Gilgamesh, Epic of

The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Babylonia that is arguably the oldest known work of literature. In its present form, the story includes a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the mythologized hero-king Gilgamesh of Uruk, a ruler of the 3rd millennium B.C.E., which were gathered into a longer Akkadian poem long afterward. Several versions have survived, the most complete being preserved on eleven clay tablets in the library of the seventh century B.C.E. Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.

File:Gilgamesh Enkidu cylinder seal.jpg

Gilgamesh and Enkidu on a cylinder seal from Ur III.

The essential story tells of the spiritual coming of age of Gilgamesh, the powerful but self-centered king who tyrannizes his people and even disregards the gods. Through his adventures, Gilgamesh first begins to know himself through experiencing the death of his only friend, Enkidu. Seeking the secret of eternal life, he eventually learns to think of others before satisfying his own needs and thus comes to understand the true value of human culture.

The epic appears to have been widely known in ancient times, and to have influenced important works of literature from the Book Genesis to The Odyssey. One of the stories included in the epic directly parallels the story of Noah's flood.

The epic is widely read in translation, and its hero, Gilgamesh, has become an icon of popular culture.

Summary

The following is a summary of the complete version of the Epic of Gilgamesh:

1. A narrator invites the reader to view the majesty of the city of Uruk and introduces us to its king, Gilgamesh. He is the greatest king on earth, two-thirds god and one-third human, the strongest man who ever existed. And yet he reigns as a tyrant over his people, failing to sympathize with their plight and even exercizing the supposed right to deflower brides before their husbands sleep with them. When his people complain to the gods that he is too harsh, they decide to educate Gilgamesh. Using clay, the mother goddess Aruru/Ninhursag creates the hairy wild-man Enkidu as a worthy rival. Enkidu lives among the gazelles of the forest. Enkidu learns the ways of humans through the sexual seduction of the beautiful sacred harlot of the goddess Ishtar, Shamhat, during which Enkidu remains aroused for six days and seven nights.
   File:Mitchell Gilgamesh-05.jpg

   Shamhat and Enkidu arrive at Uruk, followed by Enkidu's wrestling match with Gilgamesh, from Stephen Mitchell on Gilgamesh, a comic adaptation of one man's personal discovery of the epic text. The entire work is available at no charge online at strippedbooks.com
2. Enkidu learns to eat and human food and wear civilized clothing. He longs to visit the Temple of Ishtar and meet the famous King Gilgamesh, but upon learning that Gilgamesh intends to sleep with a man's bride before their wedding, he becomes enraged. He returns with Shamat to Uruk, where he blocks Gilgamesh's way to the bridal chamber. After a mighty battle, Gilgamesh and Enkidu become the closest of friends. Gilgamesh proposes an adventure in the Cedar Forest to kill the demon Humbaba, the forest's guardian. Enkidu, bitterly protests, knowing that the god Enlil himself has assigned Humbamba to this post, but ultimately agrees out of love for his new friend.
3. Gilgamesh and Enkidu prepare to adventure to the Cedar Forest. The gain the blessing of Gilgamesh's mother, the goddess Ninsun, as well as the support many of the sun-god Shamash.
4. Gilgamesh and Enkidu journey westward to Lebanon and the Cedar Forest. Gilgamesh has a series of distrubing dreams, which Enkidu naively and inaccurately interprets as good omens. Finally, they reach the forest.
5. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are not match for the terrible Humbaba on their own, but with they are aided by Shamash, who sends a variety of mighty winds against the forest guardian. Now at Gilgamesh's mercy, Humbaba pleads for his life, promising to give Gilgamesh all the lumber he desires. Enkidu, however, advises Gilgamesh to show no mercy. They two brutally slay Humbaba, disemboweling him. They then cut down the mighty cedar trees which he protected and raft down the Euphrates back to civilization.
6. Back in Uruk, the goddess Ishtar proposes marriage to Gilgamesh. Knowing the unfortunate fate of her previous lovers, he rejects her amorous advances. The spurned Ishtar demands that her father, Anu, send the "Bull of Heaven" to kill Gilgamesh for his impudence. Enkidu hunts down the bull and grasps it by the tail, while Gilgamesh, matador-like, delivers a killing thrust. The present the animal's heart as an offering to their patron, the sun-god Shamash, but Ishtar curses their feat, saying "Woe unto Gilgamesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of Heaven!" Enkidu dares to return the curse of the goddess, who proceeds to go into deep morning for the Heavenly Bull together with her priestesses, while Gilgamesh and the men of Uruk celebrate his masculine boldness.
7. The gods gather in council to decide what the punishment should be for killing Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. After some debate, the gods allow Gilgamesh to live but condemn Enkidu. He becomes ill and describes the Netherworld as he is dying.
8. Gilgamesh lamentats the loss Enkidu and realizes for the first time his own mortality.
9. Seeking to avoid Enkidu's fate Gilgamesh makes a perilous journey to visit the legedary Utnapishtim and his wife, the only humans to have survived the Great Flood and who were granted immortality by the gods. Along the way, Gilgamesh encounters the alewyfe Siduri who attempts to dissuade him from his quest.
10. Gilgamesh crosses the Waters of Death with Urshanabi, the ferryman, completing the journey to Utnapishtim's abode.
11. Gilgamesh meets Utnapishtim, who tells him about the great flood and reluctantly gives him a chance for immortality. He tells Gilgamesh that if he can stay awake for six days and seven nights he will become immortal. However, Gilgamesh falls asleep. When Gilgamesh wakes up, Utnapishtim informs him of a plant that — while not exactly confering immortality — will make him young again each time he consumes it. The plant must be obtained from the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh obtains the plant and — finally thinking of someone other than himself — attempts to bring it back to the elders of Uruk. He places the plant on the shore of a lake while he bathes and it is stolen by a serpent. Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, where the sight of its massive walls move him to praise, realizing that the only way mortals can achieve immortality is through lasting cooperative works of civilization and culture.

Gilgamesh and the Flood

File:Noah-Dove.jpg

Noah and his dove. In the Epic of Gilgamesh it is Utnapishtim who survives the flood: "I opened a vent and sunlight fell on the side of my face... I released a dove to go free, The dove went and returned. No landing place came to view, it turned back."

The marked similarity between the story of the flood told to Gilgamesh by Utnapishtim caused a major stir when the Epic of Gilgamesh was first rediscovered and publicized in the 19th century C.E.. The story simultaneously confirmed some aspects of the biblical account of the flood and radically challenged parts of the story, especially if scholars we correct that account in Gilgamesh pre-dated that of Genesis.

Details of the two accounts are so nearly identical in some respects that it is virtually impossible to deny that one borrows from the other.

• Both involve a divine warning about the flood and an instruction to build an large, sealed ark for the survior's family and animals.

• Both speak of the survivor sending forth a dove and a raven after the the rains stop.

• Both tell of the ark coming to rest on a mountain after all mankind has been drowned in the flood.

• Both describe the survivor offering a sacrifice to God or the gods after descending from the ark.

• Both tell of the primary deity blessing the survivors after the sacrifice is complete.

And yet, the differences between the two accounts are also striking. Besides the obvious difference of names, numbers, and places (Utnapishtim vs. Noah, seven days instead of 40, Mount Ararat vs. Mt. Nimush, etc.), the Genesis account allows for only one divine actor, while in Gilgamesh the functions of Divinity are divded among several gods. Thus, it is not the One God who determines to bring about the flood, but the gods collectivley as a Heavenly Council. Uptapishtim receives his warning about the deluge not from Yahweh, but from Ea, who is acting acting the orders of the Council. In Genesis, One God shows no remorse about the death of the rest of mankind which he has brought about, while in Gilgamesh, Ishtar weeps for her dead children and repents of having supported the idea of the flood in the assembly of the gods.

The question remains: if one of the accounts borrowed from the other, which came first? Did Genesis retell the Gilgamesh account with a monotheistic twist, or did Gilgamesh pervent to true story of Noah's ark in polytheistic form? Most scholars believe the latter explanation to be unlikely. For those accept that Gilgamesh is earlier but also maintain the view that the biblical story is accurate, one plausible explanation is that God revealed the truth through Genesis, while the Gilgamesh account is a primitive recollection filtered through the polytheistic culture of ancient Mesopotamia.

History

The Deluge tablet of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian

Gilgamesh, according to the Sumerian king list, was the fifth king of Uruk (Early Dynastic II, first dynasty of Uruk), the son of Lugalbanda, ruling circa 2650 B.C.E. Legend has it that his mother was Ninsun, a goddess.

According to another document, known as the "History of Tummal", Gilgamesh, and eventually his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, located in Tummal, a block of the Nippur city. In Mesopotamian mythology Gilgamesh is credited to have been a demi-god of superhuman strength, a mythological equivalent to Hercules, who built a great wall in Iraq to defend his people from outer harm.

Gilgamesh's supposed historical reign is believed to have been approximately 2500 B.C.E., 400 years prior to the earliest known written stories. The discovery of artifacts associated with Agga and Enmebaragesi of Kish, two other kings named in the stories, has lent credibility to the historical existence of Gilgamesh.^{[citation needed]}

The earliest Sumerian versions of the epic date from as early as the Third dynasty of Ur (2100 B.C.E.-2000 B.C.E.). ^{[citation needed]} The earliest Akkadian versions are dated to ca. 2000-1500 B.C.E. ^{[citation needed]} The "standard" Akkadian version, composed by Sin-liqe-unninni was composed sometime between 1300 B.C.E. and 1000 B.C.E. The standard and earlier Akkadian versions are differentiated based on the opening words, or incipit. The older version begins with the words "Surpassing all other kings", while the standard version's incipit is "He who saw the deep" (ša nagbu amāru). The Akkadian word nagbu, "deep", is probably to be interpreted here as referring to "unknown mysteries".^{[citation needed]}

The eleventh (XI) tablet contains the flood myth that was mostly copied from the Epic of Atrahasis. See Gilgamesh flood myth

A twelfth tablet sometimes appended to the remainder of the epic represents a sequel to the original eleven, and was added at a later date. This tablet has commonly been omitted until recent years, as it is in a different style and is out of sequence with the rest of the tablets ("Enkidu is still alive..."), and is considered a separate work.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is widely known today. The first modern translation of the epic was in the 1870s by George Smith.^{[citation needed]} More recent translations include one undertaken with the assistance of the American novelist John Gardner, and published in 1984. Another edition is the two volume critical work by Andrew George whose translation also appeared in the Penguin Classics series in 2003. In 2004, Stephen Mitchell released a controversial edition, which is his interpretation of previous scholarly translations into what he calls the "New English version".^{[citation needed]}

According to the Greek scholar Ioannis Kordatos, there are a large number of parallel verses as well as themes or episodes which indicate a substantial influence of the Epic of Gilgamesh on the Odyssey, the Greek epic poem ascribed to Homer.

The Epic in other media

• The Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů wrote The Epic of Gilgamesh for choir and orchestra in 1955: he described it as "neither a cantata nor an oratorio, simply an Epic". It is in the Czech and reinterprets Gilgamesh as Everyman. The 53 minute long work was commissioned by Paul Sacher who conducted its premiere in Basel, Switzerland in 1958.
• Gilgamesh was mentioned in The Outer Limits television series episode Demon with a Glass Hand, first broadcast in 1964 and written by Harlan Ellison.
• The Epic of Gilgamesh is used directly to resolve an episode of the American television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the episode Darmok (1991), the characters of Jean-Luc Picard and Dathon at El-Ardel become overt latter-day examples of Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk.
• Gilgamesh II was a four issue mature readers mini-series published by DC Comics in 1989.
• Mage comics has a retelling of the epic in the second volume of the trilogy, with Kevin Matchstick and Kirby Hero standing in for Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

External links

• Full Text of the Epic of Gilgamesh
• Tablet by Tablet Summary
• The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Spiritual Biography
• Stripped Books: Stephen Mitchell on Gilgamesh - a comic-book adaptation of a talk by Stephen Mitchell about the epic poem.
• Babylonian (Akkadian) texts: ETCSL
  • Gilgamesh and Huwawa, version A - (the adventure of the cedar forest)
  • Gilgamesh and Huwawa, version B
  • Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven
  • Gilgamesh and Aga
  • Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the nether world
  • The death of Gilgamesh
• Comparison of equivalent lines in six ancient versions of the flood story
• Comparison of The Epic of Gilgamesh to the Genesis flood
• Comparison of the Flood in Genesis to the Epic of Gilgamesh and related literature

Bibliography

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Epic of Gilgamesh

• Cooper, Jerrold S. [2002], "Buddies in Babylonia - Gilgamesh, Enkidu and Mesopotamian Homosexuality", in Abusch, Tz (ed.), Riches Hidden in Secret Places - Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2002, pp.73-85.
• George, Andrew [1999], The Epic of Gilgamesh: the Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian, Harmondsworth: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1999 (published in Penguin Classics 2000, reprinted with minor revisions, 2003. ISBN 0140449191
• George, Andrew, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic - Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2 volumes, 2003.
• Foster, Benjamin R., trans. & edit. (2001). The Epic of Gilgamesh. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-97516-9. 
• Hammond, D. & Jablow, A. [1987], "Gilgamesh and the Sundance Kid: the Myth of Male Friendship", in Brod, H. (ed.), The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies, Boston, 1987, pp.241-258.
• Kovacs, Maureen Gallery, transl. with intro. (1985,1989). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Stanford University Press: Stanford, California. ISBN 0-8047-1711-7. 
• Jackson, Danny (1997). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. ISBN 0-86516-352-9. 
• Mitchell, Stephen (2004). Gilgamesh: A New English Version. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-6164-X. 
• Parpola, Simo, with Mikko Luuko, and Kalle Fabritius (1997). The Standard Babylonian, Epic of Gilgamesh. The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. ISBN 951-45-7760-4 (Volume 1). 

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