Our Mesopotamian Moment (Part II)

In the first part of this essay, I discussed the nature of ancient Mesopotamia and how two poems from that era, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elis, embody an obsession with mastery, both of human society and the natural world. In the second part, I discuss the symbolism of those poems, and the surprising resurgence of both in modern culture, before ending with a comparison of our historical moment with that of ancient Mesopotamia.

—Darrick

Sovereignty and the Symbolism of “Above and Below”

Unlike Gilgamesh, the Enuma Elish and its gruesome narrative contain a much clearer political message. Marduk is raised to the head of the pantheon, paralleling Babylon’s rise to power over the Near East. He is depicted in the poem as an all seeing, all hearing deity: “Four were his eyes / Four were his ears; / When his lips moved, fire blazed forth. / The four ears were enormous / And likewise the eyes; they perceived everything.”¹ The New Year’s Day ceremony in Babylon makes clear the parallel: as Marduk reined in chaos among the gods, so did the king of Babylon rein in political disorder—with exceeding savagery. This could not have been lost on the nobles who came to Babylon to do homage to the king, who were required to kiss his feet during the ceremony.

In both poems, this quelling of chaos requires the sacrifice of the lower for the higher, both among the gods and in the Mesopotamian social imaginary. Gilgamesh, a mortal, must be punished by the gods for killing the “Bull of Heaven” through the death of Enkidu. (The Bull of Heaven was in some versions of the story a symbol of the constellation Taurus.²) The rebellion of the lesser gods is crushed by Marduk, who destroys the female Tiamat. In stark contrast with the biblical view of the world, in both Atrahasis and the Enuma Elish, human beings are created as servants of the gods, to save the gods from having to perform manual labor. In the Enuma Elish, human beings are created from the blood of Tiamat’s lover Qingu.

There is much one can say about these texts, but I think it doesn’t take much imagination to see these tales as embodying the fears of those who ruled the first great cities in human history: floods and other natural disasters could destroy whole cities; massive unruly populations could overthrow the government; and violent competition with other peoples for resources led to destruction.

This battle for resources is possibly reflected in the story of Humbaba in Gilgamesh. Humbaba is the guardian of the forest, and timber was a valuable resource in the desert areas of the Near East. Likewise, in the Enuma Elish, Marduk makes, from the body of Tiamat the water goddess, both Tigris and Euphrates rivers, perhaps symbolizing mastery over the chaotic source of life and death that is water.³

Furthermore, two of the most potent symbols in both poems—The Bull of Heaven and the Tablet of Destinies—are emblems of power and control. The Tablet of Destinies has been dismissed as a symbol of divine kingship, because he gifts it to his grandfather Anu. It seems to me that it has a more obvious meaning as a symbol of knowledge, particularly the written word, which was still a relatively novel technology in the second millennium B.C. And the Bull of Heaven, associated with Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, could be seen as a symbol of fertility. After killing the Bull in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh made trophies of his body parts: he  dedicated the horns to his father, Lugulbanda, and “hung them on his bed (where he slept) as head of the family.”⁴

Thus, in Gilgamesh we have the quasi-divine king seeking to claim sovereignty over the “above and below” but being felled by his mortality. What Enuma Eliš portrays is Marduk’s successful bid for total sovereignty, something the kings of Babylon must have claimed by proxy, if the poem is any indication. As the gods proclaim to Marduk their savior, “From this day onwards your command shall not be altered. / Yours is the power to exalt and abase. / May your utterance be law, your word never be falsified. / None of the gods shall transgress your limits.”⁵

Mesopotamia in Modern Culture

What do these strange, and often gruesome works, have to do with us? I am not suggesting there is a linear, historical connection between our own times and the age of Gilgamesh. What I would suggest is that there are parallels between the current age of globalization and the first great era of urbanization in the ancient world, and that this helps us understand why certain patterns of symbolism that are redolent of “paganism” and the Ancient Near East in particular, seem to be recurring.

One reason such is that our knowledge of the Epic of Gilgamesh and Enuma Eliš is the direct result of modern civilization. The tablets containing both poems were only rediscovered in the Middle East by British archaeologists in the 1850s. That modern imperialism and the technological revolutions of the modern era restored these two lost pieces of literature from the first great age of Urbanization hardly seems like an accident, given the upheavals that accompanied both.

Unsurprisingly, there are instances of these archaic epics manifesting themselves in contemporary culture. Since the first publication of the fragments of Gilgamesh by scholars in the 1870s, numerous writers, poets and musicians have seen in the king of Uruk a symbol of their own times, as a rebel against the “establishment.” For example, Gregory Coros, one of the American “Beat” poets, was fascinated with Gilgamesh and called him a “proto-Jack Kerouac.”⁶

Significantly, during the 1960s, many of these writers picked up on the subversive potential of the Gilgamesh story, in which he strives against both death and the gods. Some homosexual authors turned Gilgamesh into a “gay icon,” turning his relationship with Enkidu into a homoerotic one.⁷ More dubiously, others reinterpreted his story as a “green” narrative and Gilgamesh a proto-environmentalist whose importance lay in expressing, as one character in a novel put it, “ever since humankind lost its harmony with the whole, it has been in constant conflict with nature—yet only harms itself, since it is a part of nature.” As one historian put it, many writers found in Gilgamesh an antidote to stuffy, bourgeois society and the key to “a more primordial reality” and a “cosmic”—that is, freer and more fully human—relationship to the universe.”⁸

  In terms of popular culture, characters from Mesopotamian myths also found their way into popular culture in the late twentieth century. A character named “Gilgamesh” made appearances in the Canadian television show Highlander, as well as the New Zealand show Xena: Warrior Princess. And in one episode of Star Trek; the Next Generation, Captain Jean Luc-Picard actually recites Gilgamesh’s lament for Enkidu.⁹

Later, Babylonian aspects of Mesopotamian culture have also surfaced in the popular imagination. Author William Peter Blatty in his novel The Exorcist names the demon who possesses Regan McNeil “Pazuzu” after the Ayssrian demon-god of the underworld,¹⁰ while a Swedish “black metal” band named “Marduk,” formed in 1990, took its name from the god of Babylon, for explicitly anti-Christian purposes.¹¹ But perhaps the most famous instance is that of the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons, invented in the 1970s as a tactical war game.¹² It features a character named Tiamat, who rules  “the Nine Hells where she spawns all of evil dragonkind.” (Both Gilgamesh and Marduk were also listed among the “gods” in Dungeons and Dragons, among other Mesopotamian deities.)¹³

Two Revolutionary Moments

It is not a coincidence that a resurgence of images and figures from ancient Mesopotamian lore have found their way into contemporary Western culture. The fact that Christian faith has been losing its grip over public spaces and imagination of Western culture for some time now, as its leading figures seek putative replacements for the symbols of the faith they have abandoned. This is one explanation for the resurgence not only of Satanic imagery, but also of ancient Mesopotamian stories, since they predate Christianity.

But there are historical reasons for this as well. Despite the vast span of time and cultural development between them, our age is currently undergoing a transformation of epic proportions, one that parallels but also surpasses that of the Ancient Near East. Instead of from agricultural to urban, the transition is one from a national to a globalized world, one fueled by mechanical, chemical and digital revolutions that threaten the stability of our much large and much more complex societies. The leaders of this globalized society, like their counterparts in the ancient world, increasingly see the peoples they govern as the source of the chaos that threatens to engulf them, and like those early urban kings, seek to create systems of control to quell the chaos.

This means that like the ancient Babylonians, our leaders increasingly treat the peoples they govern as resources to be exploited, in the name of creating these systems of control. Whether it is global lock downs, centralized digital currencies or Panopticon like surveillance systems, the leaders of governments, large corporations and other powerful institutions see their subordinates as resources to be exploited. Just as many ancient rulers treated their peoples like tax cattle to be milked so they could fight wars and exploit the resources of neighboring cities, so do the leaders of this global world fight wars in order to seek resources, often under the pretext of higher principles, sometimes  “freedom,” at other times in the name of “security.” But always, they seek to extend these systems of control, whatever else they accomplish.

It may seem like a lust for power motivates our global elite, but I suspect they are more like the ancient gods of Gilgamesh, cowering before the flood. They are afraid. They fear what the technology they have helped create has unleashed, and seek to rein it in. Communication technologies are a good example. World leaders saw the internet as a force for good politically, when it facilitated “populist” political movements they favored (the “Arab Spring”) but when it began to favor “reactionary” political movements (i.e., Donald Trump, Brexit), they sought control over it, to make sure such “Black Swan” events did not repeat themselves. The introduction of writing was similarly transformative and disruptive in the ancient world. Likewise, though technology has made it possible to feed all of mankind, they must look at global population numbers the way that the Babylonian gods looked at the people of the ancient Near East: “the noise of mankind has become too much…Let there be the păssitu-demon among the people…and thus control childbirth.”

            Perhaps the most unpleasant resonance between the symbolism of these ancient epics and our current historical moment can be found in the transgenderism movement. The symbolism of creating the universe out of the body parts of a dead god is not unique to Enuma Eliš (similar beliefs can be found in the Rig Veda, for example¹⁴), but the way Marduk uses Tiamat’ body to create the universe to the applause of the other gods is eerily reminiscent of the transgender phenomenon, where adolescents are encouraged to mutilate their bodies to the applause of adult activists on social media. In both cases, the human body is used as a source of power to construct a new “world,” a new cosmic order, which undermines and destroys potential rivals.

            The symbolism of transgender ideology is related not only to the inversion of natural patterns of hierarchy, but also to a desire to control threats to one’s identity, one’s sovereignty, that are similar to that which permeates the ancient epics of Mesopotamia. The symbolism is not exactly the same, and I should stress I am not claiming any historical continuity between ancient Mesopotamia and the twenty-first century world, only a similarity of circumstance that partially explains common uses of symbolism. Artifacts like the statue on the New York Court House which suggests similar cultural and spiritual dynamics are at play.

The New (Old) Order of Things

            Modern regimes, unlike Mesopotamian kings, are different partly because they possess a weapon that could only be wielded in a society influenced by Christianity: concern for victims. Modern regimes have learned to use concern for victims to buttress their authority. Whereas in ancient Mesopotamia those who rebelled were punished (Gilgamesh, Tiamat), in our modern cultural media those who rebel are feted by the powers that be. But though there is no direct historical connection between them, the revival of Satanic imagery and of Mesopotamian figures in a post-Christian popular culture both are related to this phenomenon.

As noted above, Jonathan Pageau has drawn attention to the Satanic imagery in much of popular culture including the Marvel TV series WandaVision and a music video by the rapper Montero. Pageau notes in his video the refusal of natural patterns of hierarchy and their inversion, but also how revolutionary figures project themselves upon the world in these two examples of popular storytelling. I would like to end by noting that, though their satanic symbolism is different from that of Gilgamesh or Enuma Eliš, there is still a coherence between them.

In WandaVision, Wanda/the Scarlet Witch literally uses the minds of her town’s people as fodder for creating her alternate reality. As Pageau notes, the show presents her to the audience not only as a protagonist, but a victim we should sympathize with.¹⁵  This is in keeping with using the concern for victims to buttress authority. But Wanda is also clearly a Gilgamesh figure: she seeks control over life because of the death of Vision, the AI creation who becomes her partner in previous Marvel movies. (In fact, Vision is essentially her double: they both possess mind control powers, and like Enkidu was for Gilgamesh, is effectively made for her.)

Montero’s music video is much more straight forwardly “satanic” in its imagery. In that video, he inhabits a world populated by images of himself, erasing the rest of humanity. Notable in the video is the reversal of the image of Heaven and Hell, in which he descends to hell but then overthrows Satan and crowns himself. Here too, because of his sexuality, Montero presents himself as the revolutionary victim who overthrows the established order, his Napoleonic self-crowning recalling the Father of Lies. But Montero can also be seen as an inverted Marduk figure: just as Marduk is given the names of all the rest of the gods after defeating Tiamat, every person in the video is turned into his image. Like Marduk, he creates an entire world from the enemies he has overcome. Montero’s self-crowning also recalls Marduk’s seizure of the Tablet of Destinies and sealing of it into his chest as a claim to sovereignty.

Both WandaVision and Montero’s video embody in their respective productions the idea that it is the highest good is according to Pageau “to sacrifice the entire world for the exception.”¹⁶ Both impose their will on the world and on those “below them” in a post-Christian hierarchy, urging their viewers to identify with this new hierarchy via an “upside down scapegoat mechanism.”¹⁷ Despite this, the sort of individual sovereignty that each tends to espouse is clearly one approved by the powers that be. Though our civilization holds out the promise of individual sovereignty, autonomy, its main objective is making populations easier to control.

If my view is correct, the imagery of Satanism, of individual self-creation so prevalent in popular culture serves a much older, more “Mesopotamian” purpose. Those who govern societies in this post-Christian world are enduring changes similar to those faced by the rulers of the first ages of civilization, sharing the same desire to create order out of what they see as chaos caused primarily by other human beings. Unlike their ancient predecessors, they are possessed of greater technological and ideological sophistication; they possess the advantage of living in a post-Christian civilization which can draw on the Christian concern for victims. But insofar as their goals are concerned, our is very much a “Mesopotamian” moment in history.

1. Ibid., p. 237.

2. Arkadiusz Soltysiak, “The Bull of Heaven in Mesopotamian Sources,” Culture and Cosmos, Vol. 5, Autumn/Winter 2001, p. 16.

3. “The Epic of Creation,” p. 257.

4. Ibid., p. 83.

5. Ibid., p. 250.

6. Theodore Ziolkowski, Gilgamesh Among Us: Modern Encounters With an Ancient Epic (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 2012), pp. 58, 75, 102-103.

7. Ziolkowski, Gilgamesh Among Us, pp. 67, 73, 91-95.

8. Ibid., pp. 123-135, 108.

9. Ibid., pp. 110-111.

10. William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (New York: Harper & Row, 1971); “Pazuzu,” Gods, Demons and Symbols, pp. 147-148.

11. Their website says it was founded in order to create “the most blasphemous metal act ever”, and claims their first demo was titled “Fuck Me Jesus.” “Marduk.” Accessed December 8, 2023. http://marduk.nu/band/. 

12. Teresa Nowakowski, “14 Fun Facts About Dungeons & Dragons,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 31, 2023, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/14-fun-facts-about-dungeons-dragons-180981905/

13. Gary Gygaz, Monster Manual: an Illustrated Compendium of Monsters: Aerial Servant to Zombie (Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Games, 1977), p. 32; James Ward with Robert J. Kuntz, Deities and Demigods: Cyclopedia of Gods and Heroes from Myth and Legend (Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Games, 1980), pp. 23-24.

14. In the Rig Veda, the body of Purusha is sacrificed and carved up to create the cosmos. See “Cosmic and Ritual Order in the Rig Veda,” in Sources of Indian Tradition: Volume From the Beginning to 1800, 2^nd ed., ed. Ainslee T. Embree (New York: Columbia UP, 1988), pp. 17-19.

15. Jonathan Pageau, “Montero and WandaVision: How Satanism Functions,” YouTube video, at 27:31, April 26, 2021,

16. Ibid., at 31:52.

17. Ibid., at 33:46.