Читать книгу Reception of Mesopotamia on Film - Maria de Fatima Rosa - Страница 15

At the beginning of Histories, Herodotus explains to the reader the reasons that led him to write his work: “This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other.”⁵⁰ In the words of the Greek historian there is a marked polarization between the “Hellenes”⁵¹ and the “Barbarians,” composed, as evidenced by his account, by the Asian peoples. In contrasting them, Herodotus accentuates the chasm of a cultural distinction, perhaps more evident in Aeschylus,⁵² which would become even more acute in the subsequent centuries. As we can easily understand, the concept of Orientalism, far beyond a terminology applicable to the centuries of European imperialism, can also be understood as a notion of otherness already expressed in antiquity.⁵³ In fact, it is possible that the first form of the “derogatory stereotype now known as ‘Orientalism’”⁵⁴ was forged with the Greeks.

Nevertheless, as Said himself said, Greek authors recognized their hybrid cultural past (with Semitic and Egyptian roots) and it was only later that philosophers redraw this ancestral memory, forgetting some features of their history considered more embarrassing to build a manufactured speech.⁵⁵ Although Herodotus does not transmit the idea of ​​cultural superiority, but merely of differentiation, it is visible, in the way the historian of Halicarnassus depicts the people he calls “barbarians,” which include Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, a significant divergence in customs and modus vivendi. Thus, in Babylon, traditions were as unusual and peculiar as marriage auctions⁵⁶ or the obligation for all women to enter Aphrodite’s⁵⁷ temple to have sex with a stranger at least once in their lives. And it was this fabled and fabricated image under the ethnocentric point of view of a Greek that survived for posterity.⁵⁸

Regarding the donation of women for sexual relations in the temple or their offering to a goddess, we can say that the cinema was fruitful in reproducing this narrative. The sacrifice of virgins, and no longer mere γυνή (“women”), perhaps a derivation of the conservative Christian society of the contemporary era, is reproduced in films such as L’eroe di Babilonia (1963), Maciste, l’eroe più grande del mondo (1963), or the American horror film The Mole People (1956). Ishtar’s temple is usually the setting where the tribute of young women, usually paid by vassal cities, is carried out. Films such as L’eroe di Babilonia (1963) inclusively portray women “with crowns (…) on their heads”⁵⁹ and wrists. It goes without saying that such a custom is not documented in ancient Mesopotamian sources, merely deriving from a “Greek tendency to judge other cultures by how much they deviated from Greek social behavior, deemed the civilized norm,”⁶⁰ a tendency that gave rise to fantasy and fiction.

But the Greeks also saw ancient Mesopotamia as a sumptuous and romantic place. Significant of their doubly idyllic and exotic⁶¹ idea about the land between the rivers are the famous hanging gardens. The only Babylonian source that mentions them is the lost text⁶² of Berossus⁶³ entitled Babyloniaca. According to the author, the gardens were built by Nebuchadnezzar II in his palace, in a steep form, in order to please his wife, who had grown up in the mountains of Media.⁶⁴ Instead, in Diodorus Siculus's account, they are described as the work of a Syrian king as an offering to one of his concubines, a Persian who constantly yearned for the hills of her country.⁶⁵ As we can see, different versions about the gardens were produced over time, leaving historians and archaeologists with the inglorious task of locating the mythical Babylonian place, symbol of the exuberance and romanticism that the classics conferred to Mesopotamia. Ex libris of its idyllic and bucolic spirit, the hanging gardens, which could have actually existed not in Babylon but in Assyria,⁶⁶ are also a common theme in artistic representations and in cinematic reconstructions since the beginning of the silent era to the present (from Sémiramis [1911] to Alexander [2004]).

Between romanticism and exoticism, the clash between West and East, between Greece and Mesopotamia is perhaps more visible in the cinema in the Italian production Ercole contro i tiranni di Babilonia (1964). In the film, the hero and heroine who make up the romantic couple come from a Greco-Roman cultural universe. They are Hercules, the mythical hero of Greek mythology, and Esperia, a fictional character corresponding to the queen of the Hellenes. Her authority extended over a territory that would come to represent, at a time posterior to the plot, part of Europe. Unfortunately for her, her land had been taken over by the Babylonians. Both heroes are thus faced with the authorities of the eastern side of the Mediterranean, in a land ruled by cruelty and tyranny, as well as by a blind ambition for power. Due to this brutality, the population of the neighboring regions of Babylon, governed by the trio of brothers Taneal, Assur, and Salmanassar, is imprisoned, enslaved, and forced to work. Among this population is precisely Esperia’s.

In the confrontation between the Fertile Crescent and Hellas, the latter would be victorious. However, the duel between them could only end with the destruction and total annulment of the city of Babylon, which is overthrown and set on fire. The glory of the West, the liberation of the oppressed population, and the return of the heroes “to their land” is accomplished through the invalidation of the East. The dichotomy Occident/Orient is additionally highlighted by the portrayal of the characters: Taneal, the Babylon queen, represents the seductive and cruel version of the Oriental woman; Esperia, the virtuous queen, is the humble version of the Western woman. As we can easily perceive, the stereotypes created by the Greeks have remained until today, and cinema was one of the arts that was inspired by them.