Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Original Necronomicon may still be around

In this post at the Cthulhufiles site the author, a Dr Carlos Sorentino follows the trail of the Al-Azif, the alter ego of the elusive Necronomicon.
The rather small article reads very professional and the bibliography seems convincing. Dr Sorentino is indeed a part of the staff of Macquarie University. (with all the bullshit afloat in the net, I just had to check).
The Book of the Ancient Demons was last catalogued in Buenos Aires in 1952 in the "Anexo" of the National Library:

In 1952, the "Biblioteca Nacional" of Buenos Aires, in its old "Anexo" of Avenida Santa Fe 1851, had a copy of the translation catalogued as "Sagredo, León. El Libro De Los Antiguos Demonios Escrito por el Arabe Abdul Hazred, Salamanca, 1612." [4]
The catalogue entry is puzzling. Firstly the year is quoted as 1612 while Freyre de Andrada attributes a date of 1512 to the publication of de Sagredo’s translation. Secondly, the mention of Palau is enigmatic as this bibliographer does not seem to have ever catalogued the Al Azif or El Libro De Los Antiguos Demonios Escrito por el Arabe Abdul Hazred. Furthermore, Palau never worked in Buenos Aires: is this a reference to another, yet undiscovered, copy of the Spanish translation?
The "Anexo" was closed in 1978 when the building was declared unsafe and condemned to demolition. The collections were transferred to the library of the "Servicio Geologico Nacional" in the second floor of the "Secretaria de Industria Comercio y Mineria" en Avenida Julio A. Roca 651 in Buenos Aires. However the modern catalogue does not list El Libro De Los Antiguos Demonios Escrito por el Arabe Abdul Hazred in its current holdings.
 There you have it. It should still be there. Or not..
The mention o Theodorus Philetas, the fictional Greek scholar that created the word Necronomicon is mentioned in the text, which makes it kind of fishy.. 
Can someone shed some light on this? I think I am very gullible, to say the least. Maybe I'll contact Dr Sorentino to ask for clarifications. Will update..
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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would be interested in seeing an update when you have one. I'm most certainly intrigued.

Sean said...

I just checked their online data base and got nothing..

Sean said...

I just checked their online data base and got nothing.. which means its either not in the system or not there.

Sean said...

I just checked their online data base and got nothing..

Illuminatus said...

Hi Sean. I just searched and found this: https://mypassword.mq.edu.au/directory/index.php?Anchor=CEEA5576-D8E1-11DC-80DC-4550AC309F8B&type=browse&cat=staff&SearchStr=hou&SearchCat=Full%20Name&ExactMatch=&id=CB721A72-0648-11DB-8A9E-8A32526CA00F

Anonymous said...

http://ask.bibsys.no/ask/action/show?pid=970451504&kid=biblio

Look what I found. I thik I'll send someone there to get it for me.

Illuminatus said...

I am sorry my anonymous friend but I am not even sure what this means.. It has the date of '94, so we can be fairly sure it's one of the countless editions out there.