Mythology
The fictionalized Mesopotamian history presented in the film is largely based on Panbabylonism, as both Sumerian and Judaic stories describe the same historical events in the film. Dr. Bentley states that the Biblical flood is an established archaeological fact, and the stranding of the Sumerians atop the mountain is a clear reference to the tale of Noah's Ark.
Similarly to the protagonists of the film Ishtar descends to the underworld. There is a Panbabylonic connection between Ishtar’s descent and the Old Testament story of Joseph, which served as the basis for Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers. The descent to the underworld is a common story throughout world mythologies, as is the flood myth.
The film is erroneous in connecting Ishtar and the Sumerians. Ishtar was the Babylonian counterpart of the Sumerian goddess Inanna. The imagery associated with Ishtar in the film is entirely fictional: Ishtar’s symbol was an eight-pointed star representing Venus rather than the uneven chevron in the film.
Read more about this topic: The Mole People (film)
Famous quotes containing the word mythology:
“I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America; neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any history of America, so called, that I have seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One memorable addition to the old mythology is due to this era,—the Christian fable. With what pains, and tears, and blood these centuries have woven this and added it to the mythology of mankind! The new Prometheus. With what miraculous consent, and patience, and persistency has this mythus been stamped on the memory of the race! It would seem as if it were in the progress of our mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and crown Christ in his stead.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)