Callie Mint
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Lirkuen omo otol zeim ki mes em zeim nokh.
🕑 Added 2020-11-03 19:40:10 +0000 UTCThis is an old Akarian proverb. Transliterated, it means "To Master not Life but to Master Death is the Hallmark of Civilization."
A gloss would look something like this:
hallmark (literally, light-beacon) behind civilization to.master NEG life but to.master death
Notice the verb "Zeim" isnt actually the main verb of the sentence. The main verb is a silent "to be". if there were a non-copula main verb, it would go at the front of the sentence.
This is a poetic statement, however, and the real meaning of the phrase can't be gleamed from just a gloss. The phrases "To master life" and "to master death" are poetic ways of referring to "Agriculture" and "Fermentation" respectively.
The Akarians mark the beginning of their civilization as when they, as a people, figured out how to make bread (which is a fermentation process). To them, simply growing food and directing the growth of food "mastering life" is not enough to call yourself civilized. once you control fermentation- literally the controlled rotting of living things- that is when one calls oneself 'civilized'. of course, fermentation isnt something every society requires to do, but we can figure the old Akarians for not knowing that.
This saying is part of a larger cultural practice: Dead-laying. The funerary rites of the Old Akarians, passed down in myriad forms to the contemporary torchbearers of Old Akarians, is such that once a person of a village dies, their body is laid to rest upon their own garden bed, in full public view. the body is not hidden away, or buried, and ESPECIALLY not thrown into water. It is instead allowed to decompose until finally becoming one with the soil. That soil which provides so graciously to us.
Akarians were so enthused by the process of fermentation and how great bread and beer was, that they made up an entire goddess about it (and who could blame them?) She has been called Iverin, and she is the goddess of growth and decay, life and death, and the mediator in all social interactions. She is there when you grow food and she is there when it rots. She is there when you are laughing with your friends, and she is there when you fight with your family. Protector in the Grove, The Sunlight on our Crops! Hail, Iverin!
