The Historical Myth in American and Iraqi plays

Abstract

The mythological Greek heroes of Sophocles' Ajax encounter contemporary stories of the Iraq War and sexual harassment of local soldiers. Ajax, a Greek warrior who loses to Odysseus for the armor of Achilles and succumbs to his arrogance. McLaughlin no doubt saw striking parallels between the Iraq War and the Trojan War. According to McLaughlin, the Greek “history” was most relevant to the audience of the time, and was intended to refer to ongoing wars around the world, including Iraq (McLaughlin, 2014). Rasha Fadhil reveals the archaic origins of Iraqi culture at Ishtar in Baghdad. Tigris-Euphrates Valley refers to a region that included early urban centres and water systems, as well as states and domains as well as works and recorded religious beliefs. The region was home to the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian civic establishments and has been traced back to 7000 BCE by archaeologists. For Ishtar and Tammuz, the underworld is a metaphor for the misfortune of wealth that must be regained, as shown by tales of their adventures in Akkadia and Sumer.