He Who Saw the Deep: The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Myth: Gilgamesh! Enkidu! Humbaba! Scorpion men! A Quest for Immortality from the Dawn of Civilisation!
The Book: The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Author: Lost to the mists of time, but the tablets were copied by countless, countless students.
This text: A 1999 translation by Andrew George
Price: The tag says $7.95 (Penguin) - free versions are available at ancienttexts.org and sacred-texts.com.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

So Gilgamesh - two thirds god and one third human - is the king of Uruk-the-Sheepfold, and he's a totally awesome king. Everyone agrees on this. He rebuilt the walls of Uruk. He's conquered all the lands.

If there's a problem, it's that he's a little too awesome. He wins all the games. He beats up all the young men. He sleeps with all the girls, usually on their wedding night. The people of Uruk pray to the gods, asking if perhaps they might divert some of their king's mighty energies.

This seems reasonable to the gods, and they make Gilgamesh a playmate. The goddess Aruru takes a pinch of clay and lets it loose in the wilderness. This is Enkidu, who grows up surrounded by wild beasts and is terribly, terribly hairy.

One day, a hunter comes across Enkidu at a watering hole. Enkidu rapidly becomes a problem, undoing all his snares and setting free all the beasts. The hunter asks his dad for his advice. The advice is: go to Uruk, tell the king, and bring back Shamhat the Harlot.

'Dad, what am I going to do about the wild man?'
'Introduce him to the benefits of civilisation.'
'Literacy and reason?'
'Ale and whores!'

The hunter follows this advice to the letter. He explains to Shamhat that the plan is for her to seduce Enkidu so that the herdbeasts spurn him. Shamhat - a professional - sets about slaking Enkidu's lusts.

This takes a week. At the end of that week, Enkidu is no longer welcome among the herdbeasts, but has learned reason and wide understanding. Shamhat is just that good.

Shamhat gets Enkidu a job as a watchman for some herdsmen, and they give him bread and ale. One of them is invited to a wedding, and tells Enkidu about the king's practice of droit-de-seigneur. Enkidu is outraged, and makes for Uruk. He confronts Gilgamesh in the marketplace, and they fight.

But not for very long. Gilgamesh realises that Enkidu is the man of his dreams - literally, he's been dreaming about rocks and axes and things - and introduces him to his mother, the goddess Ninsun. Ninsun is more than happy to take Enkidu into her family, and adopts him on the spot. And then Gilgamesh makes a proposition.

'Dude! You're awesome! Let's go kill an invincible ogre together!'
'...what?'
'C'mon! It'll be awesome!'

Literally everyone thinks that taking on the ogre Humbaba is a bad idea, up to and including Enkidu. His voice is the Deluge, they say. His voice is fire, they say. His breath is death, they say.

Pish and tosh, says Gilgamesh.

He has like seven divine auras, they say. He's been divinely appointed to guard the forest of cedar, they say.

Who's king? says Gilgamesh.

So he and Enkidu gear up, forging a bunch of axes and knives and so on. Ninsun entreats the god Shamash to buffet Humbaba at the right time with thirteen winds.

It's not a particularly fun trip out, with Gilgamesh waking up from nightmares every midnight. Enkidu builds him a house of the dream god each night, and he's pretty sure the omens are good. And eventually they're able to ambush Humbaba in the cedar grove, with only two of his auras. And then it turns out that Humbaba and Enkidu knew each other of old.

'Hey, Enkidu, long time no see. Remember all those times I didn't eat you?'
'Uh...'
'Who's your friend? With all the axes and spears and knives and...oh. Dude. Not cool.'

Thanks to Shamash's winds and Humbaba's lack of auras, Gilgamesh and Enkidu get the better of Humbaba. The ogre begs Enkidu for his life, but Enkidu freaks out at the thought of him seeking revenge later on, and urges Gilgamesh to kill him. Quickly, before the gods find out, because oh, shit they're going to be in trouble. Gilgamesh smites him in the neck. Victory!

Except for the death curse. Humbaba curses Gilgamesh and Enkidu to die young. Still, they go home to Uruk, thinking that everything is probably fine.

There's a brief interlude where Ishtar falls in love with Gilgamesh. When Gilgamesh points out that Ishtar's lovers don't tend to fare very well in the post-Ishtar relationship phase, she sends the Great Bull of Heaven to smash Uruk. Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight and kill the bull. Ishtar complains, and Enkidu throws a leg of beef at her. The horns are made into ceremonial oil flasks for Gilgamesh's patron god Lugalbanda. Gilgamesh tells everyone how great he is.

Then Enkidu falls sick and dies. He hates every minute of it: he feels that he should probably die in battle rather than just get sick like normal people. Gilgamesh agrees: it sucks. But it turns out there's nothing to be done.

But wait, thinks Gilgamesh. If Enkidu can die a boring normal person death, so can I. This is intolerable!

The Babylonians know of exactly two people who have never died: the survivors of the Deluge, Uta-napishti and his wife. Gilgamesh sets off in search of them. Eventually he finds the cave at the edge of the world that the sun travels through, guarded by fearsome scorpion-men, whose gaze is death.

These scorpion-men turn out to be the nicest death-gazing terrifying monstrosities in all of mythology. When they find out that Gilgamesh is looking for Uta-napishti and therefore immortality, they tell him that it's probably a bad idea and he should really just go home. When Gilgamesh insists, they let him through, warning that he should probably travel through the cave before sunrise, because, you know, sun.

Through the tunnel, Gilgamesh comes to the shore at the edge of the world, where there's a pub. The innkeeper, Shiduri, sees him coming and, thinking he's bad news, bolts the doors. Gilgamesh threatens to force his way in, and demands to know why he's been locked out. Shiduri tells him he looks like bad news. Why shouldn't I look like bad news, says Gilgamesh. My friend died, I'm going to die, and I've been wandering the wilderness looking for immortality.

Ah, says Shiduri, you want Ur-shanabi, the boatman of Uta-napishti. Gilgamesh thanks her and is on his way.

Down at the seaside, he sees the boatman surrounded by stone men. He heroically sweeps down and smashes them all. He then asks the boatman if he can ferry him across to see Uta-napishti.

Sure, says Ur-shanabi, if you hadn't just smashed my oarsmen to pieces. He tells Gilgamesh to collect three hundred ludicrously long wooden poles, because he's going to have to punt his way across the ocean. The boatman does try and dissuade Gilgamesh from his quest, saying that he'd really be better off going home and enjoying the rest of his days. Gilgamesh says he's on a quest for immortality, and it's immortality he's going to quest for.

They punt most of the way over the Ocean of Death before running out of poles, and then Gilgamesh makes a sail out of their clothing to make it the rest of the way.

They meet Uta-napishti on his island. Uta-napishti the Distant is an ordinary looking bloke, and Gilgamesh asks him how he came by his immortality. Uta-napishti tells his story: in the days long ago, the gods thought that humans had become a bit too unruly, and decide to wipe them out with a flood. The god Ea works out that wiping out the race that feeds, clothes, worships and otherwise supports the gods might not be the wisest of ideas, and recommends that Uta-napishti build a really big boat. Uta-napishti does so, and fills it with breeding pairs of all the animals he can find, as well as masters of all the crafts, not to mention his family and his worldly goods. When the Deluge hits, the gods themselves are frightened, and start to wonder if this flood thing was such a great idea. But Uta-napishti and his people are safe, not least because he had the foresight to bring more than two cows.

Eventually the floodwaters recede, and Uta-napishti burns a sacrifice to the gods. Enlil, chief of the gods and architect of the Deluge, is absolutely furious and makes to wipe out the survivors. However, Ea points out that this would be really very very stupid, as these are now the last surviving humans, in a god-blighted wasteland.

Ah, says Enlil.

So the decision is taken to award Uta-napishti and his wife with immortality, as long as they agree to live in exile so that nobody realises what a colossal cock-up the gods nearly made.

Uta-napishti says that he'll provide the secret of immortality to Gilgamesh - but first he has to prove that he has what it takes to conquer Death. He asks him to first show that he can conquer Sleep, and stay awake for six days and seven nights.

Gilgamesh agrees to the challenge. Then he dozes off almost immediately, and sleeps for a week.

Ah well, says Uta-napishti.

Uta-napishti tells Gilgamesh to clean himself up and go home and be a king again, and provides extravagant clothes to that purpose. At his wife's urging, he also gives him a parting gift: a plant that doesn't provide immortality but does a pretty good approximation of eternal youth. Then he tells Ur-shanabi to take him home.

They're nearly there when a snake steals the plant, leaving Gilgamesh with nothing at all except the wisdom of his travels.

Still, he says as he approaches his Uruk-the-Sheepfold, there is truly no place like home.

'Those walls were built by a genius.'

 --

So this one was a lot of fun. I'm particularly taken with the bits of Babylonian mythology from the introduction and the text, which show the Babylonian gods as pretty darn fallible. For example, in order to create humans, they need to imbue their clay with the blood of a god. Instead of, say, all cutting their fingers or something, they decide to execute the leader of a godly rebellion because hey, two birds, one stone.

It doesn't occur to them until much later that imbuing their servitor race with the blood of a treacherous troublemaker might have been a bad idea...

All for One: The Three Musketeers

The Myth: Intrigue! Adventure! Swordplay! Gunplay! All for one and one for all!
The Book: The Three Musketeers
The Author: Alexandre Dumas (1844)
This text: 2013 translation by Will Hobson
Price: $14.99 (Vintage - Gutenberg has a free version which is probably the William Barrow translation, from ca. 1846)

So I enjoyed this one a lot. It's a much more modern novel than the other things I've been reading, historically-based but mostly fictional. There's a lot of fun in Dumas' writing and, especially, his characters - some of which were a complete surprise to me.

The Three Musketeers


The novel follows young adventurer d'Artagnan for the first half and young villainess Milady de Winter for the second. When d'Artagnan heads off to Paris to seek his fortune his dad gives him some advice, which is to fight everyone he can, because fighting his awesome.

'Wait, isn't duelling illegal?'
'That makes it twice as awesome!'

D'Artagnan follows this advice pretty well, managing to get into an inconclusive tussle before he ever makes it to Paris, with a stranger who insults his horse. This is Count Rochefort, one of the Cardinal's minions, but we don't find that out for quite a while.

I honestly expected Rochefort to be more of a foil to d'Artagnan, but he really only turns up occasionally to move the plot along. Apparently he's more important in the sequel, though the epilogue has he and d'Artagnan becoming great friends.

It is d'Artagnan's lifelong ambition to join the Musketeers, so the first thing he does is front up at the house of Monsieur Treville, Captain Awesome of the Musketeers. Treville is a consummate politician as well as a dashing swordsman, and represents everything a young Gascon should aspire to.

Treville is never less than awesome wherever he turns up - he's canny, he's witty, he's manipulative. He's supportive of his men, loyal to the king and vexing to the Cardinal. Dumas' introductory description:

'...despite the swingeing swordplay that gives a soldier his stiff-hipped gait, and the endless, gruelling drills, he had become one of the most feted socialites, one of the most discriminating ladies' men, and one of the most honeyed and most delicate wordspinners of his age. ... Thus the captain of the musketeers was admired, feared and loved, which constitutes the apogee of human fortune.'

Alas, d'Artagnan's aspirations must wait a little longer: he must distinguish himself by service or valour before he can join the Musketeers.

The next thing he does is follow his dad's advice some more, and rapidly insults three musketeers in quick succession - Athos, Porthos and Aramis - and each challenges him to a duel. These three are great friends and inseparable companions, so when d'Artagnan fronts up to his twelve o'clock, he's a bit surprised to find his one o'clock and two o'clock there with him. He offers a quick apology to Porthos and Aramis: since Athos is most likely to kill him, he regrets that he may miss his later appointments.

Happily, the duel is interrupted by the arrival of the Cardinal's guard, who want to arrest them for duelling but are actually happy to simply fight them for rivalry reasons. D'Artagnan instinctively joins on the side of the Musketeers, and acquits himself so well that the three Musketeers forgive him his insults and take him into their brotherhood. When the Musketeers are hauled before the King to explain why they've killed and injured several members of the Cardinal's guard, Treville spins it in a way that was absolutely about the honour of the King and the Musketeers. He makes d'Artagnan the hero of the hour, and the King ends up rewarding him with a purse of monies and a commission in the King's Guards under Treville's brother-in-law.

'Hey, Athos, Porthos, Aramis: I've been given some money by the king. How should I invest it?'
'Big dinner. Lots of wine."
'You need a valet, or you'll look like a poor person.'
'What you really need is a mistress!'
'Right you all are!'

One of my absolute favourite sequences in the book is in Chapter VII: The Musketeers at Home. The chapter provides character sketches of each of the Musketeers: dour, silent Athos, who only speaks when he has information of great moment to impart; the extravagant peacock Porthos, who makes a big show of living large with no visible means of support; and sneaky bugger Aramis, who pretends to be a pious priest-in-waiting while covertly intriguing on behalf of his lover, who is intriguing on behalf of the queen.

The chapter also introduces the Musketeers' valets - Grimaud, who Athos has trained to remain silent and respond to eyebrow gestures; Mousqueton, who happily serves the magnanimous Porthos for board and clothing, as long as he gets two hours a day to do actual paid work; and Bizan, a saintly man who intends to follow Aramis into holy orders, any day now. Porthos recruits a valet for d'Artagnan: the stout Planchet, who serves loyally and faithfully after an instructive beating early in their relationship.

D'Artagnan, with his newfound friends, soon finds himself embroiled in Intrigue. This initially manifests as a request from his landlord, Monsieur Bonacieux, to rescue his wife from kidnappers. It turns out that Madame Bonacieux has been kidnapped by agents of the Cardinal, because she was involved in a plot to smuggle the Queen's lover into Paris for a quick ... well, nothing more than a quick chat. Before long, Athos is arrested on suspicion of being d'Artagnan, the Duke of Buckingham has left Paris in possession of two of the Queen's diamonds, Monsieur Bonacieux had become a paid informant to the Cardinal,  d'Artagnan is madly in love with his landlord's wife, and is also possession of said Cardinal's said payoff to said landlord.

Constance Bonacieux is a vaguely frustrating character: she's quick-witted, spirited and flirty, and she's offstage for almost all of the book. D'Artagnan is thus motivated by love for someone he's spent twelve and a half minutes interacting with. Although, to be fair, Constance is likewise motivated, recommending d'Artagnan to the Queen for intrigue-related services, and, when we eventually get to see her again at the end of the book, pining for him. 

The uber-plot is probably worth mentioning at this point. The Duke of Buckingham, effective ruler of England, is in love with the Queen of France, Anne of Austria. Cardinal de Richelieu, effective ruler of France, is likewise in love with the Queen of France. The Queen of France is, however, married to the King of France, who is not particularly in love with her. The Queen of France is in love with the Duke of Buckingham, but unwilling to commit because of the damage it will do to France. She is certainly not in love with Cardinal de Richelieu. The Cardinal, having lost Anne of Austria to the King of France, isn't prepared to lose her again to the Duke of Buckingham, and seeks to (a) defeat him in battle or (b) have him assassinated, and if in either course he is able to weaken the King and take over France, so much the better. The King of France doesn't want to lose face by losing either his wife or chunks of France, but is otherwise fairly indifferent.

I found it interesting that the Cardinal of the novel is far more duke than priest, and not actually all that evil. I mean, he's a scheming villain and all, but he's a patriot and a tactician, and he treats the boys with respect when he comes across them. His attitude towards d'Artagnan - and to the other Musketeers - is largely that he wants them working for him.  He's the King's rival more than his enemy.

Anyway, all of this means that when the Duke of Buckingham leaves France with two of the Queen's diamonds from a set of twelve, it's of vital importance to the Cardinal to get them back to humiliate the Queen and weaken the King, and it's of vital importance to the Queen to get them back so as not to be humiliated. Milady de Winter is the Cardinal's minion for the task. Treville tasks the Musketeers with stopping her, and d'Artagnan is in charge.

'You need any cash?'
'Nah, just stole a bag of the Cardinal's gold from my landlord.'
'Right-o.'

Athos, Porthos and Aramis are picked off one by one by the Cardinal's minions and assorted passersby, but d'Artagnan makes it to England in time to alert the Duke. Milady has already stolen the diamonds, but the Duke imprisons an Irish artisan to make replacements. D'Artagnan hurries back to Paris and arrives just in time for the Queen to wear the full set of diamonds. Face is saved! The Cardinal is vexed! Victory on all points! D'Artagnan is rewarded with the sight of his beloved, a ring from the Queen and the promise of a commission in the Musketeers (which he doesn't actually take up until several chapters later, after Milady's captivity sequence).

D'Artagnan then follows up on what happened to his comrades. Porthos is holed up in an inn with a bullet wound, with the innkeeper starting to ask serious questions about the bill. His usual source of income - his mistress, a prosecutor's wife - has dried up in a fit of jealousy. Aramis is arguing theology with a Jesuit and a priest, in preparation for finally joining the priesthood. This is less to do with his religious feeling and more that he's missed a message from his mistress and thinks she's abandoned him. Athos is holed up in a tavern cellar, drinking all the wine and eating all the ham, and shooting at anyone who tries to get him out, or who tries to take out any wine or ham. They're all more or less content to continue slouching, philosophising and drinking indefinitely, but d'Artagnan rounds them up, sorts them out and brings them home. However, in his cups, Athos does fill him in on his backstory - there was this girl... It's a sad, sad story of love and betrayal, and ends with Athos putting his wife in a noose. She deserved it, he says, and that's why Athos never has a mistress and is so grumpy all the time.

At this point the plot would probably grind to a halt, if d'Artagnan had enough of a sense of self-preservation to avoid poking the hornet's nest that is Milady de Winter. Ostensibly, he does this because she's his only lead to finding Constance, who's been kidnapped again. By impersonating Milady's lover in the dark, and by shameless abusing her maid's trust (and her maid), d'Artagnan aggressively gets himself seduced, and steals one of her rings. He shows it to Athos, who says that it appears to be one of his own rings, that went missing about the time that he murdered his wife.

D'Artagnan returns to confront Milady, and exposes her shoulder in the tussle - she's a branded criminal! Just like Athos' late wife! Revelation!

Meanwhile, the Musketeers have been called up for war, because England is invading. This means they need to outfit themselves, which means having to find a lot of money in a hurry. Porthos and Aramis wheedle some out of their mistresses - though Aramis claims to have sold some poems - and Athos, having decided to do nothing and trust in fate, finds himself in possession of one of his old rings via d'Artagnan. All is well, and they ship out to La Rochelle.

England is invading, incidentally, because the Duke of Buckingham wants to rescue Anne of Austria from her marriage. He doesn't intend to conquer France; he just hopes that the Queen will form part of the settlement package at the peace talks.

Assassins disguised as soldiers attempt to assassinate d'Artagnan on a reconnaissance mission. He kills one and wins over the other with a promise not to kill him. Then a crate of poison wine turns up purporting to be from Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Only the timely arrival of the musketeers and the untimely death of his new assassin-friend save d'Artagnan from a fate exactly the same as death. Athos says he's pretty sure the assassins and the wine came from Milady, and d'Artagnan allows that she may actually be completely batshit evil after all.

On the way home from a late night at the pub - warfare being a fairly relaxed affair except for the actual shooting - the Musketeers come across the Cardinal. Because he's intriguing and doesn't want them telling anyone, the Cardinal co-opts them as guards and has them take him to another pub. He's meeting with Milady in an upstairs room. The boys overhear her mission: go to England and assassinate Buckingham. After the Cardinal has left, Athos goes up to confront Milady, and takes the this-person-has-my-complete-authority-to-do-whatever-it-takes-for-France papers the Cardinal had given her.

Now: the Cardinal is the military mastermind defending France from an English invasion and he's sending his top agent on a mission to neutralise the enemy general. I'm not entirely sure why the King's Musketeers take it into their heads to thwart this particular plot, particularly since neither the King's nor the Queen's honour is at stake. It seems to be simply on general principles: if the Cardinal and Milady are involved, it's pretty much automatically evil. So they consult with d'Artagnan - arranging a private discussion under enemy fire in a disputed bastion, so they're not overheard - and decide to send Planchet to England to warn the Duke via Milady's brother-in-law, who d'Artagnan happened to meet in a duel earlier.

The plucky valet achieves his mission, getting to Lord de Winter before Milady is able to come ashore. His Lordship has her picked up and imprisoned in his castle. He has a grudge: Milady seduced, married, and quite probably murdered his younger brother.

We spend quite a bit of time with Milady from here on out, as she slowly seduces and corrupts her brother-in-law's incorruptible Puritan lieutenant, Felton. Lord de Winter has set up the perfect prison: Milady is not to talk to anyone, especially anyone who might conceivably be seduced. But in a very long and really rather intense sequence, Milady manages it: Felton goes from Milord's stoic and loyal lieutenant to Milady's fervent defender. He busts Milady out of the castle and puts her aboard a ship. Then he goes off to assassinate Buckingham, having been absolutely convinced that he's the kind of monster that ruins young women and gets his mates to imprison them in castles. He realises his error too late - when he sets off to rendezvous with Milady's ship, she's already buggered off to France. Duke assassinated! Self free! Victory on all points!

The assassination of Buckingham means that the invasion is thwarted and everyone starts heading home. Through correspondence with Aramis' mistress, the boys learn that Constance has been rescued from her captivity and has been sent to a convent to recuperate. Shortly afterwards, they learn through a chance meeting with Rochefort that Milady has gone to that same convent to lay low. Calamity! D'Artagnan rides off to the rescue, closely followed by his friends. On the way they meet up with Lord de Winter, seeking revenge for the assassination of the Duke and the presumed execution of Felton for treason. Meanwhile, Milady meets Constance and learns that she has her eye on a certain dashing young Musketeer. She starts formulating an elaborate revenge plot involving Constance as a patsy, but suddenly there are Musketeers at the gate so she simply poisons her.

In a modern novel, Constance would have been rescued. I won't lie: my sensibilities were shaken.

Milady runs off into the woods, with the Musketeers in pursuit, Athos only pausing long enough to pick up a mysterious man in red. They track Milady down to a house on the outskirts of a border town, and take her captive. The man in the red cloak is revealed as the executioner who originally had Milady branded. With the testimony of Athos, Lord de Winter, and the recently bereaved d'Artagnan, and Porthos' and Aramis' supporting testimony re: assassins and poison wine, he agrees to execute her.

The sentence is carried out on a boat in the middle of a river.

Back in Paris, d'Artagnan is called before the Cardinal to account for the mysterious disappearance of his top agent. D'Artagnan tells the story, and when the Cardinal asks his authority, he presents Milady's whatever-it-takes papers, signed by the Cardinal himself.

I see, says the Cardinal.

Richelieu thanks d'Artagnan for removing an unreliable, unpredictable and untrustworthy element from his network, and presents him with a reward: a recommendation for a lieutenancy in the Musketeers, with the name blank. D'Artagnan offers it to Athos, Porthos and Aramis in turn, but each refuses. Treville is pleased to accept him as a lieutenant, and they all live happily ever after.

Or, at least, for twenty years, because the sequel is called Twenty Years After.