Just like he did with Gangs of New York (2002), Martin Scorsese could also have dared with Gangs of Mesopotamia . It takes place at a time when Mesopotamia was going through great convulsions with the III Dynasty of Ur disappeared and the world of the Sumerians almost already forgotten. The cities on the two rivers became a breeding ground for warlords, ambitious petty kings, and unscrupulous generals behaving like gangs of mobsters. Small towns mustered an army and conquered the neighbor, while others excelled thanks to trade. Among the latter was the legendary Mari .
Mari
Since ancient times Mari It had been the center of commerce and luxury. Sargon of Akhad he placed her under his command, and his grandson, Naram-Sin He razed it to the ground and burned it down, but 150 years later it rose from the ashes richer than ever. High above the course of the Euphrates (Buranum, in those days), with shipyards in the nearby town of Abarsil and touching the borders of several kingdoms, the inhabitants of Mari they lived quite well. If a hairstyle became fashionable in Mari , they adopted it as far away as Elam . If it was a new perfume, the women of Erbilum they were fighting over him. In the ruins of the palace, beautifully polychrome walls have been found with palace scenes, animals and plants, water-dispensing statues, remains of windows and doors with lintels decorated with braids of polychrome clay, a library of some 25,000 tablets and remains of pipes and bathrooms… a world of hedonists and people who enjoyed life.
A place like that was coveted. The father of Zimri-Lim , one of our protagonists, named Yakhdun-Lim (there are doubts about said paternity), he displaced his own brother from the throne, founded cities, executed rivals and even allowed himself to fight with the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I . The latter was no angel, but he had his own problems at home. The Assyrian, defeated outside Nagar , he chose to use the oldest method in the world:he bribed a surviving brother of Yakhdun-Lim, named Sumu-Khaman , getting him to carry out a coup by placing himself on the throne of Mari . Before the murderous desires of his uncle, Zimri-Lim he had to flee to Aleppo. But the usurper's joy did not last long, because Shamshi-Adad I, like a good cheat, had members of the palace kill him three years later, placing one of his own sons on the throne. And with this he made a serious mistake, because the shoot grew frog. We keep letters from the Assyrian king to his youngest son, Yasmakh-Adad , in which he makes all kinds of reproaches:" How long will we have to guide you in all matters? Are you a child and not an adult? Don't you have hair on your chin? When are you going to assume command of your house? Can't you see that your brother commands huge armies? While he gets victories you lie down among women. Be a man! ”. Even his own older brother had to help him with soldiers to keep the throne. Killed Shamshi-Adad I, Zimri-Lim he came back from exile and became the new kid on the block. Incidentally, the faint-hearted Assyrian prince was never heard from again.
Once he regained the throne from his father, Zimri-Lim he undertook a major program of public works, married the daughter of the king of Aleppo, his former protector, created trade routes, held off rebellious frontier tribes, and even seized the city of Rapiqum to an ambitious king who was beginning to be talked about in Babylon, a certain Hammurabi . Everything seemed to smile at him. Through the tablets we discover a great administrator who reformed the laws and the treasury; a man with a witty sense of humor to whom many proverbs are attributed; a curious traveler who left written descriptions of the places he visited; a ruler concerned about the abuses of corruption, who did not hesitate to intervene in the face of a subject's complaint against a bureaucrat; someone fearful of the gods who allowed women in his family to deal with affairs of state… But we also see someone who loves money who does not hesitate to swindle a horse dealer, delivering tin instead of silver:“You he is a great king. When he asked me for two horses I took them. In Qatna, among us, the value of those horses is 4.5 kilos of silver. But he only sent me 9 kilos of tin! What would someone who heard it say? ”. We also discover a flirtatious man, who talks to his tailors to take care of every detail of his clothing, and who does not hesitate to have a play written in his honor, the Epic of Zimri-Lim , where he is presented to the people as a great king, a great legislator and a great general whose soldiers “ eat raw meat ”.
King Hammuurabi of Babylon
But since in the life of the mobsters happiness does not last, the king of Eshnunna he challenged him . Zimri-Lim , to confront him, he did not hesitate to ally himself with the same monarch from whom he had snatched the city of Rapiqum , that Hammurabi . And the two turned out to be a perfect team. The military ingenuity of the Babylonian joined the riches of that of Mari . Together they subdued Eshnunna, the Elam, the Zagros highlanders, the subarean Assyrians... But after several campaigns in which Mari he helped with money and weapons, did something happen between them? It is not known. In any case, the alliance was broken and Zimri-Lim allied with Malgum to fight against Babylon…and they lost. Hammurabi made his former friend his vassal. Some time later, a palace revolt, probably instigated by Babylon, succeeded in overthrowing Zimri-Lim , which was never heard from again. The Babylonian, in a very suspicious act, took from Mari's library all correspondence between him and his former partner and had it destroyed. He then burned the palace with the rest of the library inside (thanks to that it has been preserved). What was in those letters? We don't know either, but it's clear that a conqueror doesn't want the people to remember that the defeated one was once his comrade.
And what happened to Zimri-Lim? Knowing the Babylonians it is possible that he was burned in his own palace or that he ended up at the bottom of the river with a weight on his feet. But many Assyriologists like to imagine that he, perhaps, was taken to Babylon in chains, and that there, with a nice background soundtrack composed by Nino Rota , such a Hammurabi he would nod to the executioner as he patted his old compadre on the shoulder and said, “ It's nothing personal, Zimri, mate. It's just business ”. Any monarch of that area and that time would have considered it a very tasteful gesture.