THE BEHEADING GAME¹

1. this text is particularly notable for its estimated length and the degree of involvement that would have been required to perform it as a charm—if, indeed, this text could even be called such a 'charm'; the narrative content of the text has prompted some scholars to categorize the poem as a kind of miniature epic or fusion of epic and charm genres. adding to this generic confusion is the terribly degraded state of the text—at some juncture, the pages containing this text had been ripped from the Codex's pages and torn into several smaller pieces; these scraps had been tucked into a small flap located on the inside of the manuscript's back cover. some physical evidence suggests that the text may have ben used at one point to hold various spices for cooking. it is frustrating—or perhaps fitting—that sucha text which so departs from the standard conventions of much of the manuscript is so damaged. in our attempts to restore the text to the best of our ability, we have restored its original placement in the manuscript. additionally, we have chosen to present 'the beheading game' as a series of fragments whose linear ordering cannot be definitively resolved.