Da Mesopotâmia ao Helenismo

Apesar do título, “Babilónia”, o livro de 2010, foca-se verdadeiramente no subtítulo, a “Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization”. Paul Kriwaczek inicia o historiar com o império Sumério, passa ao Acádio, chegando ao Assírio e por fim Babilónia. A ideia do foco em Babilónia terá que ver com a representação do fim dos grandes impérios da Mesopotâmia que deram origem não apenas a uma das primeiras grandes civilizações, mas mais importante do que isso, porque deram origem à civilização em que ainda hoje vivemos. Kriwaczek, fala numa espécie de primeira metade da História, até ao final de Babilónia (1894-332 a.C.), e uma segunda metade, aquela que agora vivemos. E por estarmos a aproximar-nos, em número de anos, no sentido oposto, da extensão dessa primeira metade, vislumbra a tragédia, apontando o momento atual como de declínio já aceite e interiorizado por nós.

Se me interessei por ler "Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization" foi principalmente para tentar aceder a mais alguma informação sobre aquilo que precedeu o Helenismo, tendo em conta a enorme força aparentemente surgida do nada num pequeno grupo de ilhas no Mediterrâneo. Contudo, como podemos ver ao longo desta viagem pela Mesopotâmia, de cerca de 4000 a.C até 332 a.C., quando Babilónia foi conquistada por Alexandre, muito do que viria a ser a grandiosidade grega teve milhares de anos para evoluir e aperfeiçoar-se. O Helenismo que influenciaria Roma e atravessaria toda a Idade Média para potenciar a Renascença e fundar o Iluminismo, chegando até nós como a cultura antiga mais próxima do ocidente atual, nasceu de uma base muito sólida. Poderíamos dizer que lavrada camada sobre camada, elevando-se centímetro a centímetro ao longo de quase quatro milénios para no pináculo da construção da Torre de Babilónia se oferecer aos gregos, e a nós.

A importância e o legado

“From before 4,000 BCE, over the next ten to fifteen centuries, the people of Eridu and their neighbours laid the foundations for almost everything that we know as civilization. It has been called the Urban Revolution, though the invention of cities was actually the least of it. With the city came the centralized state, the hierarchy of social classes, the division of labour, organized religion, monumental building, civil engineering, writing, literature, sculpture, art, music, education, mathematics and law, not to mention a vast array of new inventions and discoveries, from items as basic as wheeled vehicles and sailing boats to the potter’s kiln, metallurgy and the creation of synthetic materials. And on top of all that was the huge collection of notions and ideas so fundamental to our way of looking at the world, like the concept of numbers, or weight, quite independent of actual items counted or weighed – the number ten, or one kilo – that we have long forgotten that they had to be discovered or invented. Southern Mesopotamia was the place where all that was first achieved.”

Sobre a Escola, temos que em sumério esta chamava-se E-Dubba, em Babilónia Bet-Tuppi, referindo-se estas designações às tabuletas em que eram escritos os documentos. Vejamos o que nos diz um recém-graduado desse tempo:”

“The total number of days I worked at school is as follows: I had three days of vacation each month: and since each month has three holidays when one does not work, I therefore spent twenty-four days in school each month. And it did not seem like a very long time to me!

From now on I will be able to devote myself to recopying and composing tablets, undertaking all useful mathematical operations. Indeed, I have a thorough knowledge of the art of writing: how to put the lines in place and to write. My master has only to show me a sign and I can immediately, from memory, connect a large number of other signs to it. Since I have attended school the requisite amount of time I am abreast of Sumerian, of spelling, of the content of all tablets. 

I can compose all sorts of texts: documents dealing with measurements of capacity, from 300 to 180,000 thousand litres of barley; of weight, from eight grams to ten kilograms; any contract that might be requested of me: marriage, partnership, sales of real-estate and slaves; guarantees for obligations in silver; of the hiring out of fields; of the cultivation of palm groves; including adoption contracts. I can draw up all of these.”

Continuidade do Legado

“For the new civilization ushered in by the Macedonian conquerors was never pure Greek. Hellenism was a profoundly syncretic culture, borrowing much from the old as well as bringing in the new. Particularly here in Mesopotamia, Hellenism was always a complex brew of Greek, Assyrian and Persian culture. The greatest Hellenist bequest to the world, Christianity, had sprung from many sources: Mesopotamian Judaism, Hellenic paganism and Iranian Zoroastrianism.

Assyrian and Babylonian ideas, literary themes, philosophical notions, musical forms, astronomy and astrology, medicine and mathematics, had long travelled westward to be incorporated into the foundations of the new, alphabetic, civilization. And since a good case can be made that, in spite of the many subsequent changes in political mastership, Hellenistic culture survived – indeed survived magnificently – through Macedonian, Seleucid, Roman and Parthian times, in the end transforming itself into Byzantine civilization, which still, after so many centuries, distantly reflected the original Assyrian model of imperial management (...)”

Mas o fim de uma civilização não tem de ser o fim de tudo: “ours is a world in which decline, collapse and destruction always presages some kind of rebirth; that without sweeping away the old, the new cannot be born.”

Ler também:

Gilgamesh, a primeira história do Cânone, VI, 2018

O Infinito aberto pela Escrita e o Livro, VI, 2021

Code of Hammurabi, Wikipedia

Ishater Gate, Wikipedia