Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers, whose brilliant civilisation began to develop 5000 years ago, apart from the reports of some ancient Greek and Roman chroniclers, it existed only as a biblical legend. It is the oldest and longest civilisation, both for the influence it exerted on the Near East and on the Greek world as for its contribution to the material and spiritual development of humanity, and oddly the most poorly known to the general public.[8]
Today, however, many—albeit scattered—archaeological finds and various sites provide an impressive insight into the richness of this civilisation that invented writing and produced the first scientific systems and literary works. The artefacts kept in various European museums, the archaeological sites and the excavations themselves are documented on the basis of archive material, that is, photos, watercolours, drawings and films. Expedition reports and images of life in Mesopotamia before the first Iraq war illustrating the human adventure of reconstructing a lost civilisation.[9]
Production
The documentary was partially shot in Iraq, in the land of clay and reed between the Tigris and Euphratesrivers.[4]
The book
Victor Place and Gabriel Tranchand standing next to an Assyrian shedu at the gate of the palace of Sargon II, Dur-Sharrukin, Nineveh, 1852. Archaeological photograph reproduced on the cover.
Artist's impression of a hall in an Assyrian palace, illustration from The Monuments of Nineveh: From Drawings Made on the Spot by Austen Henry Layard (1849), reproduced on the back cover.
The book Il était une fois la Mésopotamie, on which the film is based, is an illustratedmonograph on Mesopotamian archaeology, published in pocket format by Éditions Gallimard on 4 November 1993. Co-written by French Assyriologist and biblicistJean Bottéro, and his research companion, an archaeologist and Dominican friar Marie-Joseph Stève, the work is the 191st volume in the encyclopaedic collection 'Découvertes Gallimard', and part of the collection's Archéologie series.[10] That is to say, here the subject is the rediscovery of Mesopotamian civilisation, the decipherment of cuneiform, and the study of archaeological sites, objects and documents discovered in the region, from the late eighteenth century onwards (history of Assyriology), but not the history of this civilisation.
According to the tradition of 'Découvertes', which is based on an abundant pictorial documentation and a way of bringing together visual documents and texts, enhanced by printing on coated paper; in other words, 'genuine monographs, published like art books'.[11]
While many of the French titles from the collection make it into English, this book has never been translated.
^Garcia, Daniel (1 November 2005). "L'invention des Découvertes". lexpress.fr (in French). Retrieved 8 December 2020. De véritables monographies, éditées comme des livres d'art.
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