On the Age of Darkness and Its Legends

A scholar who studies the ancient peoples, who tells the tales of the nations long gone, spoke this way: anyone who searches into this is groping forward in the dark. The lives of the ancients lie in darkness, and for the mind the path here is a narrow thread. In a black night you can look for the moon, but no one dares to take this road. Their history was never written down, and no one knows their roots and origins. Unless a son remembers it from his father and tells you the whole legend, point by point. For whoever is guided toward history draws the history out from the legend. And the footprints, signs, and relics of the past will guide you, more or less, along the way. For whatever now comes to light from the ground becomes a key to the ancient treasures. Just as in this age there have come to light all the bricks and remains of the Chaldeans. And again the roots of words and their names reveal to you the shape of what once happened. Otherwise there is no road into this matter; no one is aware of the hidden secret.