We already know that Hollywood has its particular way of "interpreting" the cultural myths of the rest of the world. For all those history lovers, the experience of watching the movies of The Scorpion King must have been a deep heartburn. Nothing as unnerving as seeing the Akkadians turned into a cloakroom group from Xena, Warrior Princess! «!
In any case, legends sometimes tend to have some truth, and the scorpion king of Yankee cinema is based, on the one hand, on the famous Egyptian scorpion king whose historical existence has been demonstrated in recent years by German archaeologists. What few people know is that the Akkadians also had a mythical being half man and half scorpion, which has little to do with the Mathayus of Hollywood.
In several of the Sumerian myths, such as the Enuma Elish (the Creation of the World) or the Epic of Gilgamesh , those men appear with the torso and head of a human and the rest of the body of an arthropod, and they are not called Mathayus, but Akrabuamelu . In the most recent myths, already from the Babylonian era, they are described as being created by Tiamat to serve as cannon fodder against the rebellious lesser gods, an army of super beings. Instead, in the Epic of Gilgamesh they are presented as guardians of the kingdom of darkness, which is accessed through a valley dominated by two large peaks, a kind of natural gate guarded by them. In this role of door guardians as they are presented by the Assyrians, a scorpion man is in charge of opening the door of heaven so that the god Shamash (Sun) leaves to travel first thing in the morning and in the afternoon they are in charge of closing it after the return of the god of his daily walk. In all cases they are described as powerful beings, who fill those who contemplate them with terror and whose gaze was death.
Of course, it must be recognized that they were not as photogenic as Dwayne Johnson . It's the thing about the Akkadians not knowing Xena .
Contributed by Joshua BedwyR author of In a Dark Blue World