I Just Want To Be A Tugboat Captain

winged genies

“[In the ninth century BC] appear winged genies . . . with human heads or sometimes the heads of birds of prey, whose task was to attract positive forces. Indeed, they hold in one hand a situla and in the other an object like a pinecone, with which they seem to sprinkle anyone who comes near them. . . . [A]s on the panels behind Ashurnasirpal II’s throne at Nimrud, these figures also appear in composite scenes: twice behind the king, who is also depicted twice, once on each side of the Tree of Life, which itself is surmounted by a winged disc representing the great god Assur or the sun god Shamash.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

Hammurabi

“Among the objects [from the eighteenth century BC] it is perhaps the Code of Hammurabi that is the most important. . . . Properly speaking, rather than a code, the text of 3,500 lines is a collection of penalties to be taken as a model. At the top of the stele, a relief illustrates that the king’s decisions were just because they were inspired by Shamash [the sun god] himself, who was the god of justice since nothing escaped his attention. Hammurabi, wearing a long garment and a thick-brimmed cap on his head . . . stands with one hand raised in greeting or respect before the divinity on a throne above the Cosmic Mountain (with scales), who is identified by the rays coming out of his back. The god holds the insignia of his omnipotence, the circle and stick, which the king must be about to touch . . . in order to fulfill his role as unfailing, supreme judge.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

The ziggurat

“The ziggurat is the image of the Cosmic Mountain where all things begin and end, like the Egyptian pyramids, but whereas the latter are linked to death (although the pharaohs buried in them were destined for a kind of resurrection), the Mesopotamian buildings are linked to the source of life. In every case the ziggurat formed part of a vast cultic complex. At Ur this was associated with a raised courtyard, with direct access from outside through a monumental door. . . .”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

Naram-Sin

“[T]he stele of Naram-Sin strikes us by its dynamism. Trampling dismembered enemies, the king leads his men in assaulting a mountain, with tremendous force. In scaling the mountain, Naram-Sin imitates on his stele the pose assumed by the triumphant sun god on many seals of the era. Firstly, therefore, the scene is a sort of epiphany, modeled on that of the god, and this parallel indicates that the royal victory has a metaphysical dimension. In fact, the mountain represents a reworking of the theme of the Cosmic Mountain. Placing the king at its summit, and thus at the center of the world, the image expresses here more forcefully than ever the decisive role of the king in the process of regeneraton.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

the Tree of Life

“[Derived] directly from the Neolithic heritage . . . the Tree of Life, a classic in the history of religions, [is] often represented from the end of the fourth millennium BC onward in Mesopotamian iconography and, therefore, often mentioned in texts. In fact, almost any plant may be an allusion to it, such as all kinds of trees, primarily whole ones, but also branches, flowers, or shoots. We have to wait until the second millennium BC for its representation to acquire the more or less canonical form of a stylized tree in a set style. First of all, the tree alludes to the blood tie that links human generations over time. From this viewpoint, it can be compared with our own genealogical trees, but, whereas the latter describe the relationships of particular individuals, the former is more abstract. It extends to the whole of humanity, past and present, uniting the living with their mythical parents, like a sort of umbilical cord.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

Has anyone seen the movie The Fountain? They might have called it The Tree for its tree of profound significance, which is somehow launched in a bubble of some sort from a mysterious Mayan temple toward a particular nebular cluster, the site of a soon-to-die star. But I don’t want to give too much away. . . .

the invention of writing

“For the whole of the fourth millennium BC, [Mesopotamian] society continued to become more hierarchical, which enabled the politico-administrative system to govern a developing society. The hereditary elites who held the reins of power were at the center of a vast, centripetal network that administered the region and fundamentally depended on their statutory capacity to mobilize the community’s workforce. This energy reserve, governed by the size of the population, enabled them to undertake public works (irrigation, for example), build sumptuous buildings, organize foreign expeditions, and obtain craft products and agricultural surpluses. This, in turn, enabled them to satisfy their own needs, maintain their dependents, meet their obligations, trade, and in general assume all the burdens of their public and private duties. . . . It was the need to control all these activities that led to the invention of writing during the Late Uruk Period.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

the golden age of Mesopotamian civilization

“This was the golden age of Mesopotamian civilization: at the latest at the end of the fourth millenium, in the so-called Late Uruk Period, architecture attained great heights, and the visual arts flourished, with the appearance of figurative scenes exalting the power of the king. It was also at that time that writing came to be invented: the resulting release of cultural and intellectual energy can only be imagined. Writing was then used exclusively in the economic sphere, primarily as a memory aid, but it nevertheless enables us to recognize that its inventors spoke Sumerian, an agglutinative language without any known parallel.”

—The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia, by Giovanni Curatol, Jean-Daniel Forest, Nathalie Gallois, Carlo Lippolis, and Roberta Venco Ricciardi, 2007.

a heritage of great value

“‘[T]he world has a heritage of great value. The Mosaic code of the Bible owes some of its principles to some of the laws formulated by Hammurabi, who was called the law-giver. From their system of arithmetic, in which they used the multiple of twelve as well as our familiar ten, we derive our sixty minutes to the hour and 360 degrees to the circle. Arabia gave us our numerals, which are still called Arabic to distinguish them from the Roman system of notation. The Assyrians invented the sundial. The modern apothecary symbols and the signs of the Zodiac originated with the Babylonians. Comparatively recent excavations in Asia Minor have revealed that there was a magnificent empire there.’

‘A magnificent empire?’ Homer dreamed. ‘Where? In Ithaca in California? Away out to hell and gone’ Without any great people, without any great discoveries, without sundials, without numerals, without Zodiacs, without humor, without anything? Where was this great empire?’”

—William Saroyan, The Human Comedy, 1943.

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