Tconju Babelen
- Place story collected: Tobase, in the Egos Valley, Tcantane
- Storyteller: Byauxe daet Geeve
- Date collected: 100227
- Collector: V. Higbe [UGU Ethnology]
- Translator: Oeyenje [UGU Linguistics]
Evey society has some form of story which tries to explain the presence of mutually unintelligible languages, and the Babel myth - the building of a tower that displeased a deity, leading to the scattering of humanity and the loss of common understanding - is a widely known trope; this particular version of the story is popular throughout the Gevey speaking lands.
The story centres on Babele, the Lord of Storms - one of the four mythical Grandsons of Sama-Lovare, the First Man. Babele is associated with youth, impetuousness, and the East; his name is a byword for incompetence and dangerous ignorance. He is also associated with great wealth, and great loss. In some versions of this story the suggestion to build a tower is made by his wife, or alternatively one of the Princes of the animal kingdom; here it is an unnamed man who makes the suggestion. The appearance of the Creator in the city disguised as a beggar, his/her conversation with a local man (sometimes rendered as a young woman), and his/her subsequent displeasure and distruction of the tower are common to most versions, as is the moral at the end of the story.
Interestingly, the settlement of Úrtaljke is built near the ruins of an ancient city - possibly over 4,000 orbits old - the most prominent feature of which is the stump of a great tower. Moreover, the name Úhrtaljke includes the root talk - 'order', compared to Babele with its root bab - 'confusion, chaos'. The site is currently being excavated by a team of archaeologists from the University of Pidome, who have uncovered some stunning examples of pottery, cut stones and exotic ceramics.
Byauxe daet Geeve, the storyteller who recounted the story for us, is a well known storyteller based mainly in Tobass. For this version of the story, she chose to relate it in the Valley dialect rather than her native Egos dialect.