My wild,
tangential mind came up with this idea at some point while I was adapting Book 1
of this trilogy into a screenplay and adding a modern-day overlay (and then
reverse-engineering the screenplay into Book 3, The Secret of the Cylinder, now available on Amazon.com).
The Cyrus Cylinder (one of
the most famous cuneiform-inscribed cylinders from the sixth century BC) is
thought by some to be the first declaration of Human Rights. It contains Cyrus’
statecraft plan to run an empire that included a diversity of nationalities and
faiths. At this point in time, the Persian Empire spanned from Greece to India.
These citizen rights (like continuing to practice one’s own religion after
being absorbed into the Empire) most likely were not guaranteed if people in
the various satrapies didn’t pay the mandatory tribute (protection money) to
Cyrus. History is always rewritten from the perspective of the conqueror, and the
world is an imperfect place, but at least here was an attempt at reciprocity
and caring for the 99% by the 1%.
The Cyrus Cylinder could
also be thought of as a tabloid of the day; with the new, conquering king
talking trash about the deposed Nabonidus, and extolling the virtues of his
own, purportedly fine pedigree (he claimed he was the Babylonian God’s chosen
one). By deposing Nabonidus, taking Babylon from him, and saying the Babylonian
God Marduk chose Cyrus over Nabonidus to rule the Babylonians, Cyrus continued
the time-honored practice of propaganda that is still being carried out today.
It just never ends, does it?
Like a papyrus scroll to an
Egyptian scribe, a cuneiform cylinder was the recording device in this part of
the world, in this era, which also happened to be the era of my protagonist of
Book 1 of the Sekhmet Series, Amat. As well as the cylinder being fashioned
from a “magic clay” in The Secret of the
Cylinder, so also was a figurine of Inanna, desert goddess of Mesopotamia (current-day
Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey), and a goddess of love, fertility and warfare.
Knowledge and worship of her would have been a secret legacy from mother to
daughter even into patriarchal time. Such figurines were considered dangerous
by the dawning patriarchal paradigm and they’re actually not too hard to find
even to this day; buried by the hundreds in cemented-over graves that can be
seen by aircraft in certain Middle Eastern countries. The feared and fierce,
magickal feminine!
What better symbols (cylinder
and Innana statue) to imprint with the symbols and stories of Amat, now
reincarnated in this book as Anoush? In Amat’s case the heart-shaped birthmark on
her collarbone was echoed on the Inanna statue, and Amat’s story was scratched
onto the cylinder. And why not have both fashioned of a magic clay that confers
peace upon all who touch it? An
instrument of peace.
Now if Inanna can control
both love and war, if the Mesopotamians trusted a woman to handle both love and
war, why can’t Americans trust Hillary Clinton to run both the military as well
as the social/humanitarian aspects of a presidency? (OK, I know there are other
issues at stake there…)
How can a Goddess represent
both love and war? Perhaps she has the power to transform one into the other? Alchemically.
Like the Peruvian shamanic process of transforming heavy energy (hucha) into
light, refined energy (sami). Truly, a female body, a vessel, a chalice, if you
were, would be required to contain and nourish this transubstantiation. So I
created this instrument, these instruments of peace, loosely based on history, because
love is ultimately more powerful than fear or war. I wanted to create a tangible
reminder that these instruments are within us and within our reach. This is a
message truly needed now at this point in time. We can be an instrument of peace. We
have it within us.
