the high priestess of babylon (art chronicles i)
a journey to the high priestess of babylon (with art from crete, assyria, persia, babylon)
this is a work of fiction
crete
belthazar, a babylonian merchant on a mission to procure what is rumored to be the most unique art in the world, is walking along the seaside in crete when he sees eleni creating this creature: a being he has never dreamed of before.
octopus (minoan) - 2nd millennium b.c.e.
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never before has belthazar seen either such a being or such a product. his mind dashes between figures as he works out what this artwork must be worth to his investors back in babylon: the art market in mesopotamia has become stale and dreary, some feel but hardly say, and investors are discretely eager to secure new product lines.
but the longer he looks at this being, the more difficult he finds the task: thinking about the pot as a thing to be marketed and sold.
this being is not still: this being is moving. never has he seen something like this before, and there is a whole row of these creatures, each one of them a little different, the arms moving differently, the eyes expressing some different emotion: not even the coloring of the skin is standardized, and each being is often flanked by other smaller beings of which belthazar has never dreamed.
and all of these beings are moving.
all of these beings are stirring him up inside.
minoan civilization concept
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partly original minoan wall painting - 2nd millennium b.c.e.
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octopus (minoan) - 2nd millennium b.c.e.
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the water
she does not react to him like women in babylon would: the women in crete seem free. they are everywhere at work creating art he has never seen before, conjuring beings from worlds he does not know. listening to her, he soon forgets his mission. all he wants to know: what are these beings, how do you create them, how do you know?
eleni, the creator of the beings, explains to him that these beings are real:
βthey live beneath the water,β she says.
she shows him so many more of these creatures and he spends all day at her shop beside the water, observing her at work and staring into the sea. he finds that he does not want to return to mesopotamia: he only wants to sit here and watch the water move with her. all he wants is to think about how these beings are out there, moving, floating in every direction deep beneath the sea: the water obsesses him.
detail of a minoan procession β 2nd millennium b.c.e.
source
he forgets about the fires he has spread across the world: he forgets about the need he has always felt to accumulate objects and subject others to his will.
somehow when he looks at these creatures, he sees himself, senses himself: moving, like them β of course he is moving! β but the movement of the water, the movement of these beings over such an enormous depth, has him thinking of a different type of movement, and he is unable to define what this is.
he thinks about soldiers marching perfectly on either side of his precisely ordered caravan, each of these men in sync with the other, each of them like a machine, and the more he thinks about this, the more disassociated he feels from his past:
this past does not seem like reality. these memories do not feel real.
only the movement of the sea, full of water that can never be contained by any one being and which itself contains so many moving beings, seems real anymore now.
βi am water,β he suddenly blurts to eleni one day, the realization stunning him.
βof course you are,β she says, but thereβs something nervous in her voice.
he does not notice.
what he notices: even the bulls here seem like water:
every being is water, he thinks. i am water, she is water, everything is water.
minoan palace fresco
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minoan dolphin fresco reconstructed - 2nd millennium b.c.e.
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snake goddess figurine β minoan (2nd millennium b.c.e.)
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he sees how eleni is so at peace with her days, so calm and graceful, so in love with her art: he sees how little she cares for the dreams he occasionally offers her of riches and palaces and enormous temples.
he tells her about the hanging gardens: but she never wants to leave the seaside.
he tells her she could meet the high priestess of babylon, a lie: but she shrugs him off, says she loves the water.
he does not press her:
he knows now what he is offering her: something less real than the water.
eleni has heard about the firy world belthazar represents:
each day she becomes slightly less calm in his presence.
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