AI aided, production, postwork and rendered in Photoshop Copyright © 2021 by Luca Oleastri - Rotwang Studio THE ZANTHU TABLETS Zanthu the Hierophant was a Muvian sorcerer and a worshipper of Ythogtha. He is the author of the Zanthu Tablets, a Cthulhu Mythos Grimoire, which were later translated by Harold Hadley Copeland. The Zanthu Tablets first appeared in "The Dweller in the Tomb", 1971, by Lin Carter. The centerpiece of the story is the discovery of the tablets, which are an important part of Carter's Xothic legend cycle. The tablets themselves are twelve engraved pieces of black jade inscribed by Zanthu, a wizard and high priest of Ythogtha. They are written in a hieratic form of Naacal, the language of the sunken continent of Mu. The tablets reveal a partial history of Mu, describing Zanthu's struggle against the rising cult of Ghatanothoa and his own religion's lamented decline. He also describes his failed attempt to release the god Ythogtha from its prison. Upon witnessing three black, beaked, slimy heads, "vaster than any mountain", rising from a gorge, he flees in terror when he realizes that they are merely the god's fingertips. According to Zanthu, he and some of his people escaped the destruction of Mu, which was sunk by the wrath of the Elder Gods.