Description: ORIGINS AND MYTHS Civilization begets exile; in fact, being banished from one's home lies at the root of our earliest stories, whether human or divine. As the Abrahamic traditions tell us, if disobeying God was our original sin, then exile was our original punishment. In Genesis, Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden after eating the forbidden fruit, their return forever barred by a flaming sword and a host of cherubim. Tragedy of course repeats itself when Cain murders his brother Abel and is exiled east of Eden. Genesis also tells us of the Tower of Babel, an edifice tall enough to reach heaven itself, a monument to human hubris whose destruction scattered its people across the earth and "confounded" our original language, thus making us unintelligible to one another for the first time since creation. The Tanakh, in fact, is rife with exile: Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness of the Desert of Paran, while the young Moses voluntarily heads into exile after murdering an Egyptian. Genesis and Exodus tell of the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt and their subsequent escape to Sinai, while the Book of Ezra records the end of the Babylonian captivity -- the inspiration behind Psalm 137's immortal lines, "by the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept / when we remembered Zion" -- and the eventual return of the Jews to Israel. Nevertheless, our religious texts tell us that exile wasn't a fate exclusive to lowly humans. In the Ramayana, the ancient Indian epic, Rama, the Supreme Being of Hinduism, is banished by his father, the Emperor Dasharatha, after falling victim to court intrigues and is ordered to spend fourteen years in exile in the forest of Dandaka, seeking enlightenment amidst demons and wandering holy men. Although Rama is recalled from his exile following his father's death, he decides to remain in exile for the entire fourteen years. Similarly, in Greek mythology, Hephaestus, the son of Zeus and Hera, is thrown off Mount Olympus by Hera due to his deformities, only to be brought back to Olympus on the back of a mule by the treacherous god of wine, Dionysus. While exile was often a temporary situation for many gods, it was a more permanent state of affairs for their mortal creations. It was in Babel's Mesopotamia, towards the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur, that one of our earliest poetic epics, The Lament for Urim, first depicted the vicious cycle of conquest and expulsion that has largely characterized our history. In The Lament for Urim Ningal, the goddess of reeds, pleads before the great gods: "I have been exiled from the city, I can find no rest." Bemoaning the destruction of her beloved Ur by the invading Elamites, Ningal cries out its name: O city, your name exists but you have been destroyed. O city, your wall rises high but your Land has perished. Employing the refrain "woe is me", Ningal chronicles the annihilation of her world: "I am one whose cows have been scattered", "My small birds and fowl have flown away", "My young men mourn in a desert they do not know". The Sumerian epic ends with a soft, sanguine prayer that Ningal's city may one day be restored, unleashing one of our first literary archetypes: the hopeful exile. In fact, if The Lament for Urim is any indication, the very concept of recorded history -- and literature -- appears to spring out of the necessity of exile, preserving in our minds what had been bloodily erased on earth.

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