Fragment of the Book of Penguins in Egyptian hieroglyphs, first millenium BC
The Book of Penguins is the primary religious and philosophical text of the Nile Penguins. Touching upon diverse areas of life, the text has been of great importance to various moral codes and philosophical schools of Penguins and Templars alike.
History[]
The Book of Penguins probably dates back to the second millenium BC, with later redactions here and there. Extant copies have been found all around the southeastern Mediterranean in Egyptian, Hebrew, Old Penguin, Greek and Phoenician.
Structure[]
The text is a loose narrative of highly allegorical events taking place mostly around the Nile, both everyday occurences and epic historical breakthroughs. The narrative is broken into numbered lines. There are no chapters; one Medieval scholar famously remarked that the book "flows uninterrupted like the Nile itself." Then in 20th century Nasser went ahead and fucked up the analogy
Style[]
Subtle moral lessons and nuanced, layered meanings have occasionally given way to conflicting interpretations (most notably The Great Vote Burn Schism). For example, line 207:
| “ | Qu squowk queek quea-qa squegume quack que dutchcoloured queqwak squa queeeee wakwakwakwak | ” |
—Line 207, Book of Penguins (text in Middle Penguin) | ||
is now agreed to be about a yam; however, Aristotle maintained it was about a carrot, Cicero argued that it was clearly about pufferfish, while Pope George II thought it was about dildos.
Significance[]
HUGE AND IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE