While wandering West Oakland after witnessing a UFO, Jocasta Menos later realized from her SANDMAN History B training that the bucket and spade were both Mesopotamian religious symbols, but needed to go to the Berkeley library to confirm this, where her research revealed the story of the banduddû and marru.
A bucket and a spade? Yes. On this billboard for cigarettes, an upwardly mobile Black couple at the beach, enjoying their smooth menthol cigarettes with a suspiciously placed bucket and spade. A neighborhood bodega with a completely incongruous window display of beach attire and equipment: buckets and spades everywhere. Even a pair of neighborhood bars on adjoining blocks: the Bucket of Blood and the Ace of Spades. What does it mean? Jocasta cries out aloud in extremis, the synaesthesia peaking as she ends up in front of the Acorn projects. Two Black kids look at her from the pavement at the red light; the girl about Charley's age, the boy a few years older. She holds a wash pail, he holds a squeegee. Bucket and spade?
Jocasta was right. The bucket and spade are notable ancient Mesopotamian symbols.
Bucket first: in many images of the Babylonian gods, some gods and demons are seen with a round-handled bucket or basket in their hands. It's called the banduddû. It's associated with collecting the bounty of the trees, with fruit collection, and some Biblical scholars believe, with the mythcycle that led to the Israelites' codification of the myth of the Tree of Knowledge. Since this symbol cycle is about cultivating orchards and thus feeding the masses, the banduddû is also seen as a regnal symbol. It is also seen corresponding with the ancient symbol of the beehive—more cultivation, more rulership. The relationship to SANDMAN's study of esmology (which comes from the root for "bees") should not be ignored. The gods that are seen with the banduddû are quite often winged avian figures (called Apkallu), but the banduddû is also carried by the bull-figure/Anunnakku, Kusarikku, who we've noticed an affinity for in Mansa's Ikenga album art.
Spade next: the shovel is another symbol of cultivation and agriculture, but this time it's associated with a much bigger hitter in the pantheon: Marduk, the creator and authority god of Babylon. The shovel symbol is called a marru, and again it conveys the idea of authority, holy rulership, feeding the masses, and while it originates with another older agricultural deity, it also has been put in the hands of, you guessed it, Kusarikku again. And it's obvious that Kusarikku's origins as a demon spawned of Tiamat was softened in later Mesopotamian myth, he soon became a guardian, a sentinel, a protector of the doorways of the granary or the city. Again: plenty, protection, regal authority.
With that, Jocasta came to the conclusion that these echoes portended the presence of a kusarikku having been retrocreated in West Oakland, likely due to the History B-related activities of Mansa, Keiner, or both.