Hiro Protagonist

When I was younger I would read a lot of swords and sorcery fiction. Stuff like Conan and what have you. While in high school I began to amass lists of foriegn words,place names, etc., that would be employed in these books. (I would also detail such things as the currency system used or catalog the deities mentioned.) It's been quite some time since I've done that, but I was very tempted to when I read King Solomon's Mines. It really took me back to those times.

There's a particular passage that I found riviting. The backstory is that King Solomon had access to a large diamond mine in South Africa. I'm not much of a Biblical scholar, but I'd wager there is little, if any, ground for this view in reality. Here's Quartermaine's description of the top of the mine:

At the edge of the vast hole, which was the pit marked on the old don's map, the great road branched into two and circumvented it. In many places this circumventing road was built entirely of vast blocks of stone, apparently with the object of supporting the edges of the pit and preventing falls of reef. Along this road we pressed, driven by curiosity to see what the three towering objects were which we could discern from the hither side of the great hole. As we got nearer we perceived that they were colossi of some sort or another, and rightly conjectured that these were the three "Silent Ones" that were held in such awe by the Kukuana people. But it was not until we go quite close that we recognized the full majesty of these "Silent Ones."

There, upon huge pedestals of dark rock, sculptured in unkown characters, twenty paces between each, and looking down the road which crossed some sixty miles of plain to Look, were three colossal seated forms -- two males and one female -- each measuring about twenty feet from the crown of the head to the pedestal.

The female form, which was nude, was of great though severebeauty, but unfortunately the features were injured by centuries of exposure to the weather. Rising from each side of head were the points of a crescent. The two male colossi were, on the contrary, draped, and presented a terrifying cast of features, especially the one to our right, which had the face of the devil. That to our left was serene in countenance, but the calm upon it was dreadful. It was the calm of inhuman cruelty, the cruelty, Sir Henry remarked, that the ancients attributed to beings potent for good, who could yet watch the sufferings of humanity, if not with rejoicing, at least without suffering themselves. The three formed a most awe-inspiring trinity, as they sat there in their solitude and gazed out across the plain forever. Contemplating these "Silent Ones," as the Kukuanas called them, an intense curiosity again seized us to know whose hands that had shaped them, who was it that had dug the pit and made the road. While I was gazing and wandering, it suddenly occurred to me (being familiar with the Old Testament) that Solomon went astray after strange gods, the names of three of whom I remembered -- "Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the childen of Ammon" -- and I suggested to my companions that the three figures before us might represent these false divinities.

"Hum," said Sir Henry, who was a scholar, having taken a high degree in classics at college, "there may be something in that; Ashtoreth of the Hebrews was the Astarte of the Phoenicians, who were the great traders of Solomon's time. Astarte, who afterwards was the Aphrodite of the Greeks, was represented with horns like the half-moon, and there on the brow of the female figureare distinct horns. Perhaps these colossi were designed by some Phoenician official who managed the mines. Who can say?"