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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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?'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.
'Introduce him to the benefits of civilisation.'
'Literacy and reason?'
'Ale and whores!'
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!'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.
'...what?'
'C'mon! It'll be awesome!'
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?'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!
'Uh...'
'Who's your friend? With all the axes and spears and knives and...oh. Dude. Not cool.'
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...
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