Gilgamesh

• I. The history of the epic
  • A. Gilgamesh is the first tragic hero
  • B. Modes in which the epic may be read
    • 1. As adventure
    • 2. As a moral tale
    • 3. As a tragedy
  • C. Themes
    • 1. Morality
    • 2. Quest for knowledge
    • 3. Search for escape from human limitations
  • D. Origins
    • 1. Probable oral beginnings: 3000 – 2700 BC
    • 2. First written down 1200 BC
    • 3. Final recension 650 BC
      • a. Library of ASSURBANIPAL (LAST GREAT KING OF ASSYRIA)
• II. The discovery of the tablets
  • A. Austen Henry Layard: 1839
    • 1. Excavated Nineveh
    • 2. Discovered thousands of broken tablets
    • 3. Returned findings to British Museum
  • B. Henry Rawlinson: 1855
    • 1. Began decipherment of cuneiform
    • 2. Joined by George Smith –1866
  • C. Rassam: 1853
    • 1. Layard’s collaborator and successor
    • 2. Excavated the actual Gilgamesh tablets
  • D. George Smith: 1872
    • 1. Announced flood account among the tablets to the Society of Biblical Archaeology
    • 2. Went to Nineveh to find the missing lines of the flood story
    • 3. Made the flood account (Tablet 11) the most completely recovered
  • E. John Punnet Peters: 1890
    • 1. Excavated oldest versions of the epic in the Sumerian language
    • 2. Only American involved
• III. The historical background
  • A. Only Assurbanipal’s recension survives extant
  • B. Evidence indicates most of the important elements existed independently in older Sumerian literature
  • C. Sumerians were the first literate inhabitants of Mesopotamia
    • 1. Probably arrived from north and east in the fourth millennium BC
    • 2. Irrigated fields and built cities
    • 3. Conquered by Semitic tribes in the third millennium BC
    • 4. Legal, linguistic, and philosophic influence persisted
  • D. The historical Gilgamesh
    • 1. Fifth postdiluvian ruler of Uruk (biblical Erech; modern Warka)
    • 2. Builder: “Uruk of the strong walls”
  • E. Temples
    • 1. Ziggurat: holy mountain in miniature
    • 2. Served by a perpetual priesthood
      • a. Holders/controllers of most wealth
      • b. Archivists
      • c. Teachers
      • d. Scholars
      • e. Mathematicians
• IV. The hero of the epic
  • A. An historical Gilgamesh did rule in Uruk around 3000 – 2500 BC, most probably within a hundred years of 2700 BC
  • B. Records praise his superior (plano–convex) bricks in fortifications
  • C. Evidence he was regarded as a great judge (like the Greek Minos)
  • D. The literary Gilgamesh
    • 1. Two parts god, one part man
      • a. Mother: goddess gave him beauty, strength, restlessness
      • b. Father: mortal gave him mortality
    • 2. The tragedy: conflict between the desires of the god and the destiny of the man
    • 3. Parents’ names
      • a. Ninsun, minor goddess noted for wisdom
      • b. Lugulbanda, god–king
  • E. Unity among the Sumerian, Old Babylonian, and Assyrian versions
    • 1. Profoundly pessimistic attitude toward human life and the world
      • a. Insecurity of geography
      • b. Instability of religious world view/political situation
    • 2. Preoccupation with fame, reputation, revolt against laws of separation and death
• V. The principal gods of the epic (Read pp. 23 – 30)
• VI. The story
  • A. Enkidu’s story
    • 1. The Fall in reverse
    • 2. Allegory of man’s rise to civilization
      • a. Savagery
      • b. Nomad taken to and lost in the city
      • c. “Noble savage” tempted, winning through temptress’s knowledge that brings only unhappiness
  • B. The Cedar Forest episode
    • 1. Allegorical levels
      • a. Real forest in north Syria or southwest Persia
      • b. Scene of strange adventures (sword and sorcery)
      • c. Dark forest of the soul
    • 2. Historical level
      • a. Need of cities for timber
      • b. Humbaba’s attributes become the aspects of a volcano
    • 3. Quest level
      • a. Heroes in search of fame
      • b. Humbaba becomes a god – rival to Shamash
    • 4. Moral level
      • a. Good vs. evil
      • b. Humbaba is evil incarnate
    • 5. Forest episode as a trap of Enlil’s to destroy Gilgamesh and Enkidu
  • C. Glorification of Gilgamesh as king
  • D. Taunting of the goddess by a disdainful mortal
    • 1. Anchises and Aphrodite – Homer
    • 2. Hippolytus and Aphrodite – Ovid
    • 3. Picus and Circe – Ovid
  • E. Killing of the Bull of Heaven
    • 1. Disaster brought on by pride
      • a. Enkidu refused Humbaba’s prayer for mercy
      • b. He insulted Ishtar
    • 2. Quarrel between Shamash and Enlil = sun vs. storm
  • F. Death of Enkidu
    • 1. Gilgamesh experiences irreparable separation
    • 2. Note the inevitability of death results now in a sense of defeat rather than of challenge
  • G. Gilgamesh’s second journey
    • 1. Topography is otherworldly
    • 2. The path is that of the sun
    • 3. Siduri is like Circe
    • 4. Urshanabi is not Charon
    • 5. Dilmun is like Elysium, but is definitely not Hades or Tartarus or Hell
  • H. For more see pp. 39 – 44.