Lama Su
In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan Kenobi travels to the secluded planet Kamino and meets the Prime Minister Lama Su, who oversees the cloning facilities creating the “grand army of the Republic.” The name “Lama Su” directly evokes the “Lamassu” of Mesopotamian mythology, a protective deity famously portrayed in sculpture with the four-legged body of a bull or lion, the wings of a bird, and the head of a human.
The Lamassu are symbolically associated with constellations and zodiacs, patterns of the stars, so it is fitting that Obi-Wan finds Lama Su by following a map of stars, which indicate the location of Kamino even though it has been hidden by its erasure from the Jedi Temple’s archive memory.
Even more significantly, in Mesopotamian mythology, the Lamassu are supernatural guardians and protectors, whose statues were often placed at the gates of cities or palaces. Thus, Lama Su’s name points to the role of his clone army in the story. Lama Su was hired by a Jedi, one of the Republic’s “guardians of peace and justice,” to create an army of clones to act as the Republic’s protectors. In a dark irony, though, Lama Su’s Clone Troopers are ultimately intended to “protect” the galaxy from the Jedi after Order 66 brands them traitors, taking their place as its guardians and enforcing the unjust rule of the Empire in the name of safety and security.
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Characters: Lama Su
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Concepts: justice / names / safety and security / suns, moons, and stars / war and peace
Influences: Mesopotamian
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