Tilleul Zinnober
Tilleul Zinnober (c.650-581 BME) [zin-OH-berr] was a historian and philosopher in the late period of the Empire of Dor-en-Sann, most noted for his elegiac history of the empire, and his idiosyncratic system for naming the historic epochs after green gemstones.
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He was born in the city of Cynosta in Cavann to an educated merchant family of modest means. His name implies he was descended from spice merchants (zinobeb being a highly prized condiment in imperial times), who may have been Iskeans from the eastern part of the empier (modern Harthera). As an adventurous youth he travelled to the capital, Gaalkedch, to take up a position as amanuensis to a distant relative who was a prelate in the Imperial Church. His skills in composition of letters and speeches enabled his master to rise to a powerful position, so that the young Zinnober acquired status and access to the imperial and religious archives of the city.
In his spare time over a number of years, he composed The Glories of the En-Sanni Peoples, from Inception to Ascension, better known as his History of the Empire. It was first circulated amongst powerful friends of his master, and eventually published to enormous acclaim. The work, which gloried the empire's unity as its greatest strength, became a masterwork of his age, disseminated throughout the empire and gifted to allies and enemies in gloriously bound volumes.
His success won him fame, wealth and a position at the imperial courts as historian and scribe. Many of his letters survive into the modern era, showing his whimsical and slightly satyrical view of life at court, and the imperial church bureaucracy.
He wrote many other histories, most of them obsequious yet slyly ironic biographies glorify ancestors of prominent people, written for money, but his greatest work is his History of All. Though relying on some fanciful and fantastical accounts of previous ages, in it he outlines the entire span of human history based on oral histories, written records and, perhaps for the first time in a major scholastic work, archeological evidence. However, it is his naming of the epochs for which he is most remembered.