It’s just silly footnotes, you say. But no, it specifically mentions a Year of the Electric Can Opener. Year of the [Consumer Product] was something Infinite Jest did repeatedly.
On top of that, the game was released around a year and a half after the novel.
Probably not useful for puzzles, but maybe DFW-style back-and-forth footnotes are underused as a choice-based IF mechanic.
Ever wondered why the Bible is so insistent you not make “graven images” of the Lord? Well, for many different cultures around that time and place, “cult statues” were at the center of their religion! These statues were carefully crafted to a god’s exact specifications, then prepared with a series of rituals known as the Mîs-Pî, so that the god could actually be summoned to earth and physically inhabit their statue. The statue was then washed, fed, entertained, and generally treated the way you’d treat a king or other very important person.
Since these statues would physically house the deity in question, it was not uncommon to steal people’s gods when you sacked their cities, an act known as “godnapping”. The oldest surviving Hittite text is about the king of Nesa going to war against Hattusa to recover a kidnapped god, referred to only as Sius=summin “our deity”. The Hittites called themselves “the People of a Thousand Gods” due to incorporating so many captured deities into their pantheon, and seem to have been the only culture to ever invent new cuneiform signs to more accurately represent foreign sounds. Because if you’ve kidnapped a god from the Hurrians, and you want that god to help you, well…you’d better be able to pray in Hurrian! If a Hurrian king doesn’t automatically know how to speak every language, why would a Hurrian god be any different?
For the Hittites specifically, the gods weren’t always housed in statues; sometimes they would use other iconography, like a gold disc for a sun god (“a” sun god because there were several of those—remember, “a thousand gods”), but more often, it was done with a standing stone called a huwasi (or ZI.KIN, a pun between the Sumerian words for “soul object” and the Akkadian word for “to inhabit”). Outside the major temples, these standing stones were the easiest way to summon a god whenever you needed one.
So why the prohibition in the Ten Commandments? Well, the ancient Hebrews were very insistent that their deity could not be summoned like this, and nobody should ever try it. Given that a decent amount of the Torah was put into its current form while they were being oppressed by the Babylonians, it makes sense that there’d be a lot of emphasis on not doing things the Babylonian way.
This is becoming less of “trivia useful for puzzles” and more like “trivial tangentially related to puzzles” haha. But keep them coming!
I could see this being part of a language-based puzzle, though. Finding a god named, say, Poseidon, and then having to find the appropriate Greek-named object to offer to him.
Oh right, I should put some puzzle suggestions too!
The reason I mention the huwasi stones is because they could potentially offer some sort of checkpoint system. You go to a new area, find the stone, perform the summoning ritual, and now your god can reach their influence through that part of the map.
It tends to end badly when people try! The Roman Empire tried over and over to summon this particular god away from the Jews, promising Him a lot more followers that Judaea could ever offer, in the hopes that He would stop supporting all these bloody rebellions against Roman rule. It never worked.
(The Romans weren’t quite as literal about summoning gods into physical bodies as the Hittites, but they did have a ritual known as “evocation” that they’d do before a battle, asking their enemies’ gods to come support Rome instead. If they then won the battle, then it was proof that those gods were now on Rome’s side, and they got added to the pantheon.)
I studied the Evocatio, among many other things, and I strongly disagree that “it never worked” (granted that one needs reading Flavius Joseph with three eyes…), because last time I checked, the Abramitic god indeed get much more followers in Rome, (and an english speaker should got that easily, because in English the Catholic church is called “Roman Catholic”…)
the divine Titus has done the Right Thing in his eyes (the loyalty between the Legions and their generals was mutual), and duly celebrates the Evocatio; he know what he actually was doing (that is, evocating to Rome the God encompassing all other Gods) because, has not only Joseph on his side.
no wonder that the Pope is both bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff, the latter title given by a Roman Emperor (Gratian), and is a key point in int’l politics: because one of its key Offices is still existant and active, technically The Empire is still extant and active… (no wonder that the Papal election calls every world leader to Rome…)
so, the Abramitic God was actually summoned on those hills along the Tiber River…
