNAMENTAL SEAL SCRIPT
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’.
18. CUNEIFORM
Babylonian epic of “Enuma Elish”:
‘When above heaven was not (yet) named
(and) below the earth was not pronounced by name
(and when they) had mixed their waters together
(but when) pastures were not yet formed, nor reed-beds were made
When none of the gods were (yet) manifest.’
19. ANCIENT GREEK
Lines from ‘Theogony’ by Hesiod:
‘…and tell me which of them first came to be. In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth…’
20. HEBREW
Lines from chapter Genesis of Christian Bible:
‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth,
The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
The God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.’
21. GE’EZ
Ethiopic continued lines of chapter Genesis of Christian Bible:
‘And God said, “Let there be a dome in midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
‘So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.’
22: OLD NORSE
Lines from Eddic prose manuscript Völuspá:
‘Of old was the age / when Ymir lived;
Sea nor cool waves / nor sand there were;
Earth had not been / nor heaven above,
But a yawning gap / and grass nowhere.’
23. BRAILLE
Lines from ‘The God’s Script’ by Jorge Luis Borges:
‘A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time. Shadows or simulacra of that single word equivalent to a language and to all language can embrace are the poor and ambitious human words, all, world, universe.’
24. LATIN
Lines from Metamorphoses by Ovid:
‘Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place.’
25. PAHLAVI
Greater Iranian Bundahishn, verse 58:
‘Such were the creatures of Ohrmazd nourished, in the spiritual state, that stood the moisture, unthinking, unseizable and unmoving, like such as sperm; then, out of moisture (there was) mixing, like sperm (and) blood; then, out of mixing, there was a collision, like a knot;’
26a. BASSA VAH
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a left to right direction.
26b. TIFINAGH
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a left to right direction.
26c. LYCIAN
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a left to right direction.
26d. GLAGOLITIC (CURSIVE)
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a left to right direction.
26e. BRAHMI
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a left to right direction.
26f. EARLY GREEK (CORINTH STYLE)
Transliteration of ‘in the beginning’ written in a left to right direction.
27. CLASSICAL ARABIC
Lines from Ibn al-Nafis’ Theologus Autodidactus:
‘With this flood became mixed a great quantity of clay of various nature, because the kinds of clay over which the flood had streamed were different…Till they became mixed and achieved a mixture very near to equilibrium. Their consistency became viscous and capable of having organs formed from them; their single parts were differentiated because the kinds of clay with which they had been mixed were different;… Thus these parts were ready to be transformed into organs: the organs of a man.’
28. TAI DAM
Tai Dam Origin myth:
‘In the beginning, the sky lowered a place and suspended it. In the sky there was soil and grass, and in the sky there were mushroom-like objects, which were seven in number. There were the nine rivers, which met at the mouth of the Black, Red, Ou and Mekong. At that time, it was like that. The sky still hung low. Thy sky was as yet a soft, unformed plane. There was no room to raise up the arm of the rice pounder. There was no room to draw out the thread in spinning.’
29. AMERICAN ENGLISH
Lines from ‘The Big Bang Theory and Everything After: The Narrative of Modern Cosmology’ by Adam Frank:
‘In the beginning there was a single geometrical point containing all Space, Time, Matter and Energy. This point did not sit in space. It was space. There was no inside and no outside.’
The information above is acknowledged as referencing material from omniglot.com and wikipedia.org websites and ‘The World’s Writing Systems’ eds. Peter T Daniels and William Bright (Oxford University Press, 1996).
