Gilgamesh
I am fascinated by Gilgamesh—see specific notes on this source. Absence of a nation-building mythos, or of a monotheistic religion?
Sumerian origin myth begins “when on high the heaven had not been named.”
Gilgamesh. To subdue harsh king G, gods made wild Endiku. G sent harlot to tame Endiku with talk of carpe diem. When he survives, G and E fight a variety of monsters. E offended Ishtar and dies, so G seeks an immortality plant. En route, G hears the flood story. Each city had one, the Hurian one from Nuzi closest to bible. G finds the immortality plant but snake bites him, so we don’t have that plant any more. Moral: cling to mankind to survive, but appease the gods!
Here is another take on the same story. Young Gilgamesh is a wild prince who abuses his droit de seigneur and other powers. The offended women of Uruk pray to the gods, who create and send the hairy wild man Endiku, first to live with the gazelles in a state of nature, then to leave that state via a temple prostitute, then to defeat Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Endiku wrestle to a tie after knocking buildings over -- are they lovers? The duo defeat an ogre guarding a sacred wood, Gilgamesh spurns Ishtar and kills her bull. Endiku finally dies, and Gilgamesh goes into the underworld after him. There he meets the Noah-like Uta-npaishtim, who survived the Ur-flood and is now immortal. Gilgamesh finally decides, or is fated, not to live forever or to revive the dead. So the moral of the tale is to live life well, do good deeds, love your family, and above all seize the day.
Gilgamesh.
Perhaps a historical king 2750-2850 bce, supposedly ruled for 126 years. Writing emerged 2600 bce. 2300 Sargon (born in bulrushes, common explanation of a commoner rising to power (e.g., Moses)) and Old Akkadian literature. Five poems in Old Sumerian (non-IE) (“surpassing all other kings”) from about 2100-1800 bce. 1700 bce Hammurabi and New Babylonian kingdom (Babylonia is what the Greeks called the Akkadians). Another version on 12 tablets (Sha naqba imuru, “He who saw the Deep”) was originally compiled in 1200 bce in reign of Tigath-pileser I by Sin-leqi-unninni, in Akkadian, a Semitic IE language. 668 Ashurbanipal Assyria ruins. Ruins are uncovered 1850-1853 and tablets are sent to British Museum; deciphered and translated 1872. The Deluge story triggered Biblical doubts or confirmation.
Gilgamesh is two-thirds god and one-third human; created by mother goddess Ninhurslag aka Aruru aka Belet-Ili, born to a king and the cow goddess Ninsun. He is fifth king and high priest of Uruk. [At first paranoid of rival city Arrata or Kish?] Proud builder of Uruk’s city walls. He is a wild bull, arrogant, conscripting men, bedding brides on their wedding first night. The people of Uruk complain to the gods (should such a “shepherd” savage his own flock?). The sky father god Anu aka Arun calls for Ninhurslag to make his match, so that they might vie with each other and leave the city in peace.
Ninhurslag creates the hairy Enkidu and threw him into the forest, where he is the anti-trapper. A hunter tells his father, who tells him to tell Gilgamesh; when Gilgamesh hears of his rival he sends the temple harlot Shamhat to him. Shamhat wakens Enkidu through six days and seven nights of kuzbu (divine sexual love arts), “does for the man the work of a woman,” turning him into a man; takes him to Gilgamesh. (Meanwhile, Gilgamesh has told Ninusn of fallen-star dream.) Hearing of Gilgamesh’s “first night” outrages, Enkidu challenges Gilgamesh: “I have come to change the old order.”
They wrestle and at length become friends (and brothers, after Ninsun “adopts” Enkidu). Enkidu: “Gilgamesh, to you is given kingship, [but not eternal life. Do not abuse your power.” Only gods live forever.]
[Uruk runs out of wood.] Gilgamesh and a wary Enkidu resolve to go to the cedar forest and contend with the giant or ogre Humbaba, cedar-guardian for the head god Enlil (but against the interests of the sun god Shamash). Now it’s Gilgamesh who has 5 bad dreams that Enkidu explains away. [Humbaba kills Gilgamesh’s men but] with Gilgamesh and Enkidu working together (“if we help each other and fight side by side, what harms can come to us”?) and Shamash sending paralyzing winds, Humbaba is finally subdued. He offers to make the forest serve Gilgamesh. But goaded by Enkidu, Gilgamesh kills Humbaba (as he dies, he curses Enkidu to die and Gilgamesh to be unconsolable). [That is why the forest is given over to non-humans.]
When the love-war goddess Ishtar’s advances to Gilgamesh are rejected (he knows of her famous inconstancy), her father Enlil agrees to send Gugalanna the Bull of Heaven after him (Taurus, said to be personification of drought). Gilgamesh and Enkidu work together and kill the sacred animal, a no-no. Now one of them must die, and because of the Humbaba-goading it is Enkidu; Gilgamesh weeps.
Obsessed with mortality and fearing death, Gilgamesh searches for the immortal Uta-napishti, guided by Shamash. Travels afar, past the Scorpion-Men mates the Girtablilu, guardians of the sun; they send him during 12 hours of darkness on the Path of the Sun to Pardesu, the garden of the gods with jeweled flowers. Gilgamesh then goes to the tavern of Shiduri, the veiled divine alewife; she consoles him (“when the gods created mankind, they also created death…until the end comes, enjoy your life, spent it in happiness, not despair…”; similar phrasing in Ecclesiastes). She sends him toward the island (Bahrain?) where Utnapishtum the Distant lives, “whom the gods took after the deluge” to conquer death. No mortal has seen him, but Gilgamesh overcomes obstacles including the stone city guards the karabu lamassu/shedu (àcherubim), crosses the sacred river with 300 cedar poles used by the ferryman Urshanabi.
Utnapishtum: “There is no permanence on earth…You wore yourself out and for what? The gods allot life and death but don’t disclose the day of death. And yet we build houses … as though this human life lasted forever.” Gilgamesh: “Well, how did you get to be immortal?” Utnapishtum tells him this flood story.
Utnapishtum ruled in Shuruppak with humans who were noisy, reproducing like rabbits, and generally annoying the gods, who determined to exterminate them. Taking pity, the wisdom god Ea (who lives in the Deep below, the underwater ocean, who sent the seven sages to rule earth) warned Utnapishtum, and tells him to build a boat and take the seed of all creatures. Six days and seven nights of storm follow.
Waters recede and the third bird doesn’t come back. Grateful, Utnapishtum makes so many sacrifices the gods gather like flies! Finally, Enlil confers immortality on Utnapishtum and his wife at the north of the rivers. By now, other humans are also mortal, and human females are less fecund.
Utnapishtum (on behalf of gods?) offers Gilgamesh immortality if he can go without sleep for a week; instead, he sleeps for a week. Utnapishtum’s wife gets Utnapishtum to tell Gilgamesh he can at least be youthful throughout life if he gets and eats a plant at the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh ties a stone to his foot and graps the nettle, but before he eats it a serpent steals it (and sheds its skin, to show the potency of the plant).
Gilgamesh returns to Uruk. [You can’t be immortal, and it is natural to fear death. But you can be kingly, you can take pleasures in measure, and you can avoid abusing your powers. You obtain immortality through your deeds. Your works will surpass and endure.]
Here is my chronology and summary of Gilgamesh:
12,000-8,000 bce
Agriculture
5500
Irrigation
3000s
Foundation of Uruk c3400; writing, bronze, Sumerian language
2000s
Real Gilgamesh or Bilgames c2750? Sargon of Akkad 2288, followed by Naram-Sim and Shulgi. Foundation of Susa, Ur. Rise of Akkadian language
c2100, tablets in Sumerian (non-Semitic non-IE language—no cognates, but written in the same cuneiform as the later Akkadian texts), five poems: i Akkadian king, ii Bilgames, Enkidu & Huwawa, iii Bilgames & Bull of Heaven, iv Bilgames in Netherworld (like Deep tablet XII), v Death of Bilgames. Known from copies made c1700.
1700s
Hammurabi of Sumer and Akkad (Gk Babylon). Sumerian dies out as spoken language, still taught to scribes and still used as syllables in Akkadian writing.
c1700, tablets in Old Babylonian (a dialect of the IE language Akkadian), fragments of “Surpassing All Other Kings” (shūtur eli sharrī)
Hittites, horse and chariot
Sippur tablet produced in here somewhere
1300s
Old Assyria, 1353
c1300-1000, tablets in Standard Babylonian (another Akkadian dialect), “He Who Saw the Deep” (sha naqba īmuru), two-thirds of the conjectured twelve tablets. Tablet XII is a separate translation of the latter half of Sumerian poem v
1200s
1100s
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
Iron, alphabet, camel, ships
c1100, Scribe, alchemist or editor Sîn-lēqe-unninni produced standard version of the eleven tablets
1000s
Tiglath-pileser I (1115-1077) of neo-Assyria
900s
800s
700s
600s
Ashurbanipal, king of neo-Assyria (668-627)
Sack of Nineveh by Medes and Persians
Rise of Neo-Babylon
c600, tablets in several Akkadian dialects, several versions of “He Who Saw the Deep” in ruins of the Nineveh library of Assyrian King Ashurbanipal. Hundreds of fragments, still being found and still being deciphered.
500s
Cyrus of Persia 534.
Darius and Marathon 490.
Xerxes 484 and Thermopylae and Salamis 480/479.
400s
Cyrus the Younger loses at Cunaxa; Anabasis (“march of the 10,000) of Xenophon and source for the NYC movie The Warriors
300s
Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great. Babylon conquered. Alexander dies 323.
[intermission]
1853 ce
Ruins of library of Ashurbanipal discovered, most hauled off to Cairo and British Museum. More are found 1879-82
1872-76
George Smith translates the “Chaldean Account of Genesis” (so excited he undresses)
1891
Publication of accounts including Gilgamesh; later editions 1900, 1930 etc.
1950
Sumerian poems deciphered
OVERVIEW OF THE GILGAMESH SOURCES
(with focus on the philosophical bits)
Sumerian poem v:
The sky god Enlil appears in a dream of Bilgames, saying:
“I made your destiny of kingship, not eternal life.
For mankind, whatever life it has, be not sick at heart, be not in despair, be not heart-stricken!
The bane of mankind is thus come. What was fixed when your navel-cord was cut is thus come.
Do not go down in anger—where is he, the man whose destiny is the same as yours?”
He Who Saw the Deep
We have about 3200 out of 3600 lines translated in whole or in part (575 lines have parts missing). Tablets 1, 6, 10 and 11 are complete.
1. Behold the great walls of the city of Uruk. Gilgamesh 2/3 god 1/3 man, 3/3 jerk; Enkidu created, Shamhat tames him and tells him of G
2. E is civilized, enraged to hear of G’s abuses of men and women; G&E wrestle and befriend one another, decide to fight Humbaba
3. After some resistance G’s mother earth-goddess Ninsun adopts E, sky god Shamash agrees to support G&E
4. Bad dreams allayed, journey to cedars
5. With help of Shamash’s winds, G&E kill Humbaba
6. G resists Ishtar’s overtures, she beseeches sky-god to summon Bull of Heaven but G&E defeat Bull—and then at E’s prodding, G kills the holy beast and E contemptuously throws thigh at Ishtar. Mistake.
7. Someone must die and it is E
8. G mourns, unconsolable over loss of friend and brother:
“I shall die, and shall I not then be as Enkidu? Sorrow has entered my heart!
I am afraid of death, so I wander the wild, to find Utnapishtim …
I grow fearful of death, so wander the wild…”
9. G not convinced E dead until he sees maggot drop from a nostril (ancients loved this scene; it was translated over and over again). G heads off in search of eternal life, searches for immortal man Utnapishtim; encounters lions, scorpion sun-guards, racing on the sun road, reaching the jewel garden
10. Alewife sends him to ferryman Ur-shanabi, who ferries him to Utnapishtim using 300 dissolving tree poles; U reprimands G for seeking immortality
“Why, Gilgamesh, do you ever chase sorrow?
You toiled away, and what did you achieve?
Man is snapped off like a reed in a canebrake!
No one at all sees Death,
The gods … the day of Death they do not disclose.”
11. Flood of Enlil story, ending in U’s immortality (“now U and his wife shall become like us gods”). U makes sacrifices to gods, who greedily gather like flies on the offerings. G blows chance at immortality by nodding off—look at the stale bread loaves. G blows chance at lifelong youth by letting boxthorn be eaten by snake (which is why snake sheds skin) (“What thing would I find that served as my landmark?”). G returns to his great work; behold the great walls of the city of Uruk.
12. Akkadian translation of the last half (lines 172 onward) of the Sumerian poem iv, “Bilgames and the Netherworld.” In this variant, E is still alive, G retrieves objects G left in the underworld. E stays, but is rescued by the gods and restored to earth.
Surpassing All Other Kings:
Missing the first bit about “He Who Saw the Deep.” Pieces of equivalent of Deep tablets 1 and 2, tablets 2 and 3, and tablets 9 and 10. Included is the Sippur tablet.
The wind-god Shamash says to Gilgamesh:
“The life you seek you will never find.”
The ale-wife or tavern-keeper echoes the god and says:
“The life you seek you will never find;
When the gods were creating,
Death they dispensed to mankind,
Life they kept for themselves.
You, Gilgamesh, make merry,
Gaze on your child,
Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace;
For such is the destiny of mortal man.”