Uncovering the Archaeology of Elden Ring's Grand Conspiracy | Elden Ring Archaeology Ep. 12

[Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] if I say the word Byzantine what do you picture maybe you picture nothing at all it's just a fancy word with no association perhaps you picture the Aggie of Sophia the famous Church commissioned by the emperor Justinian or perhaps it's the Imperial symbol the double-headed eagle with a Christian crown or a Byzantine mosaic point is if this word does conjure anything in your mind it's likely one of these images and each of these symbols of Byzantine culture is deeply and inextricably Christian The byzantines Who by the way called themselves Roman and saw themselves as the inheritors of Rome's Legacy at some point become Inseparable from the rise of Christianity it's easy to forget then that initially the Roman Imperial authorities were at Best dismissive of and often quite hostile to this nascent religion Christianity arose from within the Roman Empire initially as a decentralized collection of churches that spread through Word of Mouth to ultimately become the state religion of the Empire and completely inextricable from the late Imperial culture the key moment from Christianity's perspective is the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine to the new faith as a measure of how differently things could have played out one of Constantine's immediate predecessors the emperor Diocletian was responsible for the most systematic and brutal persecution of Christians by Imperial authorities including forced conversions and plenty of Martyrs given these inauspicious Beginnings no one would have predicted the ultimate outcome of this story that Christianity would come to so utterly transform the Roman Empire that in the end being Roman and being Christian were synonymous the erstwhile persecutors became the propagating agent for this new faith and the inexorable spread of monotheism throughout the world had begun the lingering effects of this transformation suffice it to say are everywhere all around us in Eldon ring the religion of sacred tree worship which we have so painstakingly documented in Prior episodes and whose symbols are everywhere around the player a rose not merely from a group of Outsiders or by the arrival of some magical meteor instead like Christianity in Rome tree monotheism arose from within the Empire it would eventually come to Define this is the story of how that transformation happened when we left off last episode we'd established the Eternal Empire a period in the lands between his history dominated by the three Eternal cities connected by a network of roads that covered the whole continent but as we pointed out the Eternal cities were not tree monotheists far from it they worshiped the Stars owing Heritage to the ancient astrologers as well as the Black Moon and they paid no mind to a small inconsequential group of tree worshipers and here is where our story picks up first let's investigate the iconography of the Eternal cities their walls windows and icons are covered mostly with inscrutable designs seemingly deliberately uninterpretable as if this culture is so removed from us that its symbols are utterly meaningless like a foreign script with no intrinsic meaning to an outsider but there is one icon which is interpretable the symbol seen on the giant [ __ ] chairs in the Eternal cities as well as in Celia as we've pointed out previously this symbol is also seen in the niches that hold Nikola statues in ordna and is even seen on the night sorcery symbol so it is clearly a symbol of great importance to the Knox and the culture of the Eternal cities but what is it well let's take a moment to analyze its features it has a symmetric form without regular geometric shapes which indicates a biological inspiration its Central axis has repeating elements between cephalic features and the Telson which indicates a segmented animal and has segments with legs on either side which show transverse short striations that together are arranged in leaf-like flows which suggest gills on the legs and finally gills on the legs translates literally to branchiopods a class of crustaceans if we compare these to the designs of the [ __ ] chairs we can see the resemblance clearly all of this to say the visual inspiration seems to be a brachiopod of course there are no actual branchiopods in game but this inspiration is still quite interpretable francopods are highly fitting as a visual inspiration as these creatures display fairly sophisticated phototaxis where they sink deeper during the day to avoid sunlight and resurface at night Guided by the specific spectral Allure of the night sky we know that the Knox likely shunned bright daylight as they built their cities and towns with bizarre lead-in Windows which if you think about it really only makes sense if the intention is to block out the light so they shun daylight but are drawn to the light of the night sky just like these marine animals actually we know the developers are quite aware of this phenomenon from irelia The Young Stargazer who after death turned into a jellyfish this jellyfish is modeled after the moon jellyfish which also exhibits similar light-dependent behavior and just so happens to be named Aurelia orita this is also quite consistent with the strange blue glow on all of the buildings of the Eternal cities which seems to be inspired by bioluminescence another magical phenomenon of marine biology at night as we've posted about previously one can even see a sort of false night sky in the amazing bioluminescence of marine creatures so there is evidently a whole marine biology theme going on in the Eternal cities something we will return to eventually when discussing the form of the eldenbeast but for now the question is how do we get from an internal City Empire worshiping the Stars the moon and their false night sky to the cult of the Sacred tree which defines so much of the later history in the lands between [Music] to answer this we will need to take a look at the interface between these two cultures laying down in lower Landell there is a church inside the cellian quarter called the lower Capital Church where there is a striking discovery inside the structure which is so clearly Salient that is to say an eternal city building amidst the usual Salient City symbols on the lead windows we see a tree relief a unique tree relief in the entire game the story of this tiny Chapel is both striking and clear the citizens of the town on the outskirts of Langdale the Eternal City repurposed their old building and began secretly worshiping the sacred tree this tiny Chapel tells the story of the Genesis of the religion which would come to dominate The Empire and ultimately replace its iconic features with the symbols of the saint and tree seen in the Divine Tower Bridges this actually fits perfectly with the architectural inspiration for the Salient towns the so-called dead cities of Syria he's famously abandoned towns were the prosperous towns built along the trade routes connecting the major cities of the late antique Levant in other words they are to Antioch in Constantinople what Celia ordna and lower Landell are to the Eternal cities we can see their architectural features are nicely matched and together they support the story of how tree worship sprang up from within the empire many of the extant buildings in the dead cities are churches relatively simply constructed as opposed to the Grand Cathedrals seen later elsewhere in the Empire but here are the true origins of Christianity the church is all throughout the Greek and Latin speaking world that were set up in the first centuries A.D tended to be repurposed Roman or Byzantine buildings in fact even the word Basilica to most of us now inextricable from the image of a grand Church like Saint Peter's in Rome actually originally meant a Roman meeting place the First purpose-built Christian Church actually dates to the 290s and was built in Jordan before that the early Christians often did not construct their own churches much less commit the sacrilege of converting a Roman Temple instead they repurposed generic meeting places called basilicas hence the Distinctive Designs of early Christian churches so in summary the deliberate choice of the developers to use this style of architecture as the model for Celia or and Lower Lane Del is a clear allusion to the peripheral towns of the Roman World during the first few centuries A.D exactly when and where early Christianity first took roots taking this as inspiration it seems to tell the story of a group of inhabitants within Lower Lane Dell who started a small Cult of tree worship unbeknownst to them beginning a new faith that would transform the empire so now let us lay our cards on the table and lay out the whole Ark here in the beginning there was no tree but there were giants dragons and divine Towers [Music] on the scene depicted on the obelisks of the ancient Dynasty and the concept art of the grand Cloister as well as the grand Cloister itself we have a cultural contact moment which appears to depict the arrival via ships of a foreign people perhaps the Newman and the very first idea of sacred trees in the lands between from this meeting arises the culture of the ancient Dynasty epitomized by the prophet dynast shown discarding the old world secular map and embracing the icon of a great tree the dynast preaches the coming of the great tree but like the archetype he is modeled after Moses he dies before his prophecy is fully realized hence why he is never shown on a throne or in any ruling capacity instead he is always depicted clutching the tablet an image of an itinerant Prophet who never lived to see his prophecy fulfilled [Music] next the Eternal cities worshiping the stars of the night sky build their empire which begins in the ruins of the ancient Dynasty as in nocron and noxtella's connection to the palatial ruins which grows to cover the entire lands between as evidenced by their extensive Road Network this Empire is built from the framework of the ancient Dynasty as evidenced by their overlap in nocron but it does not worship sacred trees there are no tree icons as we have previously discussed instead they worship the moon and the stars and perhaps the Beast brought to the lands between from among those heavenly bodies during this eternal age a new religion emerges Reawakening the prophecy of the great sacred tree for a new age this is what is seen in the lower Capital Church just like the early Christians reinterpreting the Hebrew Bible and its Traditions the tree monotheists of Langdale rediscovered the old Prophecy of the dynast and adapt his teaching for a new age spawning a new dominant faith eventually like Christianity in the Roman Empire this new Faith would come to dominate and Define the Empire itself as gradually one sees the emergence of the great tree reliefs and the saint statues on the Roman roads in the castles and even in Knox Stella it is during this time that the Divine Tower bridges are built adorned with Saint and tree iconography for the purpose of connecting to the pre-existing Divine Towers reconnecting to the old ways like Christian Crusaders hunting for relics in the Holy Land probably it is no coincidence that the saint statues line the structures of this stratum the Divine Tower Bridges as well as they start to appear in the Eternal cities themselves not in the city's proper but in the structures that lead to them these Saints seem to be deliberately evocative of the Knights Templar were started as a guild of warrior monks whose mission was to protect Christians who wanted to visit the holy land a foreign and potentially dangerous territory to them at the time and finally after an as of yet unspecified treason against the greater will the Eternal cities are banished underground likely noxtel and nocron first followed much later by Lane Bell as we've previously discussed here the plot that would change the world of the lands between and set in motion the events of the entire game was conceived and now finally fellow archaeologists we may turn to one of the great mysteries of this game Rome began as an insignificant Backwater City but it eventually came to dominate the entire Mediterranean and by so doing Incorporated many ancient cultures under its Banner in Eldon ring the three Eternal cities represent the three major ancient cultures that agglomerated into the Roman Empire Latin Greek and Egyptian Lane Dell of course represents originally Latin Rome with the Roman Pantheon and Saint Peter's Basilica being clear models for the Queen's bed chamber and the archery Sanctuary respectively foreign [Music] s of the two named Eternal cities we recognize Greece and Egypt which importantly both had religions based on astrological deities [Music] the ancient ruins of nocron represent ancient Greece with the Acropolis of Athens being the model for the ancient Dynasty mausoleum and finally the ancient ruins of noxtela the grand Cloister and the surrounding area in indatid inrat is modeled after the Hellenistic Temple complex of the Egyptian goddess Isis at Phile now inundated By the Waters of the Nile River after the construction of the oswan dams in Upper Egypt foreign [Music] out the parallels the representation of Isis is evidently the inspiration for millennia's form as goddess of brought there is so much to unpack about this specific lore implications in the many elements of cultural borrowings from these two locales which we will no doubt come back to in later episodes but as it regards to our current topic the IRL Inspirations allow us to see how the Eternal City stratum Consolidated into a single yet diverse star worshiping Empire which was then dominated Within by a rediscovered monotheistic religion to the detriment of the worship of all of the outer gods the Hellenistic cultures of Greece and Egypt that immediately preceded the Roman Empire are homes to Antiquities most famous astronomers like hypatia and Ptolemy these cultures merged cosmology with religion associating their gods with celestial objects Christianity emerged as a minority sect From Within These lands and was in direct opposition to these celestially inspired Gods culminating with events like the murder of hypatia by a Christian mob who accused her of sorcery the extreme tensions during the consolidation of cultures and religion in the forging of the Roman Empire sets a background for Strife between the waxing and waning faiths which is exactly the background on which the main plot tension of Eldon ring takes place culminating of course in the grand assassination during that fateful night you see it was during this time and place in world history the First Century A.D in the Roman world and specifically in the Levant where the dead cities now lay that was absolutely Rife with religious conflict this was of course the very setting of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the early Christians but it was also the setting during which the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans ending the second temple period which had stretched all the way back to the days of Cyrus the Great during the decades that lead up to the destruction of the temple Roman rule was increasingly resented in Jerusalem and it is during this period of resentment that we see the emergence of a secretive order of cloaked Assassins who wielded a characteristic curved daggers and murdered their enemies in full view of the public by now you've probably realized these assassins known as Sakari are the inspiration for the black knife assassins and their story helps provide context to the famous knight of the black knives the Sakari were famous assassins of the classical world who terrorized Romans and their sympathizers in the First Century A.D in Jerusalem like the black knives they were cloaked and mysterious like the black knives they used small curved daggers for which they are known and actually for which they are named and like the black knives they were willing to kill just about anybody to achieve their aims here's an account from Josephus certainly not an unbiased account but it's the best we have of the murder of Jonathan high priest of Jerusalem the holiest man in the holy city along with a whole host of his allies quote certain of these robbers went up to the city as if they were going to worship God while they had daggers under their garments and by thus mingling themselves among the multitude they slew Jonathan and as this murder was never Avenged the robbers went up with the greatest security of their festivals after this time and having weapons concealed in like manner as before and mingling themselves among the multitude they slew certain of their own enemies and slew others not only in remote parts of the city but in the temple itself also for they had the boldness to Murder Men there without thinking of the impiety of which they were guilty end quote so the zakari were willing to murder even the high priest of the city not so dissimilar from how the black knives would murder Godwin to achieve their aims but more importantly both groups of Assassins were politically motivated the Sakari were Jewish zealots who deeply resented the Roman occupation of Judea and were willing to Murder by the dozens to disrupt it likewise the black knives quote Scions of the Eternal City end quote as rajier puts it loyalists to the old pre-tree Faith would stop at nothing to disrupt America's new regime the fact that Lindell was once an eternal City and likely continued to have strong internal connections with Eternal City culture as at least attested to by the fact that America is known as the Eternal and is evidently a Newman as well as the floral lead indoors in both Upper and Lower Lane Dell is extremely important to this story Landell was the epicenter of a religious and Cultural Revolution from the preceding internal City culture to the now dominant sacred tree monotheism and it is those who are left behind by this revolution the remnants of the old Eternal City order Ronnie Reichard and the black knife assassins who lashed out against the new regime if you consider these two together the none of the black knives begins to seem much less like a bolt from the blue and much more like the product of a political power struggle that had been going on within Langdale for quite some time for sure each of the co-conspirators has their own varying specific motivations which we won't delve into today but from a zoomed out view this is a political power struggle through and through and what better way to sabotage the new ruling order the golden order whose strength comes from the literal life-giving power of the earth tree wielded by Queen America then to murder the Crown Prince and the rest of the golden lineage and irrevocably corrupt its roots of course it's no accident that the known conspirators namely Ronnie Reichard and the black knives themselves all hail from a competing power base and that their leaders represent a rival lineage rival claim names to the throne so much of Eldon Ring's story revolves around the metaphorical tying of lineage and descent to the power of magical trees a topic we have discussed at length in Prior episodes and will return to in time but here the implication should be clear enough by murdering Godwin and the golden lineage demigods thereby pruning the golden branches of the magical genealogy tree that is the herd tree the co-conspirators of the night of the black Knives have done something all too common in real world history magical tree or no they have exterminated the completing claimants to the throne in order to address that most dangerous period in an Empire's history a succession crisis the reverberations of this Knight of mass murder would echo through the rest of the history of the lands between starting with the remaining Powers creative attempts to deal with this new crisis but that as we like to say is a story for another day

Channel: The Tarnished Archaeologist

Views: 174,498

Keywords:

Id: o1MKKwpoPsU

Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2023