Gilgamesh Read online

  However, the death of his partner drives home to Gilgamesh the unbearable fact that he too will someday perish:

  Then I became afraid that I would die too,

  Terrified of death, and so I wander the wild.

  What happened to my friend was too much for me,

  And so I wander far, wander far in the wild.

  (Tablet X 57–60)

  Will I not die some day and be just like Enkidu?

  My heart is pierced through with sorrow!

  I am afraid of death, and so I wander the wild

  Searching for Utanapishtim, son of Ubar-Tutu.

  (Tablet IX 3–6)

  On his way to Utanapishtim, Gilgamesh is admonished as to the futility of his quest by his patron, the Sun God: “Where are you wandering, Gilgamesh? / You will never find the life you are seeking” (Tablet IX 22–23). Nonetheless the hero bluffs and bullies his way past the Scorpion People, the tavern-keeper, and the ferryman to reach his immediate goal, his ancestor Utanapishtim, who duly informs him about the unique circumstances under which he had been granted immortality, adding: “As for you, who will call the gods to assembly / So you can come to have the life you are seeking?” (Tablet XI 199–200).

  Having then failed the challenge of conquering sleep—the “little brother of Death,” according to the Greeks—Gilgamesh falls into despair:

  “O Utanapishtim, what should I do, where should I go?

  A thief has stolen my body.

  {xxiii} Death has moved into my bedroom,

  And wherever I go, Death will be with me.”

  (Tablet XI 238–41)

  When he is robbed by a serpent of even the “Heartbeat Plant” that would have conferred upon him (temporary) rejuvenation, the hero laments to his new companion:

  “For whom did I work so hard, Urshanabi,

  For whom did I drain my heart dry of blood?

  I didn’t do anything good for myself,

  Only did the earth-lion, the snake, a favor.”

  (Tablet XI 306–9)

  The Epic concludes with the lines already quoted above, wherein Gilgamesh utilizes the description of Uruk and its walls—his achievements after all—implicitly to express his pride in his “eternal name” (cf. Tablet II 162).

  Since the introduction to the Epic in Tablet I praises the virtues of ­Gilgamesh as they may be seen after his return from his quest before it launches into a catalogue of his earlier abuses, the ancient reader—or listener—might well see the Epic as a sort of “mirror for princes”—a text in which a malfeasant ruler learns from experience to temper his appetites and to rule in the interests of his subjects as well as his own. But this lesson is less trenchant for a modern woman or man—at least for those not residing in an autocracy. An audience from any period or society, however, will appreciate the hero’s struggle to come to terms with his inherent limitations, his ultimate acceptance of his transitory existence as a human being, and his final—at least within this tale—consolation in taking pride in his earthly achievements.

  Gary Beckman

  University of Michigan

  1. The poet who adapted this older source for the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic neglected to change the name of the tale’s protagonist from Atrahasis to Utanapishtim in Tablet XI, lines 45 and 189.

  {xxv} About This Edition

  My goal in approaching the Gilgamesh epic, which I come to as an enthusiast rather than a professional Assyriologist, has been to produce a version that is coherent as English narrative poetry while staying as close as is feasible to the outlines of the original text. The main challenge has been the fragmentary nature of the text as we have it. I have relied throughout upon Andrew George’s construction of the Standard Version of the Gilgamesh epic in his Oxford critical edition (2003) as well as the material in his publication (with F.N.H. Al-Rawi, 2014) of the more recently discovered Monkey Tablet, which provides twenty or so additional lines in Tablet V. George’s own translation of the Akkadian and Old Babylonian texts (and a bit of prose Hittite at the beginning of Tablet VII) that he has assembled indicates by way of brackets, italics, ellipses, and blank spaces exactly where the fragmentary lines break down and where the lacunas—gaps in the cuneiform tablet manuscripts—large and small, occur. His text, translation, and introductory essays are an invaluable service, indispensable really, to anyone interested in the current state of the Standard Version, the history of its discovery and reconstruction, and its interpretation.

  A comparison of my version with the translation in George’s edition will show that I have omitted some passages that are too fragmentary to yield continuous meaning, but also that I have adopted many of his conjectures for individual words and phrases that complete the meaning of a given fragmentary line. I have also knitted together other, more substantial, fragmentary passages into coherent scenes, condensed some passages, and have occasionally improvised a transitional line or two that ties together scenes separated by a substantial lacuna. All of this is in the interest of the reader who is better served by a text that reads straight through on a clean page.

  In the same spirit, I have eliminated or varied some of the formulaic ­language and repetition common in the original, keeping, I hope, just enough to represent or at least suggest these stylistic features. Also in the spirit of readability—as well as narrative drive and dramatic shaping—I have arranged the text into verse paragraphs rather than reproducing the couplet, and sometimes triplet and quatrain structures, that are implicit in the Akkadian text. I do retain the couplet structure where it is rhetorically important, as in Gilgamesh’s lament for Enkidu in Tablet VIII.

  {xxvi} My verse line, typically two main stresses on either side of a central syntactic pause, is intended to be analogous to the original’s verse, although I go easy on the alliteration that is an important feature in Gilgamesh’s verse line, which in some ways bears an uncanny resemblance to the Old English meter in Beowulf. Recitations of passages in the Akkadian compiled by Martin Worthington can be found at http://www.openculture.com/2010/10/the_sounds_of_ancient_mesopotamia.html. In the main my lines are end-stopped, as in the original, but I do occasionally use strategic enjambment, running a sentence into the next line and then stopping, to keep the movement fluid and for emphatic effect in shaping a scene.

  The line numbers in the margin refer to my version. (In this ebook, the line numbers have been enclosed in square brackets and embedded in the text.) The corresponding line numbers in George’s edition and in Al-Rawi’s and George’s edition of Tablet V are given in the Appendix.

  Having translated Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as well as Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days earlier in my career, working on Gilgamesh has brought home to me as nothing else has the cogency of Martin West’s thesis in his monumental The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 1997), a book that has been justly hailed as one of the most important works in classical studies of our generation. West argues in manifold and convincing detail that early Greek culture in general—and poetry especially—are deeply indebted to Mesopotamian and other Near Eastern precedents, and he traces the lines of cultural transmission from east to west. His chapters on Homeric epic expose many stylistic features—formulas, similes, speech patterns, narrative motifs and structures—that Iliad and Odyssey have in common with Gilgamesh; he also lays out the greater case that the Akkadian epic is structurally and thematically both Iliadic and Odyssean. In the first part of the poem the hero Gilgamesh is a literary ancestor of Achilles, with a divine mother who intercedes for him and a beloved friend whom he loses to a death he mourns elaborately and cannot accept. In the latter half he becomes a primordial Odysseus, a solar hero in his journey through the dark and over the sea and finally back to his original home. Readers who catch echoes of my translations of Greek epic in my rendering of Gilgamesh should not be surprised.

  I am indebted to Gary Beckman not only for his splendid Introduction; Glossary of Deities, Persons, and Places
; and Suggestions for Further Reading, but also for the many suggestions and corrections he made to improve the manuscript. My thanks also to an anonymous reader for an early critical reading of my version of Tablet I that both encouraged me and got me on the right track. And I am grateful to Cara Polsley and Erland Crupper for {xxvii} reading and commenting on the entire manuscript. My special thanks to Paula Console for teaching an early draft to her students at Donnelly College and giving me feedback. Brian Rak, my longtime friend and editor at Hackett, is responsible, among his other ministrations, for motivating me to start learning Akkadian and working on Gilgamesh. I’m grateful to him. And to my wife, Judy ­Roitman, who has, as ever, sustained me in the work.

  —Stanley Lombardo

  {xxviii} Timeline

  Beginning Date

  Ending Date

  ca. 2600 BCE

  Sumerian First Dynasty of Ur

  (1) A possible human ruler named Bilgames may have lived around 2600 BCE; an extant royal inscription from about this time mentions a king of Kish named Enmebaragesi, who lived around 2600 BCE (see below). (2) A minor deity named Bilgames, later held to be an ancestor of the rulers of the Third Dynasty of Ur, is also attested in a Sumerian text from this period.

  2112 BCE

  2004 BCE

  Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur

  (1) The Sumerian King List, which dates from this period, purports to list kings of the First Dynasty of Ur. Among them, in sixth place, is Bilgames. (2) Royal hymns from this period claim that the Third Dynasty’s King Shulgi is a brother of the deity Bilgames. (3) The Sumerian King List mentions a king of Kish named Enmebaragesi, father of Aka. Aka is otherwise known as an enemy of Bilgames in one of the five extant Sumerian Bilgames tales.

  1800 BCE

  1600 BCE

  Old Babylonian Period

  (1) Oral Sumerian Bilgames tales are preserved by Babylonian scribes. (2) A distinctive Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic is recorded. (3) Hammurabi reigns from ca.1792 to ca.1750 BCE.

  {xxix} ca. 1200 BCE

  The Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic Takes Shape

  What has survived as the best-known version of the Gilgamesh epic is attributed to Sîn-lēqi-unninnī, a Babylonian sage from an earlier era.

  911 BCE

  609 BCE

  Neo-Assyrian Empire

  In this period, Akkadian cuneiform is retained for many governmental and prestige purposes (such as wall reliefs) but business is increasingly documented in Aramaic-language documents written in Aramaic script on perishable materials, of which few examples survive.

  800 BCE

  700 BCE

  Earliest Preserved Tablets Attesting the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic

  The Gilgamesh tablets dating from this period record texts composed several hundred years earlier.

  722 BCE

  705 BCE

  Reign of Sargon II

  Dur-Sharrukin, a royal city built expressly for the Assyrian king Sargon II, is abandoned immediately after his death in battle. His successor Sennacherib makes Nineveh, ca.12 miles south, the new royal city.

  {xxx} 668 BCE

  627 BCE

  Reign of Ashurbanipal

  The library of Ashurbanipal, one of the last Assyrian kings, in Nineveh (outside present-day Mosul) collects thousands of clay tablets preserving the Babylonian literary heritage.

  626 BCE

  539 BCE

  Neo-Babylonian Empire

  This period sees a renaissance of the Old Babylonian cultural traditions, especially under the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II (ca. 605 to ca. 561 BCE), though Aramaic remains the spoken language.

  539 BCE

  Neo-Babylonian Empire Falls to the Persian Empire

  Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire conquers Babylonia. The Persians employ Aramaic as their administrative language.

  330 BCE

  Alexander the Great of Macedonia Defeats the Persian Empire

  Alexander’s conquests usher in the Hellenistic era, which spreads Greek culture throughout Mesopotamia.

  27 BCE

  Caesar Augustus Inaugurates the Roman Empire

  With his defeat of Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium, Caesar Augustus (Octavian) annexes Egypt, and the Roman Republic becomes the Roman Empire.

  ca. 100

  Extinction of Cuneiform Literacy

  Greek and Roman literary traditions having eclipsed those of Mesopotamia, cuneiform literacy is lost for more than 1700 years.

  {xxxi} 1842

  1844

  Botta Excavates Khorsabad

  Paul-Émile Botta, a French diplomat, excavates Khorsabad and uncovers remains of Dur-Sharrukin, royal city of Assyrian ruler Sargon II (722–705 BCE).

  1845

  1847

  Layard Excavates Küyünjik

  Austen Henry Layard, a British diplomat, excavates the mound of Küyünjik near Mosul, where he uncovers the remains of Nineveh, including the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. Clay tablets and fragments from the library are shipped to the British Museum in London.

  1857

  Decipherment of Cuneiform

  Independent efforts by amateur and professional scholars from England, Ireland, France, and Germany studying clay tablet fragments held by the British Museum collectively succeed in breaking the code of the cuneiform writing system.

  1872

  Smith Presents The Chaldean Account of Genesis

  Amateur cuneiform scholar George Smith recognizes parallels in the Biblical account of Noah’s flood and that of a similar flood described in Tablet XI of the Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic and presents his sensational findings to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London. In 1876 he publishes his translation of Tablet XI to great acclaim under the title The Chaldean Account of Genesis.

  1884

  1930

  Publication of Editions of the Text of the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic

  German scholar and professor of Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University Paul Haupt begins publishing his edition of the known text of twelve tablets of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic as Das babylonische Nimrodepos. In 1930, British archaeologist R.C. Campbell Thompson publishes expanded version of the twelve tablets of the epic.

  {xxxii} 2003

  U.S. Invasion

  of Iraq

  The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq results in widespread looting of antiquities, most notably from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, where more than thirteen thousand objects are stolen.

  2003

  George Publishes New Edition of Gilgamesh

  Professor Andrew George of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the ­University of London publishes the most complete edition of the epic to date, accounting for an estimated eighty percent of the text of the Standard Babylonian version.

  2011

  Al-Rawi Discovers the “Monkey Tablet”

  Under direction of the Sulaymaniyah Museum in Kurdistani Iraq, Professor Farouk Al-Rawi of SOAS University of London buys back antiquities looted after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, discovering a tablet with previously unknown lines from Tablet V of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic that provide a fuller description of the fauna of the Cedar Forest.

  2014

  Al-Rawi and George Publish Content of the “Monkey Tablet”

  In their Journal of Cuneiform Studies article “Back to the Cedar Forest: The Beginning and End of Tablet V of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh,” Farouk Al-Rawi and Andrew George include the text, a translation, and a discussion of the newly discovered “Monkey Tablet.”

  {1} The Epic of

  GILGAMESH

  {3} Tablet I

  The Creation of Enkidu

  Gilgamesh, who saw the Abyss—

  This was the man who understood all, who traveled

  To every country on earth, who came to know the depths

  Of the world’s mysteries, all its dark, secret places,

 
And brought us a tale of the time before the Flood.

  He journeyed far, returned home weary,

  And carved all his trials on a tablet of stone.

  It was he who built the great walls of Uruk,

  Built the wall of Eanna, Ishtar’s pure storehouse.

  [10] You can still see it all, the outer wall’s cornice

  Gleaming like copper in the sun, the inner wall

  Beyond all comparison. Run your hands

  Over the threshold, feel how ancient it is.

  Approach Eanna, the temple of Ishtar.

  No king today could ever build their equal.

  Climb the walls of Uruk and walk along them.

  Examine the massive, terraced foundations.

  Is the masonry not of fine, fired bricks?

  Those foundations were laid by the Seven Sages.

  [20] One square mile is town, one square mile orchard,

  One square mile clay-pits, and half a square mile

  {4} Is devoted to Eanna, its buildings and temples.

  These four parts make up the city of Uruk.

  Go there, approach the cedar ark, unfasten

  The lid’s bronze latches, and take out the tablet

  Of lapis lazuli so you can read aloud

  All the ordeals that Gilgamesh endured.

  Gilgamesh was greater than all other kings,

  Hero of Uruk, a raging bull of a man,

  [30] Vanguard of the army when he went to the front,

  A man all could trust when he brought up the rear.