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thaumasiotes · 2018-01-26 · Original thread
Sure, dressing up like characters we love has been done since the beginning of mankind. But cosplay is something different, distinguished primarily by not having occurred before 1939.

From the excellent https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Hanging-Garden-Babylon-Elusiv... :

> [Nebuchadnezzar] celebrated his prowess by inscribing on two rock faces in the Wadi Briza, a ravine in the cedar mountains of Lebanon []. This was the region where the legendary Gilgamesh and Enkidu had fought and killed the monster Humbaba. Nebuchadnezzar referred to it as a place where he had cut down gigantic cedar trees for his temple doors -- implying that he was like Gilgamesh. On the surface of the rock he also had scenes carved that showed himself grasping a tree, presumably intending to cut it down, and fighting a lion, as Gilgamesh had done

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