The Tablet of Lapis Lazuli
Reading the Epic of Gilgamesh
In this newsletter, I am reading the approx. 850 authors and works of Harold Bloom's Western canon, from cover to cover, from the Epic of Gilgamesh of ca. 1200 B.C. to Tony Kushner's 1991 play Angels in America. For today I’ve read the first item on Bloom’s list, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
For the Gilgamesh epic, Harold Bloom recommended David Ferry’s 1993 translation, but it was a very easy decision to disregard this advice. For the Epic of Gilgamesh is not so much a single creative work as a collection of clay tablets from between 2100 and 1200 B.C., written in various languages in both poetry and prose and that have been continuously discovered and deciphered since 1853. With the last major discovery and deciphering of part of the story having taken place in 2018, David Ferry’s thirty-year-old translation is now severely outdated. I have instead chosen the 2021 translation of Sophus Helle, mainly because it incorporates all the currently extant text while trying to match the literary style of the original. Another up-to-date translation is one by Benjamin Foster published in 2019, but that edition is aimed more toward academics, providing an English translation facing the original cuneiform text, striving for as much of a word-for-word translation as good English grammar and style permit, and supplying alternative translations, many of them as different from each other as the “thread of tufted wool” is from the “shining of copper,” for dozens of words and phrases in the epic.
But even Helle’s and Foster’s translations are far from complete: open them and you’ll see the pages are riddled with blank spaces or with ellipses surrounded by brackets: lacunae representing the gaps in the story our archaeologists, philologists, and Assyriologists have not been able to fill. I encourage you to look at the Wikipedia page for the Epic of Gilgamesh and see the sorry state some of our clay tablets are in, and marvel at the fact that we’ve managed to decipher so much of this most ancient poem. And, as alluded to above, the incomplete edition we see in Helle and in Foster is cobbled together from disparate sources in ways their authors probably didn’t intend: our main source on the Gilgamesh narrative is a series of tablets written in a language called Standard Babylonian, a Semitic language used in modern-day Iraq around 1200 B.C.; but major supplements come from tablets and fragments of tablets in Old Babylonian, a language spoken around 1700 B.C.; and a few smaller gaps are filled in using the Sumerian Gilgamesh cycle from the third millennium B.C., using a version of the story in another Semitic language called Ugaritic, and using some Assyrian and Hittite translations that have content not available elsewhere. Splicing together different versions of a story, written over the course of a thousand years, naturally leads to a disjointed narrative. Even proper names are not consistent across versions: in the Sumerian, the hero Gilgamesh is called “Bilgamesh.” Maybe someday we’ll gather and decipher enough pieces of clay to have the complete Gilgamesh epic. You can track the progress at the Electronic Babylonian Library at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where the story is updated as new fragments are discovered and translated.
Even the name “Epic of Gilgamesh” is something that we moderns tacked on to the Babylonian story. The Assyrians, in whose library in Nineveh the first extant tablets were found, apparently referred to the Standard Babylonian text as “The man who saw the deep,” taking that title from the opening lines of that version of the story:
There was a man who saw the deep, the bedrock of the land, who knew the ways and learned all things: Gilgamesh saw the deep, the bedrock of the land, he knew the ways and learned all things.
Helle rendered opening sentence of the Epic of Gilgamesh in verse, an “epic” being by definition a species of longform poem. But what makes the Gilgamesh epic a poem? I have it on good authority that the text doesn’t rhyme in Babylonian, Sumerian, or any other language. And we don’t know enough about Sumerian or Babylonian prosody to tell whether the cuneiform manuscripts follow any pattern based on syllabic meter. What we can tell is that the verses of the Epic of Gilgamesh make heavy use of alliteration and consonance, meaning the authors made a point to string together words containing the same sounds, and, as seen in the excerpt above, employed repetitious language that gives the story a musical quality. Much like a song might, the main story of the Epic of Gilgamesh closes with one of the opening stanzas, describing the dimensions of the city of Uruk in which our hero Gilgamesh in king:
Look: Two thousand acres for the city, two thousand acres for the orchards, two thousand acres for the pits of clay, and one thousand acres for the temple of Ishtar. Seven thousand acres is the size of Uruk.
And, hidden somewhere, away in Uruk, the story of Gilgamesh has apparently already been written down, and the reader is presently commanded to take it and read:
Now look for the cedarwood box, undo its locks of bronze, open the door to its secrets, take up the tablet of lapis lazuli and read aloud: read of all that Gilgamesh went through, read of all his suffering.
Who was Gilgamesh, other than being the king of Uruk? We’re told that he was a “splendid man of muscle,” “a goring aurochs,” an “aurochs” being a kind of wild ox, an epithet that will be later applied to his mother the goddess Ninsun. Not only was Gilgamesh “nursed by Ninsun,” but we’re told that “[t]he mother goddess Belet-ili designed his body,” and “the wise god Ea brought his figure to perfection.” All told, Gilgamesh was “two-thirds god and only one-third human.” If this ratio seems improbable, our translator Helle has an explanation: in Babylonian mythology each god was assigned a characteristic number, and Ea’a number was 40. Since the Babylonians had a base-60 number system (as opposed to our base-10 scheme), Babylonian audiences would have understand “two-thirds” to connote the number 40, and thus calling Gilgamesh “two-thirds god” emphasizes his affinity to Ea, who we’re told put the final perfecting touches on this greatest of kings.
If you’re wondering what Gilgamesh looked like, here is a memorable physical description:
He was a giant in height, eighteen feet tall, and his chest six feet broad. His feet were five feet long, and twice that his leg, and the length of his stride was the same. His beard, too, was five feet long.
And Gilgamesh really threw his weight around. The story begins with the people of Uruk being none too pleased with their king, who went “stomping through Uruk the Sheepfold / with head held high, overbearing like an aurochs.” He excelled in military exploits and games involving bats; he “darkened the youth of Uruk with despair / Gilgamesh let no son go home to his father.” Nor did he let any “daughter go home to her mother,” or bride go home to her groom. The gods, led by the deity of the skies Anu, take pity on the people and command the goddess Aruru to make a “counterpart” to Gilgamesh, a rival who will keep Gilgamesh too preoccupied to go around harassing his subjects. So Aruru takes a lump of clay and creates Enkidu, a wild man “all muscle, the mightiest in the land,” “as mighty as a meteorite fallen from the sky,” whose “body was covered with fur” and with hair “as long as a woman’s.”
Enkidu lived a solitary life, grazing with the gazelles. Gilgamesh learns of Enkidu when he has a three-day staring contest with a hunter who came to his waterhole to stalk game, freezing the hunter with fear. The hunter complains to his father that Enkidu is sabotaging all his hunting by filling the pits and breaking the traps he deployed to catch animals, and his father tells him to consult Gilgamesh on what to do. Gilgamesh, apparently perceiving that Enkidu is a feral man who knows nothing of human society, decides he wants to give this man by the waterhole a taste of civilization, and dispatches Shamhat, a priestess of Ishtar, Ishtar being the patron goddess of Uruk, to accompany the hunter and charm Enkidu into leaving the hunter alone. Now I gather from a later passage, where Enkidu offers a blessing to this same Shamhat, saying that “No soldier will be slow to undo his belt for you / or to give you gold, lapis lazuli and obsidian,” that the priestesses of Ishtar functioned as prostitutes. And accordingly Shamhat approached Enkidu at the waterhole, removed her clothes, and “showed the wild man what women can do” for six days and seven nights. Enkidu, formerly more animal than man, can now “reason and think,” but his friends the gazelles flee from him and now he can’t keep up with the herd. In a word, Enkidu has “sullied his spotless body.”
Why engaging in sexual congress should have exiled Enkidu from the animal kingdom, destroyed his innocence, and given him the gift of reason is not immediately clear. Enkidu’s gazelles must mate as well. At this stage, we probably have to look at allegorical and figurative explanations. It firstly occurs to me that Enkidu and Shamhat’s tryst was non-procreative: Shamhat never falls pregnant and, at least in the main Gilgamesh story with which we are now concerned, we never hear that Enkidu has any children. It probably is significant that Shamhat is a temple prostitute; she only sought out Enkidu because Gilgamesh commanded her to, and Gilgamesh specifically commanded Shamhat to have sex with Enkidu because that was her profession. Enkidu genuinely desired Shamhat, but each other party to this plot subordinated sexual relations to another end: for Shamhat, her duty to the king; for Gilgamesh, his duty to protect the livelihoods of his people. Arguably, this is the sort of thing that separates humanity from the other animals: the ability to order natural goods like food and procreation to higher purposes. By coming into contact with a complex economic and political system that creates professional fornicators and dispenses and withholds fornication for the good of the polity, Enkidu became human. There may also be some analogy drawn between civilization and the maturity of man. We’re told that Enkidu was naked and mute before his contact with Shamhat, making him like an infant in that regard, and his sexual initiation, a milestone in a man’s individual lifecycle, might signify mankind’s enlightenment, its separation from the natural world, and its entry into the city.
That said, Enkidu does not immediately adjust to all the customs of civilization. After Shamhat invites him to come to Uruk where “every day is a party, / where the drums thunder on / and the priestesses are ravishing,” and Enkidu accompanies her to a herdsman’s camp outside the city where he gets his first taste of bread and beer. While partying with the shepherds, Enkidu meets a traveler who is en route to Uruk for a wedding, and when the traveler explains to Enkidu what a wedding is and describes the king’s privilege of droit du seigneur, the right to deflower the bride on her wedding night, we read that “his face went white.” Enkidu and Shamhat go to the Uruk marketplace, where Enkidu confronts Gilgamesh over the outrageous privilege he is about to exercise, blocking the door to the wedding house with his foot:
They took hold of each other, butting like bulls: the door broke, the walls shook. Gilgamesh and Enkidu took hold, butting like bulls: the door broke, the walls shook.
The fight ends inconclusively, but Enkidu, whom the onlookers describe as looking “just like Gilgamesh / but shorter and stouter,” acknowledges that he has met his match:
"Your mother Ninsun, aurochs of Uruk, has given birth to a man without equal. You are superb among warriors! Enlil has made you the ruler of men."
Gilgamesh and Enkidu become friends, but in this incomplete passage Enkidu immediately begins to lose his strength:
Gilgamesh · · and spoke to Enkidu, saying: "Why, my friend, did tears fill your eyes, your arms lose strength, your power disappear?" Enkidu said to him, to Gilgamesh: "My friend, my heart burns · · · · shakes with sobs. Fear has stepped into my heart, grief has tied knots in my neck."
We don’t have a full explanation for why this loss of strength takes place, but some fragmented lines from Gilgamesh’s mother Ninsun suggest that it might have something to do with the fact that Enkidu is lonely due to having no family:
"Bitterly he will weep · · Enkidu has no · · · ·shaggy hair · · He was born in the wild, he has no family."
In any case, Gilgamesh and Enkidu set out to kill Humbaba, ruler of the Cedar Forest, thousands of miles to the west of Uruk. Enkidu knows the way, and city councilors admonish Enkidu to lead Gilgamesh to Humbaba, with the refrain “‘Go first and you help an ally, / know the road and you save a friend.’ / So let Enkidu go first.” Despite previously acknowledging Gilgamesh as an equal, Enkidu is now taking a decidedly subordinate position in relation to the king of Uruk.
Gilgamesh’s mother Ninsun prepares to go to the roof of her palace to pray to the sun god Shamash to protect and assist Gilgamesh in his battle with Humbaba:
She went seven times into the chamber of cleansing and took baths infused with tamarisk and soapwort. She put on a dress worthy of her body, and chose a jewel worthy of her breasts.
And here is part of her prayer, where she beseeches Shamash to unleash the thirteen winds against Humbaba:
"South wind, north wind, east wind, west wind, gust, and gale, tempest, blizzard, wind of evil, demon blast, thunderstorm, whirlwind, and hurricane: let thirteen winds rise! Darkness will fall on the face of Humbaba and Gilgamesh's weapons will bring him down."
On the two-week, 4,500-mile journey to Mount Lebanon, Gilgamesh has five prophetic dreams about his battle with Humbaba, each dream summoned by a ritual described with identical language:
They stopped to eat after a hundred miles, they pitched camp after two hundred miles more. In a single day they had walked three hundred miles, by the third day it was more than a month's march. They were getting closer to Mount Lebanon. They dug a well toward the setting sun, and poured fresh water into their flasks. Gilgamesh went up to the top of the mountain, and offered sacred flour to its peak: "Bring me a dream, mountain! Show me a good omen." Enkidu built him a house for the Dream God, with a windbreak against the storm. He had Gilgamesh lie in a circle of sacred flour, while Enkidu slept like a snare in the doorway. Gilgamesh rested his chin on his knees and was struck by sleep, which fills the minds of men. But at midnight he ran out of sleep so Gilgamesh got up to talk to his friend. "My friend, did you call me? Why am I awake? Did you touch me? Why am I anxious? Did a god walk by? Why are my limbs numb? "My friend, I've had [a/another/a third/a fourth/a fifth] dream, and the dream was all confused."
Gilgamesh dreams of a mountain, then of carrying a mountain, then of a storm, then of a Thunderbird, then of an aurochs, and each time Enkidu interprets the dream as an omen of success against Humbaba, sometimes an omen of aid from one of the gods, Shamash or Lugalbanda, during the battle.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu finally arrive at Cedar Mountain to confront Humbaba; we don’t get a physical description of Humbaba, except that he has tusks, and he is large enough to clear a track in the forest as he walks. It is tempting to surmise that Humbaba was a very large boar or an elephant, but it appears contemporary artwork portrayed him as an anthropomorphic monster. At any rate, we do get a detailed description of the Cedar Forest, which our translator Helle notes is unusual for Near East literature from this period, which did not normally feature elaborate commentary on scenery:
They gazed up on the Cedar Mountain home of gods, throne of goddesses. Sumptuous cedars grew along the mountainside and cast their pleasant, joyful shades. The forest was snarled up in branches, tangled with thorns, they blocked the path through the cedars and ballukku trees. For six miles around the forest grew new shoots of cedar, for four miles around it grew new shoots of cypress. The trees were webbed with creepers a hundred feet tall, and the resin that oozed from them fell like raindrops to be swallowed by the ravines. The song of a bird went through the forest, calls came back and song became clamor. A single cicada set off a chorus, · · sang · · chirped, pigeons sobbed, doves answered. The stork clattered, filling the forest with joy, the rooster crowed, filling the forest with resounding joy. Monkey mothers sang, baby monkeys cried: this was the concern of songs and drums that always thundered for Humbaba.
Though Gilgamesh is afraid upon coming face-to-face with Humbaba, Enkidu stirs up his courage and our hero cries out to Shamash, who unleashes the thirteen winds that leave Humbaba begging for his life, offering the king of Uruk all the timber he wants and scolding Enkidu, whom Humbaba had always left alone, for leading Gilgamesh to his home. But Enkidu, apparently fearing that Humbaba, if spared, will tell the gods what he and Gilgamesh have done, implores his friend to finish off their foe:
"My friend! Humbaba, the guardian of cedars: Destroy him, kill him! Crush his mind! Humbaba, the guardian of cedars: Destroy him, kill him! Crush his mind— before Enlil hears of it, the leader of gods!
Gilgamesh does finally take his sword and kill Humbaba, but not before Humbaba curses Enkidu, saying that he and Gilgamesh will not grow old together and he’ll have no one but his friend to bury him. The two men proceed to hunt down Humbaba’s seven cloaks of dread, protective force fields that seem to be identified with Humbaba’s seven sons: the Cicada, the Growler, the Blizzard, the Loudmouth, the Wise Man, Kappah, and the Demon. Finally, Gilgamesh and Enkidu cut down cedar trees and fashion a one-hundred-and-twenty-foot tall, forty-foot-wide, two-foot-thick door that they plan to ship down the Euphrates River to Nippur, where the temple of Enlil is located. I gather this gift is intended to placate the gods and prevent reprisal for killing Humbaba. Enkidu also builds a raft of cedar, cypress, and juniper branches for his own journey home. As for Gilgamesh, he floats back to Uruk upon the head of Humbaba.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu may have temporarily avoided angering the gods for killing Humbaba, but the gods wouldn’t stay placated for long. For Ishtar, the patron goddess of Uruk, asks Gilgamesh to marry her, and receives this reply:
"You are a winter too warm to freeze ice, a half-door that blocks no wind or draft, a palace that crumbles and kills its heroes, an elephant that throws off its rider, a lump of pitch that stains the hand, a flask of water that soaks the cloak, a block of limestone that weakens the wall, a ram that wrecks our walls for the enemy, a shoe that bites the foot of its owner."
Isthar has apparently had many lovers, including a man named Dumuzi whom she sent to the underworld, the stallion whom she damned to lashes and long days of galloping in the service of man, and the shepherd whom she turned into a wolf forever to be chased away by his own sheepdogs. The scorned Ishtar begs her father Anu to let her borrow the Bull of Heaven and set it loose to wreak havoc in Uruk:
When it leached the land of Uruk, the forest, marsh, and canebrake dried up. As it went down to the river, the water level fell twelve feet. The Bull snorted, a pit opened up, and a hundred men of Uruk fell in. It snorted again, a pit opened up, and two hundred men of Uruk fell in. It snorted a third time, a pit opened up, and Enkidu fell in, up to his waist.
Enkidu escapes from the pit, and he and Gilgamesh make a plan: Enkidu will grab the Bull of Heaven by the tuft of its tail while Gilgamesh thrusts his down through its back between the horns, which succeeds in killing the Bull. Enkidu tears off the Bull of Heaven’s member and throws it at Ishtar, who is on the city walls stamping her feet in anger, while Gilgamesh examines the dead Bull’s horns:
Each horn was thirty pounds of pure lapis lazuli and their cases were two fingers thick. They could hold three hundred gallons of oil. Gilgamesh dedicated them to his god Lugalbanda; he picked them up to hang them in his bedroom.
That night Enkidu dreams that the gods have convened to determine how to punish Gilgamesh and Enkidu for killing Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, and it’s decided that, while Gilgamesh will be spared, Enkidu shall die. I suppose Gilgamesh was spared because of his being two-thirds god himself. Enkidu really falls ill, and, at least twelve days later (the text is very fragmented) he dies. Gilgamesh is so distraught he builds a bed for Enkidu’s body and has it lie on his left side until he sees a maggot fall from one of the nostrils.
Enkidu’s death causes Gilgamesh to have an epiphany about death: “I too will die. Am I not like Enkidu?” He dons a lionskin and leaves Uruk in search of Uta-napishti, a man who has achieved eternal life, partly to figure out how to live forever himself, and partly, it seems, to distract himself from thoughts of death and enjoy life while he can. When the sun god Shamash warns him about his vain search for immortality, Gilgamesh replies:
"After I have walked and wandered the wild, will I lack rest in the underworld? All those years of lying down! "Now my eyes will see the sun, till I am full of light. The dark of death is far away—look at all the sun! When do the dead ever see daylight?"
Gilgamesh comes to Twin Peaks, which is apparently the gateway to the shore from which he can sail to find Uta-napishti. The way is guarded by scorpion people, who let him pass after a conversation that is mostly lost to us. After traveling twenty-four hours through complete darkness, Gilgamesh comes across the trees of the gods, one bearing “fruits of carnelian” and the other bearing “leaves of lapis lazuli.” Maybe these trees are somehow associated with sun and the moon, given their colors and the fact that they lie far to the east of Uruk. In any case, Gilgamesh suddenly finds himself on the shore and meets the innkeeper Shiduri, who tells him he can hitch a ride with Ur-shanabi, Uta-napishti’s boatman, to meet the man who conquered death. After a mishap where Gilgamesh rashly destroys the Stone Ones who were helping Ur-shanabi, our hero finally gathers the three hundred, hundred-foot-long punting poles necessary to convey him and the boatman across the sea to the Waters of Death to Uta-napishti’s home.
Uta-napishti is not impressed by Gilgamesh and his quest for immortality:
"You never rest, and what do you get for it? You have exhausted yourself with ceaseless toil, you have filled your sinews with pain and hastened the day of your death."
But Gilgamesh insists that Uta-napishti tell him the secret of eternal life, notably using the same reasoning by which he, seeing Enkidu die, deduced his own inevitable death:
“I look at you, Uta-napishti, and your body is no different, you are just like me. You are no different, you are just like me! "My heart was all set on fighting with you, but now that I see you, my arm falls limp. Tell me, how did you find eternal like in the gathering of the gods?"
Here Uta-napishti tells the story of the Flood. The gods all agreed to flood the earth and destroy humanity. (Though this backstory isn’t in our text, the translator Helle tells us that other Assyrian sources give the gods’ reason for wanting to kill all humans with floodwater: we were too noisy.) All the gods swore an oath of silence about their plot, but Ea decided to break this omertà and warn Uta-napishti, then living in the city of Shuruppak on the Euphrates, by whispering through the wall of his house:
"'Man of Shuruppak, son of Ubara-tutu! Raze the house, build a boat, leave wealth, look for life, forget your goods, save yourself! And bring on board the seed of all life. "'The ship you will build: let her measures match up, make her as wide as she is long, and roof her over, like the Apsû'" [the underwater lake that served as Ea's dwelling -- Joe Steakley]
It’s all well and good to build a ship to carry oneself and each of the species of animals on earth, but what should Uta-napishti say when the townspeople ask him what he’s doing? Here we have the most inspired part of the whole epic, for Ea tells Uta-napishti to say this to the citizens of Shuruppak: “ina šēr kukkī ina līlâti / ušaznanakkunūši šsamût kibāti.” Since cuneiform symbols can have different semantic and phonetic meanings, and because the Epic of Gilgamesh was written without spaces between words and without punctuation marks, these lines can be interpreted in two ways, one a promise of blessings from the gods, the other a warning of impending doom. In other words, Halle translates this message alternately as:
“‘At dawn sweets, at dusk wheat in downpours he will rain on you.'"
or:
"'At dawn dark, at dusk death for all he will let fall on you.'"
Finally the deluge comes, and Uta-napishti brings his family, his goods, the livestock and creatures of the wild, and experts in all kinds of crafts aboard his ship. It storms for six days and seven nights, and on the seventh day the ship runs aground atop the fourteen peaks of the Mountain of Secrets. After seven days stranded on the mountaintop, Uta-napishti starts to search for land:
"I brought out a dove and set it free. The dove flew off, but then it returned. It found nowhere to land, so it came back. "I brought out a swallow and set it free. The swallow flew off, but then it returned. It found nowhere to land, so it came back. "I brought out a crow and set it free. The crow flew off and saw the sea ebb away, it pecked, hopped around, and did not come back."
Uta-napishti immediately makes a sacrifice and the gods, smelling the pleasing scent, swarm “to the sacrifice like flies.” Among the gods, Belet-ili resolves henceforth to hang a necklace of “mighty jeweled flies” around her neck to remind her of the Flood. And Ea, despite having agreed to wipe out humanity and promising to keep quiet about the scheme, takes the opportunity to berate his fellow gods for the indiscriminate massacre of man:
"'Instead of the Flood you unleashed, lions could have come to cull humankind. Instead of the Flood you unleashed, wolves could have come to cull humankind. Instead of the Flood you unleashed, famine could have come to cull humankind. Instead of the Flood you unleashed, war could have come to cull humankind.'"
As an apology to Uta-napishti, the god Enlil grants him and his wife immortality.
Having told this story, Gilgamesh’s host challenges him to stay awake for six days and seven nights, implying that the gods might reward him too if he manages the feat; Gilgamesh, exhausted from his long journey, falls asleep instantly. Uta-napishti has his wife bake Gilgamesh “his daily bread” and “set it by his head,” as a tally of how many days he’s slept. When Gilgamesh does wake up, he finds:
His first bread was all dried out, the second was tough as leather, the third had some moisture left, the fourth had turned white, the fifth was showing spots, the sixth was still fresh and the seventh was on the coals.
Despite this failure, Uta-napishti, before sending him on his way, tells Gilgamesh that immortality can be acquired by plucking a thorny, thistle-like plant at the bottom of the underground lake Apsû. Gilgamesh dives into Apsû and successfully brings the plant back to the surface, resolving to take it home to Uruk and have an old man eat of as a test, before trying it himself. But on his way home a snake slithers up and steals the plant, causing it to shed its skin. Now bereft of all practical means of attaining eternal life, Gilgamesh seeks consolation in the dimensions of the city he rules:
"Look: Two thousand acres for the city, two thousand acres for the orchards, two thousand acres for the pits of clay, and one thousand acres for the temple of Ishtar. Seven thousand acres is the size of Uruk."
If our persons can’t live forever, we can at least hope that our deeds will persist far into the future. Uruk is in ruins, and the lapis-lazuli tablet on which this story was written, if it ever existed, might be lost forever, but we still know Gilgamesh’s name and know some of the deeds he is said to have done, and to that small extent this king of Uruk, who might have really existed, has achieved immortality. Of course, Gilgamesh is not around to enjoy this posthumous fame, and I don’t know how much consolation he would have had on his deathbed from speculating that men millennia in the future would read fragmented accounts of his exploits. If one can imagine a future of fame and lasting endurance for the fruits of one’s labors, one can just as easily imagine a more distant future where all fame and all fruits have been erased.
But this is the end of the main story of the Epic of Gilgamesh, comprising the first eleven Tablets, not to be confused with the physical clay tablets on which the manuscripts were written. There is a twelfth Tablet that tells another story involving Gilgamesh and Enkidu, but in this one Enkidu has been brought back to life and has children and multiple dead wives. Gilgamesh’s favorite ball has somehow fallen down to the underworld, and Enkidu, tasked with retrieving the ball, also brings back his impressions of the land of the dead. The general impression I get of these departed souls is that they are a resentful lot:
"You must not wear clean clothes, for they will see that you are a stranger. You must not smear yourself with sweet oil, for they will gather around the scent. You must not throw a stick through the underworld, for you will be surrounded by those it strikes. You must not carry a cudgel in your hand, for the spirits will tremble before you. "You must not wear sandals on your feet, you must not raise your voice in the underworld. You must not kiss the wife you love, you must not hit the wife you hate. You must not kiss the son you love, you must not hit the son you hate, lest the outcry of the underworld overwhelm you!"
Gilgamesh interrogates Enkidu about the fates, most of them bad, of various classes of people:
"Did you see the man who suffered from leprosy?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "His food is kept apart, his water is kept apart. He eats uprooted grass, he drinks bitter water. He lives outside the city." "Did you see the man who did not pay heed to the words of his father and mother?" "I saw him." "How doe he fare?" "He constantly cries out: 'My body! My limbs!'" "Did you see the man who was doomed by a curse from his father and mother?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "He has no heir, his spirit is restless." "Did you see the man who profaned the name of his god?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "His ghost eats bitter bread and drinks bitter water." "Did you see the stillborn babies who did not even know their name?" "I saw them." "How do they fare?" "They eat honey and ghee at tables of gold and silver." "Did you see the man who burned to death?" "I did not see him. His ghost is not there, his smoke went up to the skies."
So much for the Epic of Gilgamesh. If you’ve read the Gilgamesh narrative or have any thoughts on the story, I’d be interested to see what you think in the comments. I know there are similarities between some events related in this epic and events recounted in other literary works; I’ve passed over these similarities in silence with the intention of discussing them soon. For the time being I plan to update this newsletter every Monday, so next week I’ll post an exposition and reflection on the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
I enjoyed reading the epic of gilgamesh. I thought the text would be too dense or cryptic and kind of expected it to be a chore. Thankfully reading through the text was a breeze.
There is a bias which can go something like entertainment from past can be outdated and boring. While it might be truish in most cases, in the case of gilgamesh it is anything but. Surprisingly, the narrative structure of gilgamesh flows like a big budget Hollywood blockbuster - hero introduction, sidekick introduction, battle between hero and sidekick, hero and sidekick becoming friends, go on adventures one by one, kill demons and bulls, death of a friend, fall of hero and comeback. But I think gilgamesh does something with its ending that I think no big hollywood movie would ever do(You might even say it "subverts" the typical superhero movie endings involving a big CGI carnage) - The hero not achieving his goal and instead getting a lecture on why his goal was stupid from the start.
My favorite section of the book does not involve any of the adventure or fights. It is the charming section where Gilgamesh roasts the goddess Ishtar in so many creative ways that her choice to take revenge seems understandable(lol).
Another theme that I was constantly aware throughout the book is the constant anxiety around death and its many forms. Gilgamesh is the strongest and bravest among all and everybody acknowledges the same but there are many instances Gilgamesh gets seized by death anxiety and does not know how to process. For example - On the way to kill Humbaba, Gilgamesh gets different types of dreams and it is clear that they are nightmares but Gilgamesh instead accepts the favorable interpretation of the dream that Enkidu gives. This raises question about whether if enkidu is only giving a favorable interpretation to soothe gilgamesh or do they not see that as a bad sign? This theme of death is made explicit at the end of the book with immortality and the great flood etc.
This book is a great start to the western canon and onwards to Egyptian book of the dead.