This is a special Bahro cave that they constructed for Yeesha. Its location is a complete mystery. We know that the other Bahro cave is located in the ceiling of Rudenna cavern because our KI devices told us so in the past, but the hourglass cave does not register on a KI at all. The upper part is similar to the Rudenna cave.

However, the hole in the floor does not drop into a cavern. Rather, it opens into a lower cave chamber with a pond in the center that contains the same algae that live in the D'ni lakes.

This picture is from Kadish's office in Ahnonay, and shows the cave. It was left by Yeesha in the days when it was possible for a single person to drop a pellet and view the cave; the number "625" is a measurement in D'ni time, and was the delay between linking a pellet in the upper chamber and it falling into the pool in the bottom chamber. In this case, about 15 minutes. Whatever method she used to delay the drop is no longer working, so now the pellet falls immediately and you have to already be in the lower chamber to see the wall glyphs.

No one has yet found a confirmed explanation of what the other numbers written in a smaller size might mean, although they might be Er'cana oven settings. They read 410, 325, and 250. The other symbols and pictographs are also unexplained. However, the dark figures represent the Bahro, and the symbols are their form of writing. Many other examples of Bahro script can be seen in the Age of Noloben. The lighter colored figure on the right side of the image appears to be the typical Bahro figure for Yeesha.

The petroglyphs:

When visiting the lower half of the hourglass cave, most people are focused on copying the Cleft viewer settings and do not notice that there are seventeen petroglyphs on the walls. They are like the viewer settings in that they only appear in the light given off by a dissolving food pellet.

The petroglyphs chronicle important events in Yeesha's life beginning from when she leaves Tomahna on her journey of self-discovery. When Dr. Watson followed Yeesha's Journey in 2006, he discovered a series of notebooks that Yeesha left behind in the Great Shaft. Entries in some of them cover many of the events shown in the petroglyphs, so the story the seventeen-glyph sequence covers is better documented than any of the other Bahroglyphs found in the caverns or Ages.

In 2006, an explorer named Brett Middleton conducted his own studies of the Hourglass cave glyphs, based on work done by the Bahroglyph Study Group. He used their methodology and many of their preconceptions whick led him into a number of erroneous conclusions, but his analysis is detailed and imaginative.

One mistake he made was to call Yeesha’s monogram a mandala. His definition of mandala was "a decorative form of D'ni writing, usually presented in a circular frame, that joins the letters of a name or word through overlapping and shared strokes. The mandala may be set within a decorative border. (Yeesha's mandala is sometimes set within a border decorated by books, the spiral hand, and the desert bird.) To the best of my knowledge, the term "mandala" was first applied to this form of writing by BladeLakem in the DLF forums in June 2004."

In reality, a mandala, which translates as "circle", is a spiritual symbol from the Hindu religion that is intended to represent the cosmos. In common use, a mandala is a circular geometric pattern. It has nothing to do with writing. Another difference is that he tends to call the Bahro identification mark the "weeping eye" or the "crying eye", instead of the BSG's "mourning eye".

A monogram is "a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol", and that is exactly what Yeesha's name glyph does.

I'm going to quote from his study and then give my own interpretations or corrections afterward. However, I have changed all instances of the word "mandala" to "monogram" to avoid perpetuating that mistake. Brett's study is contained in the darker gray boxes.

In AD 1832, when Yeesha was seventeen, she left Tomahna in an attempt to find herself. Atrus and Catherine are there to say farewell. My own speculation is that she spent a period of time wandering around North America before she eventually returned and settled down in the Cleft. During that period, she would have traveled into what is now Utah and seen Newspaper Rock, a Native American pictograph site. Yeesha left a copy of sections of the Newspaper Rock glyphs in Eder Kemo.

The monograms in the image are Yeesha's name above her figure, and what appear to be "ehlm" or "ehom" above her parents. Either way, it's not the word "home" in English as Brett reported.

She wrote about that time in one of her journals which she left in the Great Shaft:

Alone. There is a powerful conjunction between the in and the out, the beneath and the above. A wound, a mouth, a well, a pit. I wanted to make the journey for myself from where the D'ni dug upward, where they almost came to the surface. From the place where Ti'ana first climbed downward, and where Father followed evil into the ground. I began my journey with a heavy burden. It was Ti'ana who came to D'ni, and caused its fall. I am from her. I feel I am destined to bring another destruction. Father and Mother tried to prepare me — tried to tell me who they thought I was. I still see the power of each. I have the best of each — and the burden of each. And as they watched me leave, I saw the sadness and the fear. But more terrifying, I saw their hope. And I left my comfort to find me. And even as I took my first step away from Tomahna, my shoulders ached, for the burden I bore. Deep prophecies and weighty destinies. So much to learn and understand about myself. My father said we can never understand — we can only understand more. The more I understood the more powerful I became, and the more dangerous I became, and the less I understood.

Yeesha living in the Cleft. She stayed there for a period that may have been years before she ventured down into the D'ni caverns.

Yeesha trading with local Amerindians for food. Since Eddy county is located in the southeast corner of New Mexico, it's quite likely that the natives in question are Shis-Inday or Mashgalénde (bands of the nation called Mescalero Apache today). This was a practice she would have picked up from the stories her parents told her of Anna, who did the same when she lived in the Cleft. The natives would have known from stories that people living in the Cleft had medical knowledge and other forms of wisdom that would be valuable to them.

The symbol above Yeesha's head is a monogram of her name. The symbol above the native in the foreground probably also represents his name, and is a fairly typical Southwest design representing a bear. Since it is the only object of its color in the picture, a guess would be that his name was Yellow Bear.

Yeesha exploring D'ni and the linking books to other Ages. The pattern she is sitting on is the central plaza tile design from a residential neighborhood. This is a common design found in many other places as well. The symbols around it are (clockwise from about 10 o'clock): Kadish Tolesa, Rebek, unknown (Amerindian animal-humans?), Kahlo, unknown (Yeesha?), Teledahn, and Ahnonay. Except for the third and fifth glyphs, these are the similar to glyphs found in the Age of Eder Kemo.

The glyph has white markings overlaid on it that are hard to see. If the colors are enhanced, clockwise from 12 o'clock they are: the symbol for sadness with a Bahro, what appear to be various animals, D'ni letters, and the Age of Gahreesen. in the center is the D'ni cavern, and what appears to be the same figures found next to the Bahro portal gate in Eder Kemo.

This is the courtyard tile design used in the glyph.

Glyph 4 has markings in white overlaid on it that are hard to see. This is a color enhanced version of the glyph showing the white markings more clearly. Clockwise from 12 o'clock, they are: the symbol for sadness with a Bahro and Bahro writing, what appear to be various animals, D'ni letters, and the Age of Gahreesen. in the center is the D'ni cavern, and what appears to be the same figures found next to the Journey door in Eder Kemo.

It would seem that it was around this time that the Bahro noticed Yeesha, and began to watch her.

Yeesha meets Calam, a surviving D'ni master of the Art of writing Ages. It shows her traveling through the tunnel system to the D'ni cavern, beginning at the Cleft. Yeesha traveled down the Great Shaft to the tunnels like her great-grandmother, grandfather and father before her. We know from a map of the Journey to the Surface drawn by her great-grandfather Aitrus that the trip takes about three days of walking.

Home was far behind — I was no longer a child. I journeyed deep — deep within myself, deep within the earth, down to the D'ni cavern. I was alone for a time as I consumed my heritage, breathing deep the air of the cavern and the knowledge of my people. But the desire for companionship drove me mad. I engaged a senomar as my confidant, and a tredfish in the harbor became my younger brother. I spoke to them as family and they answered. I swear they answered. Then my mind took a final step into madness when I walked into the library on Ae'gura and saw an old D'ni man on the floor below me. Now I was imagining people to ease my loneliness. But he was no mirage — his name was Calam. And he was a D'ni Writer of Ages.

It's unclear what this glyph represents, but it may be the concepts and philosophies Yeesha has developed regarding the writing of Ages. This spiral is shown in a number of Bahroglyphs, and appears to be important to them. The Bahro home world is even named the Spiral Age. We cannot be certain of what the spiral represents because the meaning appears to shift from glyph to glyph. Among others, the spiral is also used in the glyphs for the Relto calendar stone and calendar stars.

Yeesha and Calam argued a lot in the beginning of their relationship, according to Yeesha's notes. You see the spiral symbol of Yeesha's beliefs and a chasm separating it from Calam's ideas, which were all about the iron-clad rules and traditions of the D'ni Art.

Fighting aside, Yeesha counted herself very fortunate to have met Calam. Her own training in the Art came from her parents, who were self-taught based on initial training by Gehn, who himself was self-taught after having only received a short introduction to Writing just before the Fall of D'ni. Calam was a fully trained master, and was able to teach her things she would never have learned otherwise.

Trust did not come easily. There was a conflict between us — between his ancient rules of D'ni, that I did not respect, and my creativity, which he feared. We fought and feared and battled and screamed, until exhausted, we began to learn from each other. We learned of the power of both, just as Father and Mother had done.

Calam and Yeesha eventually came to an understanding, and Calam began to train her, filling in the rather large gaps in her knowledge. By the end of their relationship, he was learning almost as much from her as she was from him, which is represented by the symbols of their styles being melded in this glyph.

Yeesha comments about her parents' training by her grandfather, Gehn. Gehn was always impatient and reckless in his attempts to create new Ages, and often copied passages from different descriptive books to make new ones, and didn't care that the passages were never intended to work together. Because of that, his Ages were almost always disasters. It wasn't until his 233rd attempt that he wrote an Age that didn't immediately begin to fall apart.

So I learned to Write with all the skills that the D'ni had known — beyond what my parents had taught me. For their lessons were given by a flawed instructor and by their own trial and error. I learned to Write from a Master; an opportunity father was never given.

The relationship continues, and Yeesha makes great strides toward becoming a master of the Art, writing Ages that are wonders to Calam. Her work would also shock and astonish other surviving D'ni Writers when they were introduced to them later.

Calam's abilities were breathtaking — he knew all the D'ni knew, when D'ni fell. But I taught as well as learned. There were things that the D'ni were forbidden to Write, words they feared, concepts they shunned. Rules and boxes. I had no cultural fear of such things, so I dug deeper, asking questions that Calam could not answer.

At this time, Calam begins to believe that Yeesha may be the Grower mentioned in Words of the Watcher, but Yeesha, who greatly admires his talent with writing, begins to believe that he is. Together, they finally learn of the existence of the Bahro, and how they are bound to the D'ni Empire by a mysterious stone tablet. However, they may not yet have made contact and learned to understand Bahro communications.

And together we sought answers. That is how we learned of the Bahro and the tablet. I learned of its power. We grew in knowledge and strength, and Calam became one of my dearest friends. I began to think that it was he who would be the Grower.

This is a sequence where Brett began to be especially fanciful. He describes elements in the glyphs as being literal, where I believe they are figurative.

Calam and Yeesha meet another Writer in the caverns. The larger book symbol with the halos and radiating lines may indicate he was a surviving guild master of the Guild of Writers. Yeesha never mentions his name in her notes. At the very least, it probably indicates that the person was important and outranked Calam.

Some explorers who have studied the glyphs nicknamed this person "evil book", but there is no proof at all that he was evil. However, it's certain that the encounter was not a good one, since the scene is surmounted by the Bahro sadness symbol.

But evil will find you, even in the depths of the earth, and Calam was murdered.

The man seems to be angered by Yeesha, probably because she is not following the laws of D'ni and rules of Writing that the Guild and had used since the founding of the caverns. I believe the markings represent rage and possibly a verbal attack, rather than a physical attack.

Calam leaps to Yeesha's defense, and redirects the man's anger to himself. The arch of lines may represent his attempt to shield Yeesha from the man's anger. The idea that he was employing a "force field" to protect her is highly unlikely. While force fields were not unknown in the D'ni Empire, there are only two places we can find them now: the Jalak playing grid and the Space Pod orbiting the planet in the Todelmer Age.

The enraged man kills Calam. This was the second traumatic event Yeesha experienced in her life, and was fundamental to her later actions. She became guilt-ridden, believing that it was her fault that Calam died. There are many hints that she never got over it.

The first event that scarred her personality was a betrayal by her older brother, Sirrus, who used a mechanism in the Age of Serenia to rip her mind from her body and attack it in a mental realm called the Dream. He did that as part of a plan to take over her body and trick their father, Atrus, into teaching him the Art. The plan was to kill Atrus and Catherine after learning all he could from them, so that he could build a personal empire of Ages to exploit and rule over. The plan failed when their eldest brother, Achenar, decided to oppose Sirrus and rescue Yeesha.

In her grief, Yeesha attacks the man. It's not clear how the battle was fought, although other explorers have published theories. This glyph seems to imply that Yeesha attempted to trap him in prison Age by luring him with at least one book that was legitimate. One thing is certain — there was no "mystical" aspect to the fight, since there is no records that indicate such a thing was possible. Instead, it might have been a deadly game of hide and seek, jumping from Age to Age. Since she was apparently trying to trick him into using a trap book, that's one way she might have done so.

The idea that she was trying to trap Evil Book in a prison Age is supported in this glyph. In the end, Yeesha won, and the man is shown trapped in a book.

Yeesha wrote about that day in one of her journals found in the Great Shaft. The entry shows that the events of that day caused a shift in her thinking and personality. Instead of being focused on learning about her D'ni heritage and learning to be a better Writer, she becomes obsessed with the Bahro and freeing them from D'ni. After her victory over Evil Book, she was approached by the Bahro and learned to speak with them. They began teaching her their methods of Writing and linking. This gave her the last key to unlocking her true ability as a writer, as she integrated their techniques with those of her parents and Calam. This resulted in her being able to safely make changes to existing Ages, travel through time, and perform many other feats that the D'ni would never have thought possible. It also made her supremely arrogant and much more impatient than she had been before.

Yeesha found the path she needed to follow to free the Bahro from their enslavement by the stone tablet. The tablet was intangible to anyone who had not followed that path and activated four daughter tablets. Completing the path allowed the aspirant to pick up the tablet. However, once she had it in her hands, she thought only of using it to correct all the flaws she believed existed in the world, and that selfishness caused it to return to its intangible state.

Power is a gift. Power is a curse. I learned of the fearsome power I wield on that day — the day of Calam's death. In a fit of rage I destroyed the murderer, and I destroyed my innocence. And again I learned that most things cannot be returned to how they were. And my power continued to grow even as I began to see that the prophecies of the Grower might speak of me. My destiny began to be fulfilled. But there was still more. The Least. Abused. Mistreated. Misunderstood. Ignored. They were mocked and scorned and their hearts still show their pain, but they continue to serve. Such power they have, and yet they serve. They treated me with kindness, and I learned from them. They respected what I was becoming. With them I learned new laws, new rules, and new powers. I used the powers to care for a tree to come, and the Tablet allowed me to grow beyond Ti'ana, beyond Father and Mother, beyond D'ni, beyond Calam. The Tablet held them. The Tablet chained them. The Tablet held me. The Tablet empowered me. I watched with them. I waited with them. I learned with them. I called them from captivity and grew while they gathered. Together we became both weak and strong. And then my time came. My time to take the Tablet. My time to choose. I was ready. I felt the pull of holding it, of channeling and releasing the full power of the Bahro. I would right the wrongs. I would set things the way they should be. I would choose well — I could not fail. I am the Grower. I was so sure, so strong, so wise, but I didn't open myself and listen to the Maker. The noise of me drowned his quiet voice. And I failed. Failed to see anything beyond myself and what was obvious. And pain came quickly, when I realized what I had done. The tablet returned, and the Bahro continued to serve. The pain still burns me. But the powerful Bahro simply wait and serve. Pain is often how we learn. But it is not for us to give — we are not the teachers. We must not abuse them. We must not abuse the Bahro.

After her failure with the stone tablet, Yeesha found out that once you've touched it, you can never touch it again. She had to find another way to free Bahro from its influence.

This glyph probably represents Yeesha enacting her second plan, which was to call explorers to come and follow the Journeys. This plan involved tying a Bahro's soul to four ceremonial pillars, which an explorer would move from D'ni to break the binding, then return to restore the Bahro's spirit to its body. This plan was probably inspired by Words of the Watcher, in which the Watcher refers to people he called the "gathered".

From Words:

The door lies at the end of the path.
Who will gather? Many.
Who will finish? Few.

The action of the gathered means nothing.
The action of the deceived is toiling in vain.

When the tree dies there will come a new one.
A grower to learn of the death.
A grower to see new life.
A grower to bring the gathered.
A grower to restore the least.
A grower to move through time.
A grower to link at will.
A grower to follow the shell.
A grower to banish the darkness.
A grower to graft the branches.
A grower to join the paths.

You toil and strive to write Ages and move stones.
The path of the stone is toil for the gathered.

Do not fear the wound, it is a way of peace in time of need.
A place of patience;
A place of stone;
The gathered are known by their faces of stone.
A place to fall;
A place to be raised;
The gathered will fall into the wound.

Do not put out the least for they will save you.
The gathered will tell of the path of the shell.
The bound will know of the path of the stone.
Words are many, but action is what is desired.
The gathered will find rest when the light comes.

The dreams of the wise are a gift from the Maker.
The cleft is a blessing to the gathered.
Contempt is a gift from the accuser.
Roll the stone to know the deceiver.

Yeesha eventually lost patience and became angry over the slow progress of the plan, and went to far as to insult the Called who did not respond or who did not finish the Journey in a recorded message she left in the Great Shaft. Her exact words were "Have I not become the Grower? The Grower... Yet all I grow is anger. Watching them call, watching them fail, waiting and watching. I am the Grower! How can I wait much longer on such fools?"

A theory has been proposed that the people who hear Yeesha's call have a trace of D'ni ancestry. The possibility exists because a number of workers vanished early in D'ni history while digging air ventilation shafts to the surface. However, it's purely speculation, and there is no evidence that supports or refutes it. It goes along with an idea that the Amad people, whom Gehn was visiting when he met and fell in love with his wife Keta, were descendants of the missing D'ni workers. Again, there is no evidence to support or deny the idea.

Brett Middleton's theory about Kadish being Evil Book is an attractive one that is popular among explorers. However, I don't believe it is true. There are several reasons, but the most compelling one involves the time travel aspect.

We know from her journals that Yeesha did not learn the Bahro version of the Art, which allowed her to circumvent time, until after Calam was murdered. This means her project to rescue Kadish took place well after Calam died. I simply cannot believe that Yeesha would have gone back in time to the Fall of D'ni and rescued Kadish just so she could bring him forward in time to murder her mentor. That's an event she would have known would happen, so why do it?

There is also the statement she made about meeting the Writer nicknamed Evil Book. She said, "But evil will find you, even in the depths of the earth, and Calam was murdered." The key is how she phrased it. She said that evil found them, not that she brought evil to them. If she truly blamed herself for the event, I think she'd have said so.

In the end, though, it's up to each and every one of you to decide for yourselves what you choose to believe about that event. All that really matters is that it was the second traumatic event in her life, and was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was instrumental in driving her to hate her D'ni heritage. Up until then, she seems to have been objective with her views of their society. Afterward, she hated everything D'ni with a passion, and tried by means of slanted stories and outright lies to make explorers hate them too.

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