SiWren of the Patriarchs

Si'Wren of the Patriarchs, by
Roland Cheney

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Copyright (C) 1998 by Roland Cheney
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Title: Si'Wren of the Patriarchs
Author: Roland Cheney

Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6592] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 29,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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OF THE PATRIARCHS ***

Copyright (C) 1998 by Roland J. Cheney
Si'Wren of the Patriarchs
by Roland Cheney
To my wife, Jacquelyn.
Author's Remarks
The story of Si'Wren was culled out of a veritable treasure trove of
hundreds of little clay tablets which were found sealed and submerged
for over 4,000 years in stone jars. The jars were brought up from their
place of discovery on the floor of the Persian Gulf, where they had lain
half-buried under successive layers of sediment for over four millennia,
by an internationally renowned team of archaeologists, oceanographers,
and professional deep sea divers.
Although few realized the true significance of the find at the time, it
was to be recognized later as a momentous event on that fateful day
when the very first stone jar was actually removed safely intact from
the bottom of the sea by a crude, squealing, grease and rust encrusted
loading crane, to be hoisted free after so many centuries and set at
long-last on the heaving deck of the aging expedition ship.

Monetary funding for the expedition was so short at times that the only
affordable ship permanently on duty throughout the entire venture was
an extremely dilapidated and barnacle-festooned vessel of third-world
registry. No doubt many of the people involved viewed it as a minor
miracle that the near-constant threat of mechanical breakdown did not
endanger the success of the mission proper.
But the mechanics and engineers worked more than a few miracles of
their own when catastrophe loomed, as it did more than once, and their
determination ultimately prevailed.
Safely deposited on dry land after having been lost and forgotten for
almost all of recorded human history, the stone jars were finally opened
to reveal, instead of wine or oil, the curious little clay tablets safely dry
and cushioned in a packing medium of loose straw and uncombed wool.
The clay tablets, finally exposed to the light of day after holding their
secrets for so long, were gently removed from their stone keepers and
carefully packed in crates to be secretly shipped to the back rooms of a
major museum. There, it was hoped, they could be systematically
catalogued, transcribed, and translated by the dedicated ministrations of
a team of the foremost scholars of our time.
After careful and intensive study, the story was derived and adapted -by
express and exclusive museum permission- by the author, who poured
himself out in an exhaustive work upon this unspeakably priceless
literary treasure, to such an extent that a state of chronic ill-health and
increasingly strained and weakened eyesight had begun to set in toward
the end of the project. Every effort was taken to achieve the highest
possible standard of accuracy, integrity, and authenticity in highlighting
every nuance of meaning from so obscure an original tongue.
The author has since recovered, and the story of Si'Wren is therefore
presented now in modern literary form, which -it is hoped- will be
found to have suffered but little from the inevitable abuses of such a
distant cultural disparity and linguistically disjointed translation. The
rigorous demand of a simple, honest, and straightforward retelling of
the story of Si'Wren owes it's true success, not so much to the tireless
and unstinting efforts of the author, working with a bank of modern

university supercomputers, but rather to the remarkable purity of
Si'Wren herself, and the crude directness and honesty of the original
telling.
Here, then, is the final result of so much work, such danger and
heartbreak on the high seas, unrelenting secrecy, and endless scrutiny,