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human
[H.P. Lovecraft] What is the Necromicon?

I already know the book itself is about summoning otherworldly beings, but I want a more in-depth explanation. What exactly are the creatures? Where was the book written? What has happened to people who have tried to read it, and what language is it written in?

Any other details I didn't ask about are allowed; the more that's explained, the better.
gpt
The book is not "about" summoning otherworldly beings. While that sort of thing may be discussed within the text, it was mainly written as a combination field guide/notebook of observations/transcription of ancient writings that contains more insight into the nature of reality than most other books. Many have used the information it contains for foul experiments of varying natures, which do include summoning or communicating with otherworldly entities. Even if no such foolishness is attempted, the insights it grants into reality are not healthy for the weak-minded. But the book is also something of a riddle, and the book not written in a particularly straightforward manner. Fully understanding the Necronomicon would take years of study, and might just lead to madness. Here's an excerpt to give you an idea of how it's written:

> Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but *between* them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. *Yog-Sothoth* knows the gate. *Yog-Sothoth* is the gate. *Yog-Sothoth* is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in *Yog-Sothoth*. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, *saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind*; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is *Them*. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. *Iä! Shub-Niggurath!* As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. *Yog-Sothoth* is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.

And of course there's the famous couplet of inscrutable meaning:

> That is not dead which can eternal lie  
> And with strange aeons even death may die.

The Necronomicon is far from perfect, given the merely human nature of the author. This author is the infamous Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet and wanderer who lived in the 8th century in what is now Yemen. It was originally titled Al Azif, and contained information Alhazred had learned from many sources, including Irem (fabled City of Pillars) and the ruins of an ancient race that far predates humanity. Alhazred largely rejected Islam, instead seeming to worship other entities whose nature he never made clear, though he called them Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. Alhazred died in 738, reportedly being gruesomely torn apart and eaten by an invisible creature to the shock of onlookers.

Originally it was in Arabic, though the original work is long since lost. Luckily(?), translations into Greek (dating back to 950) survived the church's attempts to stamp out the book. This translation is the origin of the "Necronomicon" title. In 1228 the book was translated again, into Latin (the original Arabic version having been lost even by this early date). A short-lived attempt to translate the work into English was never published, and only fragments now survive. A few of the older editions are known to have survived to the present day:

* A 15th-century edition of the Latin translation, in the British Museum
* Three 17th-century reprints of the Latin translation, in the French Bibliothèque Nationale, at the Widener Library of Harvard, and in the Miskatonic University library

There are rumors of other Latin translations surviving in various private collections, and one of the Greek translations survived as late as 1926 when it vanished along with the artist Richard Pickman.