An observation on masculinity/femininity as portrayed in the media, and a flickering candle of hope that things aren't all _that_ bad, or perhaps that they are changing, at least.
I went to see the movie 'Shrek' with a few friends, and in the movie there is a confrontation with a faerie tale dragon and a reluctant hero 'knight' who wants to avoid the dragon, not slay it... of course, that can't happen and still be an interesting story. So the confrontation happens, and it turns out that the dragon is an amorous female... and later in the story turns up to aid the hero, and slay the illegitimate king.
Though she does play a supporting role, it is one never played by any dragon in faery tales I heard/read as a child, let alone a female dragon. I loved it!
My roommate took his kids to see it and they all loved it, but methinks for different reasons
Re: The new paradigm of consciousness (4)
Though I haven't seen this movie (Shrek) your description, Enki, reminds me of something I'm quite familiar with - the re-working of familiar myths and 'fairy tales' from either a different point of view (Psyche / Cinderella archetype from the point of view of one of the sisters) or with a less patriarchal / woman positive & empowered perspective. You see, my partner teaches a class every other year at the college here on "Women in Myth and Fairy Tale". In fact, Wolkstein & Kramer's Inanna is one of the texts used in the course.
I know there is much discussion and controversy over 'revisionist' histories. But, as everyone knows, history has traditionally been written by the victors or those in the dominant power position. While the work of archaeologists such as Maria Gimbutas has been much derided , it at least has served as a reference point that helps us to consider alternative explanations for archaeologic discoveries...
I'm reminded of the numerous excavations (switching to a totally different part of the world) of Silbury Hill in England, the largest human made earthen mound. Evidently, researchers have excavated it a number of times in search of the remains of an ancient Wessex king but have come up empty-handed. Others (of a more feminist bent) say that it is simply representational - a mound, breast or belly, holding nothing, concealing nothing.
So, coming back to enki's comment, I definitely applaud literature and films that present the familiar - from unfamiliar points of view. As one who has lived, what many would call, an "alternative lifestyle much of her life, I completely understand the need for such works.
Re: Gendered Old Age in the Enuma Elish
One of the first questions of the my first set of tasks for the training for initiation with Caitlin and John was... to think of myself as the Other Sex for a day.
With lots of trepidation, I wrote my report on this specific question saying that I couldnīt think of myself as a man, because of several reasons. First, I was martial and very androginous, preferring sober tight-fitting blacks to pink and pastels linen or silk and woollies. Secondly, whenever I read good authors describing women, they were either self-sacrificing, mommies, muses about to lose their lives, subservient, etc. I quoted lots of books and authors I had been reading at that time. The Lord of the Rings, for example. No girl in the Quest for the Ring... arrrrrgh
I have to look into the first report, but oooh the list of reasons why I like being a woman was long... and why I did not like menīs portraits of women longer still... *chuckles
Thus, I decided to do the monthīs task by ... trying to be more understanding to men! )))
Surely I was concerned. Didnīt know how Caitlín Matthews would react to my answer.
I should not have worried because... she invited me to take part in her research for the book that I find her greatest contribution to understanding the Personal God and Inspirer in the life of women: In search of womenīs passionate Soul - The Daimon Lover. This is an in-depth study of the Animus or Torch Bearer of Oneīs Soul. Absolutely fantastic.
I guess I was the least important in her list of luminaries. But I am so very grateful to have been part of Caitlinīs survey. She just published the book in 1997 and contacted me to do the survey for her in 1996.
She did not forget the question I had replied in my first report in 1990.
When I find the short story of the vegetarian dragon who was the pet of the princess who needed no knights to be rescued... Iīll send it to you all!
best,
Lishtar
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
War as the Ethos of the Iron Age
Returning to the Iron Age, wherever the hero myth of the solar hero and dragon has been interpreted literally, in terms of a warrior confronting a powerful and dangerous enemy, it has led to polarization and endless strife. The Enuma Elish offered a paradigm of divine behaviour that was inevitably used to justify the violation of life that was the hallmark of the Iron Age. The rise of the Babylonian cult of Marduk coincided with the glorification of war and conquest that plunged the different peoples and races of the Near East into a struggle for supremacy or survival, whose legacy of conflict has still not come to an end after 4,000 years - presumably becasue the beliefs formulated then still govern human consciousness. What, in the history books of the early part of this century, used to be admired as the great age of the Babylonian and the Assyrian Empires was marked by the most barbarous cruelty: the flaying alive of bodies, gouging out of eyes and cutting off of limbs, the murder of thousands of enemy prisoners, practices that are not extolled in the early centuries of Sumerian civilization. The emotional climate of the Iron Ageis one of acute anxiety and fear of disaster. This, more than anything else, created a compulsion to aggression. The majority of men had to be warriors. They defended the community, avenged the dead, brought glory to the family name. The king, in particular, had to be a warrior, one like David, of whom they sang to one another in dances saying "Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands" ( 1 Sam 18:7).
The Iron Age is dominated by the mythology of war, in which the hero is seen politically as the mighty warrior. The ideal of the king was no longer to be the shepherd of the people, as it was in early Sumer, but the mighty conqueror, on the model of Hammurabi, Darius, Agammenon or Alexander. Cruelty became a virtue and barbarism a way of life. War was regarded as natural and a right, the royal road for a man to follow if he were to serve his gods, his king and his country. Like the Palaeolithic hunt, war brought men together in a shared aim and a shared heroic purpose whose intensity was such that no tilling of the soil or herding animals could emulate it. The ideal of conquest forged the bond of a tribal consciousness, pre-empting the otherwise universal reflections of art, as can be seen in the seemingly endless lines of identical warriors carved on Assyrian tablets dedicated to destruction. The Iliad and the Old Testament are focused on war, as pointed out by Campbell. One immediate difference between them is that in the Iliad the sympathies and assitance of the many gods are offered to both sides, so that neither is designated as intrisically wrong or evil, which means that both are ultimatelly bound by a common humanity. In the Old Testament, on the other hand, with its single and omnipotent god, there is only rare evidence of respect for the enemy or sympathy for his fate.
In the course of the Iron Age five great empires - Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek and Roman - imposed themselves successlively on an immense area of land, which at one time extended from Greece to India and from the Caspian Sea to Sudan. To the north-west of Mesopotamia, the Hittite Empire was established in Anatolia, extending its influence southwards into Syria and Canaan. Further to the South, Egypt pursued the same pattern of imperial expansion after the invasions of the Hyksons in 1500 BCE.
During this time the organic growth of the psyche was abruptly cut off as the close relationship of people with a specific soil, established over many millennia, was irrevocably broken. Whole tribal groups were uprooted or taken into slavery, since the agricultural prosperity o these empires depended upon the labour of slaves. Women and childre were often seized as slaves when their fathers or husbands were killed, or when pirates raided foreign shores in search of loot. ...
The Assyrian king Tiglat Pileser III (745-727 BCE) ws the first to institute the wholesale transplantation of populations in Babylonia, which was conquered by Assyria in 745 BCE, as many as 35 different tribal groups were broken up and transferred elsewhere. Shalmaneser V followed his fatherīs example when he dispersed the 10 tribes of Israel throughout the Assyrian empire in 721. Many thousands of people journeyed away from lands that for centuries had been their home only to arrive at places totally unknown to them, where they were forced to live among strangers. Wherever a population was deported, another was transferred to the vacated land.
______
More tomorrow or later today... have to go to work.
My friend Dr. Paul Collins, who does Gallery Lectures at the British Museum, compared the Assyrian expasion of these times to the expansion of the British Empire of the 19th century It is a brilliant comparison by the young archaeologist I have the pleasure to call friend.
He did the historical introduction to the Healing of Gilgamesh, a playlet I did as the present to the gods and the people for my consecration as a hierophant back in 1995.
We honour the gods by honouring likewise the people who love the gods
Like yourself, who are reading this piece right now.
Isnīt it incredible that just in the late 20th century and beginning of this new millennia we are reversing the power of war as the power to kill to enter the economic mastery for technology and progress measured by social development and prosperity issues?
Well, this is SOME progress in consciousness...
Mother Nammu and all Mothers of the Gods be praised!
best,
Lishtar
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Re: Martial Arts before the Iron Age
Here are a few challenging ideas, Lishtar. The execution of thousands of captured soldiers was a standard policy of Sargon of Agade and his dynasty according to their inscriptions. They apparently lacked the bureaucracy to handle a large hostile male population. Even earlier, the Sumerians were familiar with war as far back as the days of the original non-legendary Gilgamesh of Uruk with its huge protective city wall. Presargonic Lagashite rulers, such as Eannatum, Enannatum, and Entemena, celebrated their military exploits, even asserting that they were chosen by Inanna who accompanied them into battle (even Ur-Nanshe was not immune to such talk). The intensity of military hostilities may have increased with the immense turmoil surrounding the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. Later the Neo-Assyrian kings made a powerful and distasteful reputation for themselves by their inflated propaganda displayed on bas-reliefs which visiting foreign envoys had to pass on their way to an audience with the Assyrian emperor. The problem of war was not a new problem in the Iron Age, but perhaps it was no longer viewed as a problem at that time. In any case, the Sumerians were not averse to protecting their families, their worship, and their property. Such are the thoughts of a non-military and non-militant scribe.
Re: Martial Arts before the Iron Age
Thanks for the great additions, Dearest Dubsar... Smiles for you, inner sobs for the .... subtleties and ideals of brotherhood for humankind of warriors, past, present and to come... Sargonids inclusive sighs. Patriarchy started this way and it is still strong... Letīs face it, hordes of invaders coming to a carefully tended plot of land or a city... does not invite the most peaceful welcome from any earlier settler. I find it easier to forgive Sumerians than empire builders though. I like Sargon very much though.
Empire builders perhaps are of the killer sort. The question is, can we build a new millennium without the same course of action?
I hope so.
from your non-military but martial myth lover friend,
Lishtar
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Re: Nasty Symbolic Boundaries
Cooperation can be pursued in this millennium. At least I encourage my students to seek honorable cooperative trajectories for their professional careers. Part of the problem I explore in class includes the features of the symbolic boundaries that we set in constructing our cosmos. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow has built on the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas in explaining these boundaries. Although boundary construction seems to be a universal human trait, it is not necessary to set malice and contempt at the boundaries of "us" and the "other." When we draw boundaries so tightly that all outside our immediate circle are the enemy, then brutal conduct is too easily justified. The extreme brutality of 20th century wars depended on hostile, contemptuous boundary construction. Another point can be mentioned. There was ample room in southern Iraq for various flourishing Sumerian and Kishite cities in the third millennium, but perhaps certain men and women elected to take quickly rather than plan and implement slowly. In my little circle I try to encourage openness to the sacred realities of life and commitment to community and even covenantal thinking (people like John Locke and James Madison had wonderful ideas about human dignity and freedom even if they did not implement them perfectly in their own lives). Some thoughts from an old Sumerian scribe who prefers some primitive thinking and practice to the postmodern alternatives. Hope I am not getting too far off the thread, Lishtar!
Re: Nasty Symbolic Boundaries
Surely it is not far off the thread, Dearest Dubsar! I guess I have an ancient soul as well. Despite the modern looks
Besides, we canīt love Ancient Sumer, Babylon and Assyria and not to wish peace, prosperity, love, light and laughter for Modern Mesopotamia...
And perhaps, just perhaps we are a bit too optimistic to wish always for the best for the region HERE AND NOW.
There is no other way though. For if we canīt change much of the present, we can try and retrieve the treasures of the Mesopotamia past which are not lost... and as such build bridges between past, present and the future for the generations to come.
I praise your efforts to increase cooperation for your students. You are truly an interesting Professor...
I know this for sure. Otherwise, how come in all worlds would you have belonged to Ancient Sites Babylon and ... joined our Board? (so glad you did!) *jumping up and down with joy
Best always,
Lishtar
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Re: Treasures in our glorious past
Mesopotamia's past is filled with treasures that deserve our investigation, criticism (in the positive etymological sense of thoughtful comparison, analysis and decision), elaboration, and celebration. Tradition matters. We should transmit our traditions critically and creatively, but we should certainly know them and pass them on for the benefit of the present and future. The abandonment of the past by some existentialists and postmoderns impoverishes us. Our lives in the present must remain vitally (not statically or stagnately) connected with the past and future. We must remain in context. Eliade had objections to history as profane, valueless passing of time, but he approved of living with the stimulating powers of the past tradition and the refreshing energy that the beginnings can repeatedly offer us, as we return again and again to the origins. These origins include the Sumerian insights on a world of order, a cosmos that nevertheless refused to be totally predictable and pliable for the humans. A few thoughts of a Sumerian scribe who disagreed with the teenager who dismissed history with the comment, "History is not interesting; it is only about dead people."
Re: Nasty Symbolic Boundaries
I agree with both you completely on this.... "boundaries," in the socio-political sense - but also many times in the interpersonal sense, are the cause of so much ill-will, acrimony, anger, bitterness and much worse in this world. I have witnessed examples of the quintessential "us" and "other" arguments all over the world... that, and here at home, our incredibly insular, xenophobic U.S. cuture. IMHO, everyone, when possible, should spend time living in another country or with another cultural group for a minimum of three months. Obviously, this is a fairly classist statement as international trips are unfeasible for many people due to the sheer cost of international travel.
However, I was blessed to have lived in the eastern Mediterranean on the island of Cyprus for three years in the early 80's and during that time was exposed to a wide variety of cultures and nationalities. Nothing helps one to gain a better perspective of their own culture than spending time living in another.
This reminds me of the Arabic saying (paraphrased), "I against my brother, I and my brother against our cousin, I and my cousin against the neighbor, I and my neighbor against someone from another town, I and the person from another town against the infidel."
And from the primitive to the post-modern, I'm reminded of the Apollo 8 astronauts who were the first to see the world from a distant perspective... "the big blue marble" ... We are all one on this rocky, silicon based, water covered ball that is spinning through space. Boundaries don't seem as important anymore...
Ok.... yawn... could say more, but it's past my bed time.
Hello everyone! I hve just been back from the mountains and now am at my sister`s computer: the cousins` monthly meeting is my sister1s turn this month ?D
It is great to return to cyberspace and see that we all care about Modern Mesopotamia and luv the past... without losing sight of our modern times while trying our best to bring Mesopotamia into the right perspective... perhaps to heal her bad press in the present as well. Great!
I agree totally that in the information age, boundaries are no longer of much value, and cyberspace is one of the shining examples of this new way of seeing and living our lives.
I think very much history is about memory. About stories we should learn because they tell a lot about the past so that we can build a better future here and now not making the same mistakes perhaps others made...
Without memory, we lose our sense of ourselves.
The point is to create good memories, so that we can bring them back from the past in times of need or to summon a smile, a shared laughter, a long lost dream that we fought hard to come true.
And maybe some people in the future will feel then like reading our own stories and the stories of our times too.
best,
Lishtar
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Re: Gendered Old Age in the Enuma Elish
I guess this thread is finished temporarily by now... )) because I donīt think many of us here are interested in more observations on the myth of the solar hero and the official beginnings in terms of mythology for patriarchy....
I was going to introduce a few shining lines not of my own on the issue... but slept on the books, a common occurrence these days...
This is our board, so you are all very welcome to post bits and pieces that you find great to share! Here and in all threads!
My own inner healing of the Enuma Elish is in The Hero and the Dragoness. I guess it was one of my first official Mesopotamian myth retellings. Should have done a chronology for them, but .... well I simply kept doing the Work and never cared about dating material in the past.
I still luv very much a very sober postcard from my archaeologist friend who does gallery talks in the British Museum on the Hero and the Dragoness. He wrote that I came "very close to the theological speculations archaeologists do on the same issue"
hmmmm....
regards,
Lishtar
PS: Thanks so much Dubsar for the idea for the thread! It was a real pleasure to get back to Cashford and Baring! Especially the non-patriarchal bits
Blessed be the Gods and all Their Mothers!
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Re: Gendered Old Age in the Enuma Elish
Hey, This may sound like a really stupid question to yall, but I am in a history class and I dont understand Enuma Elish at all!!
Can some one please explain it to me and may be the cultral values of this "dramatic epic"? Also if anyone knows anything about the egyptian hymns to the sun (morning and evening), nile ant Aton. Cultural values on these also, that would be great. I just cant see that they are much more than prayers or a tribute to the gods. I would really appriciate anybodies help. Thanx so much.
Becca
, it at least has served as a reference point that helps us to consider alternative explanations for archaeologic discoveries... 
IMHO, everyone, when possible, should spend time living in another country or with another cultural group for a minimum of three months. Obviously, this is a fairly classist statement as international trips are unfeasible for many people due to the sheer cost of international travel. 
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