Library of Congress
Talin Kraft
Every spring, I visit my family in Washington, DC. I love The Mall with all the museums and monuments. This year, being under Lee Lawrie’s spell, I took the opportunity to visit the Library of Congress, for which Lee Lawrie created a set of amazing doors.
The beautiful exterior bronze doors of the John Adams Building depict figures of gods, heroes, and real people from around the world that brought alphabets to their respective cultures.
Thoth is an Egyptian god of writing, wisdom, and knowledge. He invented Egyptian hieroglyphs and system of writing and served as the scribe of the gods.
Brahma is one of the principal deities of Hinduism, one of the Trimurti, the Creator god (along with the Preserver god Vishnu and the Destroyer god Shiva). He is the creator of the four Vedas, the god of sacred knowledge. It’s a bit disappointing that he is depicted in human form, his traditional representation is with four faces and four arms. He holds the texts of Vedas in one hand.
Ts’ang Chieh is a mythological figure in ancient China, a courtier of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of Chinese characters. He was so wise, observant and perceptive that people believed that he had four eyes. Look closely – Lee Lawrie gave him four eyes, but if you’re not familiar with the legend, it’s easy to take the extra eye for an eyebrow. The story has it that he invented the pictographs after observing animals’ footprints and having a conversation with a hunter, who was able to tell him exactly which animal left each footprint. And that’s how the idea was born – that every thing on earth can be represented by its own “footprint”, or a pictograph.
Cadmus is a Greek hero, founder of Thebes. He brought Phoenician alphabet to Greece, and later it was modified to become a Greek alphabet.
Nabu is one of the Babylonian/Assyrian gods. He was a scribe for Marduk, the main god of Babylonya, and as such, Nabu became a god himself – the god of writing and wisdom, and was the keeper of the tablets of destiny.
Tahmurath is a mythological Persian Shah, who used to fight demons with magic. He is the only one here who didn’t invent an alphabet himself; instead, he was able to subdue an evil spirit who pleaded with him to spare his life in exchange for knowing how to write in seven different scripts. I just love the visualization of the evil spirit!
Hermes is a deity in Ancient Greek mythology, a messenger god, associated with eloquent speech and knowledge, patron of writers, inventor of the alphabet.
Itzamna is one of the most important Mayan gods, god–creator, the ruler of the heavens and of day and night, who gave the Maya the foundations of civilization – literacy, medicine, and agriculture (note a plant in his hand). He also created the Mayan calendar. Itzamna was first high priest and first writer, as the art of reading and writing was sacred and belonged to priests only.
Odin is the supreme god in Norse mythology, among other things he is a founder of runic alphabet. Runes were so important and sacred to Vikings that Odin had to make a huge sacrifice to learn it – he pierced himself with his spear and and hung on the World Tree, Yggdrasil, for nine days and nights, receiving no help, no food, not even a sip of water, to perceive the meaning of the runes.
Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent (see feathers behind his head), was one of the major deities of the ancient Mesoamerican pantheon. For Aztecs, he was a god of wind, rain, learning, writing, and knowledge, the inventor of books. Another interesting detail – according to some legends, he had a beard, which was unusual for Mexican tribes. The reality and importance of the beard is widely disputed now, but Lee Lawrie rendered him bearded.
Ogma is a god from Irish mythology, a member of Tuatha Dé Danann. He is the inventor of Ogham, the script in which Irish Gaelic was first written. To this day, you can see Ogham stones in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Ogma is a god of poetry and eloquence, but first and foremost, he is a warrior, and as such, his attribute is a club. He was so fierce that during a battle he had to be chained and held back by other warriors until the right moment.
Sequoyah is the only real person here. He was an illiterate Cherokee Indian, silversmith by trade (do you see a jeweler’s hammer in his hand?). He had to interact with white people, selling them his ware, so he noticed “talking leaves” that allowed his customers take notes or remember things. He vowed to create a similar system for his tribe. He didn’t have much support – Indians believed that writing was either a hoax or sorcery, but Sequoyah was persistent. First, he came up with a system of one symbol for each thing or a concept, much like hieroglyphs. But there were just too many things around, he became frustrated trying to invent and remember a glyph for each one. Anecdotally, he spent so much time thinking about it that he forgot to tend to his fields, and his wife had to beg their neighbors for extra food. His friends and neighbors pitied his family as they thought he had lost his mind. But, in the end, Sequoyah came up with a syllabary of 85 characters. After seeing its worth, the people of the Cherokee Nation rapidly began to use his syllabary and officially adopted it in 1825.
