The Mark

An artifact of paper and ink, recovered from a private collection in 1991. The script is illegible. The mark at the center is the institution’s own. The institution did not commission the artifact. The institution did not approve its making. The institution received the artifact thirty-five years after it was made. The hand that drew it is not named in the Archive’s records.

External annotation. Paper-dating places the artifact between 1953 and 1968. The ink is consistent with iron-gall preparations of the period. The script, examined by three independent scholars, contains words from at least four languages: Latin, Greek, Akkadian, and an Eastern European tongue the Archive’s consultants have declined to specify. The text repeats. The mark in the center is, by all examinations, drawn last.