Re-giardinieri e Natura selvaggia. Implicazioni politico-simboliche dello sradicamento, taglio e trasporto in città degli alberi nella Mesopotamia del III e II millennio

Abstract

In Sumerian mythological literature, as in coeval Akkadian one, between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd millennium, the ruler, foremost among them Gilgameš, on several occasions uproots and/or cuts down trees. These trees should be understood as elements of a wider ‘Wilderness’, with which they share a powerful and ambiguous ontological otherness compared to the city and, more generally, to the land of Sumer. The action of the king on the tree, like that of a farmer or gardener, with the consequent realization of ‘artefacts’, allows, through a cultural organization of the power of the tree, the renewal of the relationship, always subject to crisis, between the human community and the divine world.