GILGAMESH
![](329px-Hero_lion_Dur-Sharrukin_Louvre_AO19862.jpg)
Possible
representation of Gilgamesh as Master of Animals, grasping a lion
in his left arm and snake in his right hand, in an Assyrian palace
relief (713 – 706 BC), from Dur-Sharrukin, now held in the
Louvre
Preceded
by : Dumuzid,
the Fisherman (as Ensi of Uruk), Aga of Kish (as King of Sumer)
Succeeded by : Ur-Nungal
Abode : Earth
Symbol : Bull, lion
Parents : Lugalbanda
and Ninsun
Children : Ur-Nungal
Gilgamesh
was a major hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist
of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during
the late 2nd millennium BC. He was also most likely a historical
king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who was posthumously deified.
His rule probably would have taken place sometime between 2800 and
2500 BC, though he became a major figure in Sumerian legend during
the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BC).
Tales
of Gilgamesh's legendary exploits are narrated in five surviving
Sumerian poems. The earliest of these is most likely "Gilgamesh,
Enkidu, and the Netherworld", in which Gilgamesh comes to the
aid of the goddess Inanna and drives away the creatures infesting
her huluppu tree. She gives him two unknown objects, a mikku and
a pikku, which he loses. After Enkidu's death, his shade tells Gilgamesh
about the bleak conditions in the Underworld. The poem "Gilgamesh
and Agga" describes Gilgamesh's revolt against his overlord
King Agga. Other Sumerian poems relate Gilgamesh's defeat of the
ogre Huwawa and the Bull of Heaven, while a fifth, poorly preserved
poem apparently describes his death and funeral.
In
later Babylonian times, these stories began to be woven into a connected
narrative. The standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh was composed
by a scribe named Sîn-leqi-unninni, probably during the Middle
Babylonian Period (c. 1600 – c. 1155), based on much older
source material. In the epic, Gilgamesh is a demigod of superhuman
strength who befriends the wildman Enkidu. Together, they go on
adventures, defeating Humbaba (Sumerian: Huwawa) and the Bull of
Heaven, who is sent to attack them by Ishtar (Sumerian: Inanna)
after Gilgamesh rejects her offer for him to become her consort.
After Enkidu dies of a disease sent as punishment from the gods,
Gilgamesh becomes afraid of his own death, and visits the sage
Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Great Flood, hoping to find
immortality. Gilgamesh repeatedly fails the trials set before him
and returns home to Uruk, realizing that immortality is beyond his
reach.
Most
classical historians agree that the Epic of Gilgamesh exerted substantial
influence on both the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems written
in ancient Greek during the 8th century BC. The story of Gilgamesh's
birth is described in an anecdote from On the Nature of Animals
by the Greek writer Aelian (2nd century AD). Aelian relates that
Gilgamesh's grandfather kept his mother under guard to prevent her
from becoming pregnant, because he had been told by an oracle that
his grandson would overthrow him. She became pregnant and the guards
threw the child off a tower, but an eagle rescued him mid-fall and
delivered him safely to an orchard, where he was raised by the gardener.
The
Epic of Gilgamesh was rediscovered in the Library of Ashurbanipal
in 1849. After being translated in the early 1870s, it caused widespread
controversy due to similarities between portions of it and the Hebrew
Bible. Gilgamesh remained mostly obscure until the mid-20th century,
but, since the late 20th century, he has become an increasingly
prominent figure in modern culture.
Historical
king :
![](640px-Mesannepada_seal_drawing.jpg)
Seal
impression of "Mesannepada, king of Kish", excavated in
the Royal Cemetery at Ur (U. 13607), dated circa 2600 BC. The seal
shows Gilgamesh and the mythical bull between two lions, one of
the lions biting him in the shoulder. On each side of this group
appears Enkidu and a hunter-hero, with a long beard and a Kish-style
headdress, armed with a dagger. Under the text, four runners with
beard and long hair form a human Swastika. They are armed with daggers
and catch each other's foot.
Most historians generally agree that Gilgamesh was a historical
king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who probably ruled sometime
during the early part of the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2900 –
2350 BC). Stephanie Dalley, a scholar of the ancient Near East,
states that "precise dates cannot be given for the lifetime
of Gilgamesh, but they are generally agreed to lie between 2800
and 2500 BC." No contemporary mention of Gilgamesh has yet
been discovered, but the 1955 discovery of the Tummal Inscription,
a thirty-four-line historiographic text written during the reign
of Ishbi-Erra (c. 1953 – c. 1920 BC), has cast considerable
light on his reign. The inscription credits Gilgamesh with building
the walls of Uruk. Lines eleven through fifteen of the inscription
read:
For
a second time, the Tummal fell into ruin,
Gilgamesh built the Numunburra of the House of Enlil.
Ur-lugal, the son of Gilgamesh,
Made the Tummal pre-eminent,
Brought Ninlil to the Tummal.
Gilgamesh
is also referred to as a king by King Enmebaragesi of Kish, a known
historical figure who may have lived near Gilgamesh's lifetime.
Furthermore, Gilgamesh is listed as one of the kings of Uruk by
the Sumerian King List. Fragments of an epic text found in Mê-Turan
(modern Tell Haddad) relate that at the end of his life Gilgamesh
was buried under the river bed. The people of Uruk diverted the
flow of the Euphrates passing Uruk for the purpose of burying the
dead king within the river bed.
Deification
and legendary exploits :
Sumerian poems :
![](640px-Gilgamesh_in_a_Sculptured_Vase,_Shara_Temple,_Tell_Agrab,_Iraq.jpg)
Sculpted
scene depicting Gilgamesh wrestling with animals. From the Shara
temple at Tell Agrab, Diyala Region, Iraq. Early Dynastic period,
2600–2370 BC. On display at the National Museum of Iraq in
Baghdad.
![](640px-Mace_dedicated_to_Gigamesh-AO_3761_with_transcription_of_the_name_Gilgamesh.jpg)
Mace
dedicated to Gilgamesh, with transcription of the name Gilgamesh
in standard Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, Ur III period, between 2112
and 2004 BC
It is certain that, during the later Early Dynastic Period, Gilgamesh
was worshipped as a god at various locations across Sumer. In 21st
century BC, King Utu-hengal of Uruk adopted Gilgamesh as his patron
deity. The kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c.
2004 BC) were especially fond of Gilgamesh, calling him their "divine
brother" and "friend." King Shulgi of Ur (2029–1982
BC) declared himself the son of Lugalbanda and Ninsun and the brother
of Gilgamesh. Over the centuries, there may have been a gradual
accretion of stories about Gilgamesh, some possibly derived from
the real lives of other historical figures, such as Gudea, the Second
Dynasty ruler of Lagash (2144–2124 BC). Prayers inscribed
in clay tablets address Gilgamesh as a judge of the dead in the
Underworld.
Gilgamesh,
Enkidu, and the Netherworld :
During this period, a large number of myths and legends developed
surrounding Gilgamesh. Five independent Sumerian poems narrating
various exploits of Gilgamesh have survived to the present. Gilgamesh's
first appearance in literature is probably in the Sumerian poem
"Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld". The narrative
begins with a huluppu tree—perhaps, according to the Sumerologist
Samuel Noah Kramer, a willow, growing on the banks of the river
Euphrates. The goddess Inanna moves the tree to her garden in Uruk
with the intention to carve it into a throne once it is fully grown.
The tree grows and matures, but the serpent "who knows no charm,"
the Anzû-bird, and Lilitu, a Mesopotamian demon, all take
up residence within the tree, causing Inanna to cry with sorrow.
Gilgamesh,
who in this story is portrayed as Inanna's brother, comes along
and slays the serpent, causing the Anzû-bird and Lilitu to
flee. Gilgamesh's companions chop down the tree and carve its wood
into a bed and a throne, which they give to Inanna. Inanna responds
by fashioning a pikku and a mikku (probably a drum and drumsticks
respectively, although the exact identifications are uncertain),
which she gives to Gilgamesh as a reward for his heroism. Gilgamesh
loses the pikku and mikku and asks who will retrieve them. Enkidu
descends to the Underworld to find them, but disobeys the strict
laws of the Underworld and is therefore required to remain there
forever. The remaining portion of the poem is a dialogue in which
Gilgamesh asks the shade of Enkidu questions about the Underworld.
Subsequent
poems :
Story of Gilgamesh and Aga :
![](417px-Obverse._Gilgamesh_and_Aga._Old_Babylonian_period,_from_southern_Iraq._Sulaymaniyah_Museum,_Iraqi_Kurdistan.jpg)
![](414px-Reverse._Gilgamesh_and_Aga._Old_Babylonian_period,_from_southern_Iraq._Sulaymaniyah_Museum,_Iraqi_Kurdistan.jpg)
Story of "Gilgamesh and Agga". Old Babylonian
period, from southern Iraq. Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq
"Gilgamesh and Agga" describes Gilgamesh's successful
revolt against his overlord Agga, the king of the city-state of
Kish."Gilgamesh and Huwawa" describes how Gilgamesh and
his servant Enkidu, aided by the help of fifty volunteers from Uruk,
defeat the monster Huwawa, an ogre appointed by the god Enlil, the
ruler of the gods, as the guardian of the Cedar Forest. In "Gilgamesh
and the Bull of Heaven", Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay the Bull
of Heaven, who has been sent to attack them by the goddess Inanna.
The plot of this poem differs substantially from the corresponding
scene in the later Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Sumerian poem,
Inanna does not seem to ask Gilgamesh to become her consort as she
does in the later Akkadian epic. Furthermore, while she is coercing
her father An to give her the Bull of Heaven, rather than threatening
to raise the dead to eat the living as she does in the later epic,
she merely threatens to let out a "cry" that will reach
the earth. A poem known as the "Death of Gilgamesh" is
very poorly preserved, but appears to describe a major state funeral
followed by the arrival of the deceased in the Underworld. It is
possible that the modern scholars who gave the poem its title may
have misinterpreted it, and the poem may actually be about the death
of Enkidu.
Epic
of Gilgamesh :
![](Humbaba_deamon-AO_9034-IMG_0655-black.jpg)
The
ogre Humbaba, shown in this terracotta plaque from the Old Babylonian
Period, is one of the opponents fought by Gilgamesh and his companion
Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh
![](629px-O.1054_color.jpg)
Ancient
Mesopotamian terracotta relief (c. 2250 — 1900 BC) showing
Gilgamesh slaying the Bull of Heaven, an episode described in Tablet
VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh
Eventually, according to Kramer (1963)
Gilgamesh
became the hero par excellence of the ancient world—an adventurous,
brave, but tragic figure symbolizing man's vain but endless drive
for fame, glory, and immortality.
By
the Old Babylonian Period (c. 1830 – c. 1531 BC), stories
of Gilgamesh's legendary exploits had been woven into one or several
long epics. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the most complete account of
Gilgamesh's adventures, was composed in Akkadian during the Middle
Babylonian Period (c. 1600 – c. 1155 BC) by a scribe named
Sîn-leqi-unninni. The most complete surviving version of the
Epic of Gilgamesh is recorded on a set of twelve clay tablets dating
to the seventh century BC, found in the Library of Ashurbanipal
in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. The epic survives only in a
fragmentary form, with many pieces of it missing or damaged. Some
scholars and translators choose to supplement the missing parts
of the epic with material from the earlier Sumerian poems or from
other versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh found at other sites throughout
the Near East.
![](594px-Tablet_V_of_the_Epic_of_Gilgamesh.jpg)
Tablet
V of the Epic of Gilgamesh The Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq
In the epic, Gilgamesh is introduced as "two thirds divine
and one third mortal." At the beginning of the poem, Gilgamesh
is described as a brutal, oppressive ruler. This is usually interpreted
to mean either that he compels all his subjects to engage in forced
labor or that he sexually oppresses all his subjects. As punishment
for Gilgamesh's cruelty, the god Anu creates the wildman Enkidu.
After being tamed by a prostitute named Shamhat, Enkidu travels
to Uruk to confront Gilgamesh. In the second tablet, the two men
wrestle and, although Gilgamesh wins the match in the end, he is
so impressed by his opponent's strength and tenacity that they become
close friends. In the earlier Sumerian texts, Enkidu is Gilgamesh's
servant, but, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, they are companions of equal
standing.
In
tablets III through IV, Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel to the Cedar
Forest, which is guarded by Humbaba (the Akkadian name for Huwawa).
The heroes cross the seven mountains to the Cedar Forest, where
they begin chopping down trees. Confronted by Humbaba, Gilgamesh
panics and prays to Shamash (the East Semitic name for Utu), who
blows eight winds in Humbaba's eyes, blinding him. Humbaba begs
for mercy, but the heroes decapitate him regardless. Tablet VI begins
with Gilgamesh returning to Uruk, where Ishtar (the Akkadian name
for Inanna) comes to him and demands him to become her consort.
Gilgamesh repudiates her, insisting that she has mistreated all
her former lovers.
In
revenge, Ishtar goes to her father Anu and demands that he give
her the Bull of Heaven, which she sends to attack Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull and offer its heart to Shamash.
While Gilgamesh and Enkidu are resting, Ishtar stands up on the
walls of Uruk and curses Gilgamesh. Enkidu tears off the Bull's
right thigh and throws it in Ishtar's face, saying, "If I could
lay my hands on you, it is this I should do to you, and lash your
entrails to your side." Ishtar calls together "the crimped
courtesans, prostitutes and harlots" and orders them to mourn
for the Bull of Heaven. Meanwhile, Gilgamesh holds a celebration
over the Bull of Heaven's defeat.
Tablet
VII begins with Enkidu recounting a dream in which he saw Anu, Ea,
and Shamash declare that either Gilgamesh or Enkidu must die as
punishment for having slain the Bull of Heaven. They choose Enkidu
and Enkidu soon grows sick. He has a dream of the Underworld and
then he dies. Tablet VIII describes Gilgamesh's inconsolable grief
over his friend's death and the details of Enkidu's funeral. Tablets
IX through XI relate how Gilgamesh, driven by grief and fear of
his own mortality, travels a great distance and overcomes many obstacles
to find the home of Utnapishtim, the sole survivor of the Great
Flood, who was rewarded with immortality by the gods.
![](640px-Mesopotamian_-_Cylinder_Seal_with_Scorpion_Man_Shooting_at_Winged_Creatures_-_Walters_42807.jpg)
Early Middle Assyrian cylinder seal impression dating between 1400
and 1200 BC, showing a man with bird wings and a scorpion tail firing
an arrow at a griffin on a hillock. A scorpion man is among the
creatures Gilgamesh encounters on his journey to the homeland of
Utnapishtim.
The journey to Utnapishtim involves a series of episodic challenges,
which probably originated as major independent adventures, but,
in the epic, they are reduced to what Joseph Eddy Fontenrose calls
"fairly harmless incidents." First, Gilgamesh encounters
and slays lions in the mountain pass. Upon reaching the mountain
of Mashu, Gilgamesh encounters a scorpion man and his wife; their
bodies flash with terrifying radiance, but, once Gilgamesh tells
them his purpose, they allow him to pass. Gilgamesh wanders through
darkness for twelve days before he finally comes into the light.
He finds a beautiful garden by the sea in which he meets Siduri,
the divine Alewife. At first she tries to prevent Gilgamesh from
entering the garden, but later she instead attempts to persuade
him to accept death as inevitable and not journey beyond the waters.
When Gilgamesh refuses to do this, she directs him to Urshanabi,
the ferryman of the gods, who ferries Gilgamesh across the sea to
Utnapishtim's homeland. When Gilgamesh finally arrives at Utnapishtim's
home, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that, to become immortal, he must
defy sleep. Gilgamesh fails to do this and falls asleep for seven
days without waking.
Next,
Utnapishtim tells him that, even if he cannot obtain immortality,
he can restore his youth using a plant with the power of rejuvenation.
Gilgamesh takes the plant, but leaves it on the shore while swimming
and a snake steals it, explaining why snakes are able to shed their
skins. Despondent at this loss, Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, and shows
his city to the ferryman Urshanabi. It is at that this point that
the epic stops being a coherent narrative. Tablet XII is an appendix
corresponding to the Sumerian poem of Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the
Netherworld describing the loss of the pikku and mikku.
Numerous
elements within this narrative reveal lack of continuity with the
earlier portions of the epic. At the beginning of Tablet XII, Enkidu
is still alive, despite having previously died in Tablet VII, and
Gilgamesh is kind to Ishtar, despite the violent rivalry between
them displayed in Tablet VI. Also, while most of the parts of the
epic are free adaptations of their respective Sumerian predecessors,
Tablet XII is a literal, word-for-word translation of the last part
of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld. For these reasons, scholars
conclude this narrative was probably relegated to the end of the
epic because it did not fit the larger narrative. In it, Gilgamesh
sees a vision of Enkidu's ghost, who promises to recover the lost
items and describes to his friend the abysmal condition of the Underworld.
In
Mesopotamian art :
Although stories about Gilgamesh were wildly popular throughout
ancient Mesopotamia, authentic representations of him in ancient
art are extremely rare. Popular works often identify depictions
of a hero with long hair, containing four or six curls, as representations
of Gilgamesh, but this identification is known to be incorrect.
A few genuine ancient Mesopotamian representations of Gilgamesh
do exist, however. These representations are mostly found on clay
plaques and cylinder seals. Generally, it is only possible to identify
a figure shown in art as Gilgamesh if the artistic work in question
clearly depicts a scene from the Epic of Gilgamesh itself. One set
of representations of Gilgamesh is found in scenes of two heroes
fighting a demonic giant, certainly Humbaba. Another set is found
in scenes showing a similar pair of heroes confronting a giant,
winged bull, certainly the Bull of Heaven.
Later
influence :
In antiquity :
![](590px-Guido_Reni_-_Polyphemus_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
The
episode involving Odysseus's confrontation with Polyphemus in the
Odyssey, shown in this seventeenth-century painting by Guido Reni,
bears similarities to Gilgamesh and Enkidu's battle with Humbaba
in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
![](477px-Indus_valley_civilization__Gilgamesh__seal_(2500-1500_BC).jpg)
Indus
valley civilization seal, with the Master of Animals motif of a
man fighting two lions (2500–1500 BC), similar to the Sumerian
"Gilgamesh" motif, an indicator of Indus-Mesopotamia relations
The Epic of Gilgamesh exerted substantial influence on the Iliad
and the Odyssey, two epic poems written in ancient Greek during
the eighth century BC. According to Barry B. Powell, an American
classical scholar, early Greeks were probably exposed to Mesopotamian
oral traditions through their extensive connections to the civilizations
of the ancient Near East and this exposure resulted in the similarities
that are seen between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Homeric epics.
Walter Burkert, a German classicist, observes that the scene in
Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which Gilgamesh rejects Ishtar's
advances and she complains before her mother Antu, but is mildly
rebuked by her father Anu, is directly paralleled in Book V of the
Iliad. In this scene, Aphrodite, the later Greek adaptation of Ishtar,
is wounded by the hero Diomedes and flees to Mount Olympus, where
she cries to her mother Dione and is mildly rebuked by her father
Zeus.
Powell
observes that the opening lines of the Odyssey seem to echo the
opening lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The storyline of the Odyssey
likewise bears numerous similarities to that of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Both Gilgamesh and Odysseus encounter a woman who can turn men into
animals: Ishtar (for Gilgamesh) and Circe (for Odysseus). In the
Odyssey, Odysseus blinds a giant Cyclops named Polyphemus, an incident
which bears similarities to Gilgamesh's slaying of Humbaba in the
Epic of Gilgamesh. Both Gilgamesh and Odysseus visit the Underworld
and both find themselves unhappy whilst living in an otherworldly
paradise in the presence of an attractive woman: Siduri (for Gilgamesh)
and Calypso (for Odysseus). Finally, both heroes have an opportunity
for immortality but miss it (Gilgamesh when he loses the plant,
and Odysseus when he leaves Calypso's island).
In
the Qumran scroll known as Book of Giants (c. 100 BC) the names
of Gilgamesh and Humbaba appear as two of the antediluvian giants,
rendered (in consonantal form) as glgmš and wbbyš. This
same text was later used in the Middle East by the Manichaean sects,
and the Arabic form Gilgamish/Jiljamish survives as the name of
a demon according to the Egyptian cleric Al-Suyuti (c. 1500).
The
story of Gilgamesh's birth is not recorded in any extant Sumerian
or Akkadian text, but a version of it is described in De Natura
Animalium (On the Nature of Animals) 12.21, a commonplace book which
was written in Greek sometime around 200 AD by the Hellenized Roman
orator Aelian. According to Aelian's story, an oracle told King
Seuechoros of the Babylonians that his grandson Gilgamos would overthrow
him. To prevent this, Seuechoros kept his only daughter under close
guard at the Acropolis of the city of Babylon, but she became pregnant
nonetheless. Fearing the king's wrath, the guards hurled the infant
off the top of a tall tower. An eagle rescued the boy in midflight
and carried him to an orchard, where it carefully set him down.
The caretaker of the orchard found the boy and raised him, naming
him Gilgamos. Eventually, Gilgamos returned to Babylon and overthrew
his grandfather, proclaiming himself king. The birth narrative described
by Aelian is in the same tradition as other Near Eastern birth legends,
such as those of Sargon, Moses, and Cyrus. Theodore Bar Konai (c.
AD 600), writing in Syriac, also mentions a king Gligmos, Gmigmos
or Gamigos as last of a line of twelve kings who were contemporaneous
with the patriarchs from Peleg to Abraham; this occurrence is also
considered a vestige of Gilgamesh's former memory.
Modern
rediscovery :
![](453px-Mr._George_Smith,_the_man_who_transliterated_and_read_the_so-called_the_Babylonian_Flood_Story_of_Tablet_XI.jpg)
![](530px-British_Museum_Flood_Tablet.jpg)
In 1880, the English Assyriologist George Smith (left) published
a translation of Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh (right), containing
the Flood myth, which attracted immediate scholarly attention and
controversy due to its similarity to the Genesis flood narrative.
The Akkadian text of the Epic of Gilgamesh was first discovered
in 1849 AD by the English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in the
Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Layard was seeking evidence
to confirm the historicity of the events described in the Christian
Old Testament, which, at the time, was believed to contain the oldest
texts in the world. Instead, his excavations and those of others
after him revealed the existence of much older Mesopotamian texts
and showed that many of the stories in the Old Testament may actually
be derived from earlier myths told throughout the ancient Near East.
The first translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh was produced in the
early 1870s by George Smith, a scholar at the British Museum, who
published the Flood story from Tablet XI in 1880 under the title
The Chaldean Account of Genesis. Gilgamesh's name was originally
misread as Izdubar.
Early
interest in the Epic of Gilgamesh was almost exclusively on account
of the flood story from Tablet XI. The flood story attracted enormous
public attention and drew widespread scholarly controversy, while
the rest of the epic was largely ignored. Most attention towards
the Epic of Gilgamesh in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries came from German-speaking countries, where controversy
raged over the relationship between Babel und Bibel ("Babylon
and Bible").
In
January 1902, the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch gave
a lecture at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in front of the Kaiser
and his wife, in which he argued that the Flood story in the Book
of Genesis was directly copied off the one in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Delitzsch's lecture was so controversial that, by September 1903,
he had managed to collect 1,350 short articles from newspapers and
journals, over 300 longer ones, and twenty-eight pamphlets, all
written in response to this lecture, as well as another lecture
about the relationship between the Code of Hammurabi and the Law
of Moses in the Torah. These articles were overwhelmingly critical
of Delitzsch. The Kaiser distanced himself from Delitzsch and his
radical views and, in fall of 1904, Delitzsch was forced to give
his third lecture in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main rather than in
Berlin. The putative relationship between the Epic of Gilgamesh
and the Hebrew Bible later became a major part of Delitzsch's argument
in his 1920–21 book Die große Täuschung (The Great
Deception) that the Hebrew Bible was irredeemably "contaminated"
by Babylonian influence and that only by eliminating the human Old
Testament entirely could Christians finally believe in the true,
Aryan message of the New Testament.
Early
modern interpretations :
![](364px-ISHTAR-EPOS_p221_IZDUBAR_TAKING_LEAVE_OF_SABITU_AND_SIDURI_IN_THE_HAPPY_HALLS.jpg)
Illustration
of Izdubar (Gilgamesh) in a scene from the book-length poem Ishtar
and Izdubar (1884) by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton, the first modern
literary adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh
The first modern literary adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh was
Ishtar and Izdubar (1884) by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton, an American
lawyer and businessman. Hamilton had rudimentary knowledge of Akkadian,
which he had learned from Archibald Sayce's 1872 Assyrian Grammar
for Comparative Purposes. Hamilton's book relied heavily on Smith's
translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but also made major changes.
For instance, Hamilton omitted the famous flood story entirely and
instead focused on the romantic relationship between Ishtar and
Gilgamesh. Ishtar and Izdubar expanded the original roughly 3,000
lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh to roughly 6,000 lines of rhyming
couplets grouped into forty-eight cantos. Hamilton significantly
altered most of the characters and introduced entirely new episodes
not found in the original epic. Significantly influenced by Edward
FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Edwin Arnold's The Light
of Asia, Hamilton's characters dress more like nineteenth-century
Turks than ancient Babylonians. Hamilton also changed the tone of
the epic from the "grim realism" and "ironic tragedy"
of the original to a "cheery optimism" filled with "the
sweet strains of love and harmony".
In
his 1904 book Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients, the
German Assyriologist Alfred Jeremias equated Gilgamesh with the
king Nimrod from the Book of Genesis and argued that Gilgamesh's
strength must come from his hair, like the hero Samson in the Book
of Judges, and that he must have performed Twelve Labors like the
hero Heracles in Greek mythology. In his 1906 book Das Gilgamesch-Epos
in der Weltliteratur, the Orientalist Peter Jensen declared that
the Epic of Gilgamesh was the source behind nearly all the stories
in the Old Testament, arguing that Moses is "the Gilgamesh
of Exodus who saves the children of Israel from precisely the same
situation faced by the inhabitants of Erech at the beginning of
the Babylonian epic." He then proceeded to argue that Abraham,
Isaac, Samson, David, and various other biblical figures are all
nothing more than exact copies of Gilgamesh. Finally, he declared
that even Jesus is "nothing but an Israelite Gilgamesh. Nothing
but an adjunct to Abraham, Moses, and countless other figures in
the saga." This ideology became known as Panbabylonianism and
was almost immediately rejected by mainstream scholars. The most
stalwart critics of Panbabylonianism were those associated with
the emerging Religionsgeschichtliche Schule. Hermann Gunkel dismissed
most of Jensen's purported parallels between Gilgamesh and biblical
figures as mere baseless sensationalism. He concluded that Jensen
and other Assyriologists like him had failed to understand the complexities
of Old Testament scholarship and had confused scholars with "conspicuous
mistakes and remarkable aberrations".
In
English-speaking countries, the prevailing scholarly interpretation
during the early twentieth century was one originally proposed by
Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, which held that Gilgamesh is a
"solar hero", whose actions represent the movements of
the sun, and that the twelve tablets of his epic represent the twelve
signs of the Babylonian zodiac. The Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud, drawing on the theories of James George Frazer and Paul Ehrenreich,
interpreted Gilgamesh and Eabani (the earlier misreading for Enkidu)
as representing "man" and "crude sensuality"
respectively. He compared them to other brother-figures in world
mythology, remarking, "One is always weaker than the other
and dies sooner. In Gilgamesh this ages-old motif of the unequal
pair of brothers served to represent the relationship between a
man and his libido." He also saw Enkidu as representing the
placenta, the "weaker twin" who dies shortly after birth.
Freud's friend and pupil Carl Jung frequently discusses Gilgamesh
in his early work Symbole der Wandlung (1911–1912). He, for
instance, cites Ishtar's sexual attraction to Gilgamesh as an example
of the mother's incestuous desire for her son, Humbaba as an example
of an oppressive father-figure whom Gilgamesh must overcome, and
Gilgamesh himself as an example of a man who forgets his dependence
on the unconscious and is punished by the "gods", who
represent it.
Modern
interpretations and cultural significance :
![](581px-Royal_Air_Force_Bomber_Command,_1942-1945._CL3400.jpg)
Existential
angst during the aftermath of World War II significantly contributed
to Gilgamesh's rise in popularity in the middle of the twentieth
century. For instance, the German novelist Hermann Kasack used Enkidu's
vision of the Underworld from the Epic of Gilgamesh as a metaphor
for the bombed-out city of Hamburg (pictured above) in his 1947
novel Die Stadt hinter dem Strom.
In the years following World War II, Gilgamesh, formerly an obscure
figure known only by a few scholars, gradually became increasingly
popular with modern audiences. The Epic of Gilgamesh's existential
themes made it particularly appealing to German authors in the years
following the war. In his 1947 existentialist novel Die Stadt hinter
dem Strom, the German novelist Hermann Kasack adapted elements of
the epic into a metaphor for the aftermath of the destruction of
World War II in Germany, portraying the bombed-out city of Hamburg
as resembling the frightening Underworld seen by Enkidu in his dream.
In Hans Henny Jahnn's magnum opus River Without Shores (1949–1950),
the middle section of the trilogy centers around a composer whose
twenty-year-long homoerotic relationship with a friend mirrors that
of Gilgamesh with Enkidu and whose masterpiece turns out to be a
symphony about Gilgamesh.
The
Quest of Gilgamesh, a 1953 radio play by Douglas Geoffrey Bridson,
helped popularize the epic in Britain. In the United States, Charles
Olson praised the epic in his poems and essays and Gregory Corso
believed that it contained ancient virtues capable of curing what
he viewed as modern moral degeneracy. The 1966 postfigurative novel
Gilgamesch by Guido Bachmann became a classic of German "queer
literature" and set a decades-long international literary trend
of portraying Gilgamesh and Enkidu as homosexual lovers. This trend
proved so popular that the Epic of Gilgamesh itself is included
in The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature (1998) as a major early
work of that genre. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminist literary critics
analyzed the Epic of Gilgamesh as showing evidence for a transition
from the original matriarchy of all humanity to modern patriarchy.
As the Green Movement expanded in Europe, Gilgamesh's story began
to be seen through an environmentalist lens, with Enkidu's death
symbolizing man's separation from nature.
![](Gilagmesh.jpg)
A modern statue of Gilgamesh stands at the University of
Sydney
Theodore Ziolkowski, a scholar of modern literature, states, that
"unlike most other figures from myth, literature, and history,
Gilgamesh has established himself as an autonomous entity or simply
a name, often independent of the epic context in which he originally
became known. (As analogous examples one might think, for instance,
of the Minotaur or Frankenstein's monster.)" The Epic of Gilgamesh
has been translated into many major world languages and has become
a staple of American world literature classes. Many contemporary
authors and novelists have drawn inspiration from it, including
an American avant-garde theater collective called "The Gilgamesh
Group" and Joan London in her novel Gilgamesh (2001). The Great
American Novel (1973) by Philip Roth features a character named
"Gil Gamesh", who is the star pitcher of a fictional 1930s
baseball team called the "Patriot League".
Starting
in the late twentieth century, the Epic of Gilgamesh began to be
read again in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, the former President of Iraq,
had a lifelong fascination with Gilgamesh. Hussein's first novel
Zabibah and the King (2000) is an allegory for the Gulf War set
in ancient Assyria that blends elements of the Epic of Gilgamesh
and the One Thousand and One Nights. Like Gilgamesh, the king at
the beginning of the novel is a brutal tyrant who misuses his power
and oppresses his people, but, through the aid of a commoner woman
named Zabibah, he grows into a more just ruler. When the United
States pressured Hussein to step down in February 2003, Hussein
gave a speech to a group of his generals posing the idea in a positive
light by comparing himself to the epic hero.
Scholars
like Susan Ackerman and Wayne R. Dynes have noted that the language
used to describe Gilgamesh's relationship with Enkidu seems to have
homoerotic implications. Ackerman notes that, when Gilgamesh veils
Enkidu's body, Enkidu is compared to a "bride". Ackerman
states, "that Gilgamesh, according to both versions, will love
Enkidu 'like a wife' may further imply sexual intercourse."
In
2000, a modern statue of Gilgamesh by the Assyrian sculptor Lewis
Batros was unveiled at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Source
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh