INSTRUCTIONS/LINKS: use left/right arrow keys or space to flip through the panels also on https://horizonpenblade.wordpress.com/2015/11/06/mesopotamian-art/ (possibly higher quality) DESCRIPTION/STORY: [So for school I'm doing a bunch of things involving retelling scenes from ancient myths in different settings, this is one of those.] The Mesopotamians were depressing. They believed that when you died, no matter what, you ended up in this world of death and dust and darkness and... yeah. Their mythology also had a couple humans who tried to gain immortality (well, one who tried, another who had the chance) and both pretty much failed/missed out. The myth that includes this scene is the only known exception. This is basically the ancient Mesopotamian version of the Noah story. Here's how the whole thing goes: So, humans were having a bit of an overpopulation thing--it wasn't so much of a problem for them as it was for Enlil, the god of earth. All their talking and noise and stomping around on his patron-ee was getting on his nerves, and the other gods were agreeing with him. So they tried to wipe out the humans in quite a few ways. They would have been successful if it weren't for Enki, the god of the waters and wisdom. He, you see, had kind of come up with the idea of humans, and he wasn't exactly in the mood for wiping them out those days. Or any days, for that matter. Well, the rest of the gods got fed up and somehow got him to make a flood to wipe anyone out. They also made him promise not to talk to any humans to avoid him telling someone and foiling them. Enki, of course, found a loophole. (If you don't know what that is, you evidently still need to click that green flag and press space through the scene.) He warned a king named Untapishtim to make a boat, and he did, and the human race survived, and in the process of the flood, the gods realized how important the humans were to them, and so... • they let the humans live (but gave them a shorter lifespan/less chances of life so they were less annoying), and • they let Untapishtim have immortality. Nice and tidy, right? Anyways, this loophole actually seems like a bit of an archetype. In at least one version of the fairy tale "The Goose Girl"... Well, you'll need some background info for that part, so: There's this princess who gets impersonated and forced to swear not to tell any person that she's the real princess or that the impostor is an impostor or anything that happened to her. So, she goes in disguise as a goose girl, and eventually the prince asks her why she does something to someone else. Somehow it's caused by the whole impostor-thing, and she's like "I promised not to tell anyone, so I can't say," and he's like "Well, go tell that stove." So he listens, hidden for her, at the top of the stove pipe, and she tells the stove the whole story and everything gets fixed. Anyways, a little more about the Mesopotamians--in this art, I portrayed the scene by the coast, but Mesopotamia was more landlocked--the waters being referred to in most cases would probably be two rivers--the Euphrates and the Tigris. Untapishtim actually comes up in the epic of Gilgamesh--a story of one of those failed attempts at immortality. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sandars, N. K. The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Version with an Introd. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1972. Print. Schomp, Virginia. The Ancient Mesopotamians. New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2009. Print. Myths of the World. These were the main ones I used. There was also a book at the school library that I grabbed to remind myself which rivers were the right ones, but I hope that doesn't need to be cited. :) NOTES: Untapishtim isn't supposed to be a rugby player... that's just the combination of my problems drawing human proportions and that cloak.
