Mespotamian myth
seems to be a common touchstone, as if the first culture to develop
a written language was also the first (and only) one to experience
some kind of tragic Fall from prelinguistic grace. It is invoked
by at least three stories which contain lethal texts (Snow Crash,
Macroscope,
and The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.)
Mesopotamia has a kind of wondrous resonance, as if its people
knew something magical about language by virtue of their pivotal
position between orality and literacy,
and were able to create lethal texts which really worked. (It
is not uncommon for the very first people to do something to do
it extraordinarily well.)
Mesopotamian legends, such as Gilgamesh,
differ in a key way from Biblical legends. Mesopotamian myths
emphasize a free exchange between the realms of the living and
the dead. For example, the bodies of the dead were buried with
food and servants, to see them on their way in the spiritual realm,
which was envisioned to be much like the realm they had just left.
Conversely, the dead could interact with the living, blessing
those who propitiated them and cursing those who did not. This
makes Mesopotamian legend highly amenable to symbolic manipulation,
for what happens in one realm is mirrored in the other. In other
words, it is saturated with magic. Biblical legend, on the other
hand, institutes a sharp division between the two realms, and
thus is much less focused on symbolic manipulation. It posits
a nonmagical, material, realist world. I believe this helps explain
why two important novels about cyberspace, Snow Crash and
Macroscope, both hark back to Mesopotamian rather than
Biblical myth: both are about worlds where symbolic manipulation,
that is, magic, plays a central role.
It is worth noting that some Biblical legends are clearly reworkings
of Mesopotamian legends. The story of the Flood
can be found in the Gilgamesh legend, and the
Tower of Babel story appears in
Sumerian nam-shubs.
