I like this picture. This is a statue of Marduk. An ancient Babylonian god, represented or perhaps believed to be incarnated himself in this famous gold statue for centuries. Behind him is the temple of Marduk, which was allegedly used as a model for the tower of Babel. Believed to be 800 pounds, 13 feet tall, whoever was in control of this statue was said to be the ruler of Babylon--in the grasp of Marduk. To the sides of him (but not facing him) are horn and harp players, surrounded by people bowing down to this authority of antiquity (Playing their Babylonian nation anthem, perhaps?). It would be difficult to imagine the extent that something so material could mean to their culture.
It made me think of the parallels to the American flag. It's cultural significance, it's heightened level of prestige, and the raging controversy that people have been quick to take sides on how we should go about honoring it, or NOT honoring it. Lots of thought and rules have been put into how we should respect it, and what it makes someone if they don't respect it. To some the public debate sparked by Kaepernick protesting the national anthem and saluting the flag is an absolute disrespect to the men and women that have or continue to protect and serve. To others he is a herald of awareness to systematic racism and inequality, exercising his constitutional right for social justice. Whatever your stance on the issue, you are standing on the other side of many Americans, and we remain divided.
During the rise of the Persian Empire, Persian armies ransacked Babylon and annexed it into the empire. They got a hold of the Marduk statue and as an act of retribution, melted the statue--prohibiting anybody from the grasp of Marduk again. The ultimate disrespect to their god. The worshipers of Marduk died, and he became a dead god, a story of the past. Their progeny went on to worship other gods as his grasp on the minds of the Babylonians faded into memory.
History shows us that symbols of national identity, although fleeting, live inside of us. We live within our symbols more than we live inside ourselves. The ones we have chosen to represent the achievements of our reality have become our reality. They have given us something other than the things they symbolize, and we should be clear about what they have taken away. As humans innately do, we have gotten to caught up in the momentum of the worship of our cultural symbols. We have designed systems of overly specific etiquette. Rituals that have been imposed on us, but not thought up by us. Now as we struggle on what exactly we should be doing with our symbols as our country wrestles with it's identity, we should remember what they actually are: a piece of fabric. A book. A monument. An image.
As civilizations rise and fall, symbols come and go, what remains is the redundant behavior of people placing detailed oriented, particular rituals around their representations.
Can we distance ourselves from the weight of our symbols for some clarity of the moment?
Or are we still in the grasp of Marduk?