The Historical Background of Gilgamesh - Book Report/Review Example

Gilgamesh 2008 Gilgamesh, the oldest documented stories in the world tells about an ancient King of Uruk, Gilgamesh, who may have in fact existed, and whose name is on the Sumerian (Sumer was in Mesopotamia, i.e. today called Iraq -"Mesopotamia," the Greek for "between two rivers" - the Tigris and the Euphrates). The epic dates back to the 18th century before the Christian era, that is, more than 3,700 years ago. Engraved in the block -shaped letters known as cuneiform on clay tablets, Gilgamesh stands as the most basic classic of world literature, a classic which is still in the making, for scholars keep on discovering and assemble slices -- in Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite and other ancient languages intermittently adding some more lines to this story of the ancient Middle Eastern king's search for immortality and his accepting the inevitability of death (Dirda, 2007). The story of Gilgamesh, in several Sumerian versions, was at first generally known in the third millennium B.C. After a long oral history of retelling, this story in a regulated Akkadian version was recorded in the seventh century B.C., to be kept in the celebrated library of King Assurbanipal of Nineveh, written on twelve tablets. "Gilgamesh's life and his adventures during his unsuccessful quest for immortality are told on eleven of the twelve tablets." The twelfth tablet is "a description of the nether world, in which Gilgamesh rules after his death as divine judge over the shades, guiding and advising them. . ." (Oppenheim, 257) Later, it waslost, barring sporadic pieces. It was rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century A.D., and made accessible in translation to German by the start of the twentieth century to surprise people that The Book of Genesis, supposedly written by Moses and considered to be the seed for the entire Bible are drawn from the story of Gilgamesh (GotQuestions). Both these ancient texts describe the "fall" of mankind and a deluge. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, originally found on 12 stone tablets, depicts Gilgamesh as the King of Uruk, who is two-third god and one-third man, aroused into humanity by his friend Enkidu. After Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh goes for a voyage in search of immortality (Ancient Texts). The Historical Background Mesopotamia was the site of one of the oldest urban civilizations where, during the fourth millennium B.C., human communities went through an astonishingly fast change from villages to developed cities with big populations, temples and palaces. During this era, "writing is invented, large buildings and temples appear for the first time. . . . it was the organization of the canal system, of irrigation, that made the further developments possible." (Kirk, 98). In Mesopotamia there were perpetual conflicts between the new cities in the lush river valley and the primeval culture of the wandering and hill peoples, the basic nature of which is between civilization and wildness. Mesopotamia was not land of a docile nature by any means, alternating between famine and fierce floods as it is seen in the conflict between the wild Enkidu loosening traps, hampering people's living or, the enlightening Harlot tempting Enkidu to pleasures and duties of civilization. The humanizing of Enkidu (who ws two-third god and one-third man,) by the Harlot can be seen as a allegory for the cultivating of the land by civilized ways, specially the system of canals that regulated the violent waters letting expected, irrigated agriculture (Kramer, 1981). Gilgamesh: From Oral to Written tradition The oral tradition has the distinction that without a fixed written text, stories are passed off from one generation to the next for thousands of years, changing from narrator to narrator , adjusted to this community and that, with the names of settings and characters added and /or taken away to meet the needs of a particular audience. The story of Gilgamesh belongs to such an oral tradition. "It is virtually impossible to determine when the material was first written down, let alone when it originated orally or how long it existed in an oral tradition. Rather it can be assumed, from the materials handed down from succeeding ancient peoples and languages, that it was not composed all of a piece and at one time but was added to gradually and varied by many tellers." (Mason, page 98) The story Gilgamesh was the King of Uruk is part human being and partly god. Discovering that he was partly human, he accepted this reality during the flow of the story. He was a bad ruler, who slept with all the women and carted off children from their families. The goddess Aruru created a man, Enkidu to equal Gilgamesh in order to save his subjects from his tyranny. Enkidu was covered with unkempt hair, fierce like the wilds eating grass with the gazelles and drinking water with the animals. A trapper was scared by the sight of Enkidu and asked his father to do something as Enkidu was liberating animals from the traps. His father advised him to go to Gilgamesh in Uruk asking for help and then bring a harlot from a temple with him who would seduce Enkidu, so that next the wild animals will throw Enkidu out and he can be drawn in to civilized culture. The whore complied, seducing Enkidu, so he was discarded by the animals and then she taught Enkidu ways of civilization, like, to be dressed in clothes, eating bread and consuming wine. She told him of the power of Gilgamesh making Enkidu wanting to encounter and confront Gilgamesh to a fight. In that fight, Gilgamesh lastly threw Enkidu, causing him to accept Gilgamesh as a true king and eventually becoming his best friend. Gilgamesh yearned to do great things in order to be remembered-- to go to the cedar forest and kill its guard fiend, Humbaba, scaring Enkidu as he knows Humbaba, but after being pestered by Gilgamesh prepared to accompany him to the daring trip. The epic tells of the escapades of the aggressive and commanding Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu. When Enkidu unexpectedly fell ill and died, Gilgamesh became consumed by a dread of death. His forebear Ut-napishtim (who with his wife had been the only people to endure a great flood) told him of a plant that gave everlasting life. After getting the plant, though, Gilgamesh left it carelessly and a serpent took it away. The hero then went to the ghost of Enkidu for soothing information of the life after death but unfortunately was told by Enkidu that a depressing future waited for the dead. Reading Gilgamesh though the biblical paradise lost While nakedness was portrayed in the Epic of Gilgamesh as a symbol of wildness and counter-civilization, in the Hebrew world of Genesis, it was the symbol of purity and innocence. In both epics, the woman tempted the man and makes him fall from gods' grace. In Genesis, Eve tempted Adam into the world of sin although there was no direct sexual initiation by Eve like Shammat, the temple prostitute taming Enkidu, Adam, like Enkidu, got clothed and fell from goodness. In both Gilgamesh and Genesis, the humanization of the early creations brought with it pleasure and companionship but also misery and pain (Langill, 2003). In the Sumerian epic, the final fall came in the form of Gilgamesh losing his friend, Enkidu. However, Gilgamesh found the immortal man who survived the deluge and now rests in peace. In Genesis, on the other hand, Adam and Eve lost their heavenly abode as they fell from virtue and the flood washed away the sins of mankind. In the epic of Gilgamesh, gods were arrogant and men had to follow their whims. Mesopotamia, at that time, did not have a stable government and the ever-changing directions of the rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, resulted in lack of farmland and hence that of food. Hence, the people believed that the gods meant to punish human beings. So, Gilgamesh and Enkidu fall from their grace whenever they disobeyed the gods. On the other hand, the Hebrew God, as described in the Genesis, was the creator who cared for his creations. It was the human beings who wanted to usurp power from God and become like Him. For example, in the Cane and Abel story, Cane tried to become like God and take death in his own hands (DeLauro). Hence, such men were destined to fall from grace of the gods. The Flood and Bible We have been told in the 11th table that it was Utnapishtim's flood. The convention of the gods resolved to flood the whole world to wipe out mankind. But Ea, the god who made man, informed Utnapishtim, from Shuruppak, a city on the banks of the Euphrates, asking him to construct a huge boat: 'O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu: Tear down the house and build a boat! Abandon wealth and seek living beings! Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!( The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI). Utnapishtim obeyed and sealed his ark with pitch. He took all animals with spinal cords, and his family members, and also some other humans. Shamash, the sun god sprinkled down loaves of bread and poured down wheat. Then the flood came, so ferocious that the gods were scared by the flood, and moved back, going up to the heaven of Anu. They were were trembling like dogs, bending by the "outer wall". Ishtar screamed like a "woman in childbirth", the "sweet-voiced Mistress of the Gods" howled. And The gods-those of the Anunnaki-were weeping with her, the gods humbly sat weeping, sobbing with grief(), their lips burning, parched with thirst( The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI) However, the flood was comparatively brief. It swayed for "Six days and seven nights", squashing the land. On the 7th day the storm was hammering, it was like a war. Then the ark settled on Mount Nisir (or Nimush), almost 500 km (300 miles) from Mt Ararat. Utnapishtim sent out a dove then a swallow, but they returned indicating that they did not find land there. Then he sent out a raven that didn't come back. So he freed the animals and sacrificed a sheep. The gods smelled the savor, the gods smelled the sweet savor, and collected like flies over a (sheep) sacrifice.' Then Enlil saw the ark and was infuriated that some humans had endured the flood But Ea harshly reproached Enlil for excess in causing the flood, at which Enlil conferred immortality to Utnapishtim and his wife, and sent them to live distant, at the Mouth of the Rivers, the place where Gilgamesh found him, and heard the outstanding story. Gilgamesh found the immortal man who survived the deluge and now rested in peace. It is often believed that Utnapisthim was the model for the flood and Noah's ark in Genesis. Scholars have pointed out that Utnapishtim and his wife could be the source for Adam and Eve and the paradise on earth that they live in could be compared with the Garden of Eden (Mattfield, 2000). However, while Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden once they fell from the moral standards set by God, Gilgamesh found paradise where the immortal man continued to live. The flood myth is common in many of the ancient texts and the similarity is striking in Gilgamesh and Genesis. Gilgamesh, on his voyage reaches a land - ostensibly paradise on earth - where a man called Utnapisthim and his wife survived a deluge and attained immortality. The deluge occurs in the Sumerian epic before Gilgamesh found the immortal man who rested in peace after the flood while in Genesis, the flood washes away the sins of mankind after Adam and Eve sin and lose the heavenly abode. The Genesis modified the story of Gilgamesh in that God relented on His rage and wanted only the faithful to live, like Utnapishtim in Gilgamesh. In Genesis, God was patient and waited for 120 years for mankind to turn less wicked (Genesis 6:3). On the other hand, in Gilgamesh, the gods were in council and hardly ever in agreement with each other. Besides, the gods in Gilgamesh had limited powers and they had to starve when there is no life on earth. It seems that the human writers of Gilgamesh had more or less transposed their human experiences on the gods. On the other hand, the release of animals by Noah seemed to indicate the level of the flood. Noah's Ark, as directed by God, is described in highly engineering terms, of a huge volume that made it impossible to sink while Utnapishtim's ark is a simple cube and dimensionless. Besides, Genesis was an older myth, on which pagan myths like Gilgamesh have developed. Noah's Ark, on the other hand, is considered to be a historical truth and Noah as if a real person, as Jesus says: 'Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the Ark. Then the Flood came and destroyed them all.' (Luke 17:26-27). Gilgamesh: Immortality and Death Gilgamesh gradually became conscious that immortality was beyond his ability to uphold as there were life-lessons still to be achieved. After Enkidu's death, he lamented: "What can I do, where can I go A thief has stolen my flesh. Death lives in the house where my bed is; wherever I set my feet, Death is." Return to Uruk he must, to "suffer" again the "death," and rebirth, of embodied life. In The Buried Book (2007), David Damrosch a Columbia professor of comparative literature notes that " Gilgamesh is often read as an existential tale of the fear of death and the quest for immortality, but the epic is equally a tale of tyranny and its consequences." It also reflects on "the limits of culture . . . presented in contrast to the world of nature." In his last chapter, Damrosch talks about some later uses of the Gilgamesh story, centering on Philip Roth's The Great American Novel (in which an important character is a baseball pitcher named Gil Gamesh) and Saddam Hussein's novel Zabibah wal-Malik, a sort of love story-cum- symbol of the first Gulf War. Above all, the Damrosch recommends his readers to appreciate that Gigamesh stories are part of an "Islamo-Christian civilization." "Gilgamesh and The Iliad, the Bible and the Qur'an were not products of secluded, perpetually conflicting civilizations but they are reciprocally shared consequences of the lush cultural milieu of western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean world. Isaac and Ishmael are half brothers, and Uta-napishtim and Noah are closer in spite of everything. They are two forms of indistinguishable character. This is a very well-intended politically correct view that can at times appear as snobbish to the bigoted Victorians as they so habitually were to "Orientals." In spite of these flaws, this view helps us to get introduced to a very old classic that has actually come to live on its own in the 21st century. This Babylonian epic lingers to depict a very human story about knowledge excruciatingly obtained. No wonder that its hero is called, in the unforgettable first line, "He who saw the Deep." And what does Gilgamesh learn Something all of us still learn before the end that waits for everyone -- "a man's life is snapped off like a reed in a canebrake". We should then make good deeds, love our families and benefit from simple pleasures. As Utanapishtim says, in Andrew George's translation: But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full, Enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, Dance and play day and night! Let your clothes be clean, Let your head be washed, may you bathe in water! Gaze on the child who holds your hand, Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace! For such is the destiny [of mortal men] (as cited from Dirda, 2007). Works cited Dirda,Michael, In search of Gilgamesh, the epic hero of ancient Babylonia, book review, , The Buried Book:The Loss and Rediscovery Of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh By David Damrosch, Henry Holt, Washigton Post, March 2, 2007 Oppenheim, A. Leo. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization. Revised Edition, completed by Erica Reiner. The University of Chicago Press, 1964,1977. Gotquestions.org, Book of Genesis, retrieved from http://www.gotquestions.org/Book-ofGenesis.html Ancient Texts, The Epic of Gilgamesh, retrieved from http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/ Kirk, G.S. Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures. Cambridge U.P. and California U.P., 1970. Mattfeld, Walter Reinhold Warttig, Sabbath Origins and the Epic of Gilgamesh, Metareligion, 2000, Kramer, Samuel Noah. History Begins at Sumer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1981. Second paperback printing, 1990. Orig. published under title: From the tablets of Sumer: Indian Hills, Colo.: Falcon's Wing Press, 1956. Mason, Herbert. Gilgamesh. A Verse Narrative by Herbert Mason with an after word by John H. Marks. A Mentor Book. N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1970. angill, Tim Myth Making in the Bible and the Ancient Near East: The Yahwist Primeval Creation Myth, Axis Mundi, 2003 DeLauro, David, Gilgamesh and Genesis, Roots of Western Civilization, retrieved from http://www.saintjoe.edu/daved/PAPERS/c3ppr1.html Morris, Henry M.The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings, Baker Books, 1995 Read More