Darren Hopkins

Darren Hopkins is as an art historian, a sculptor (clay and metal), and photographic processing. Many years ago, he had a strange dream concerning the discovery of an ancient and immortal woman trapped deep within the earth, and of releasing her from this strange tomb, not knowing whether this creature to be released was dangerous or safe, good or evil, or something that could not be so defined. As a result of this dream, which stayed with him for a very long time, his literary interests drifted from art towards languages as a way of trying to understand the history of this fictional immortal and all that she had seen. This woman, over 3500 years old, eventually look on the name Edelon, a bastardization of the old Homeric Greek word eidolon‘an unreal image, a phantom, spectre, an image appearing in a dream’. To build up the historicity of this character and the other immortal and historical characters around her, he began to study and learn ancient languages, beginning with Latin, which he began in a roundabout way by translating the simple graffiti written on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Since that time, he has studied a good many other languages, such as Sumerian, Egyptian Hieroglyphic, Hurrian, Minoan (CretanHieroglyphic, Linear A), Hittite, Kassite, Luwian, Ugaritic, Mycenaean, Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan, Old Latin, Sabellic, Middle Persian, Old Celtic, Runic, Gothic(Visigothic, Ostrogothic, Vandal, Burgundian), Old Provencal, Old French, MiddleHigh German, etc. Some of these language studies have resulted in published articles over the years, on vulgar Latin, Old French, Middle High German and the untranslated Minoan languages of Cretan Hieroglyphic (20–17th C BC) and LinearA (17–14th C BC) (the language of the character Edelon).