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Ancient Epic
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About This Book
Ancient Epic offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to six of the greatest ancient epics â Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Apollonius of Rhodes' Agonautica.
- Provides an accessible introduction to the ancient epic
- Offers interpretive analyses of poems within a comprehensive historical context
- Includes a detailed timeline, suggestions for further readings, and an appendix of the Olympian gods and their Akkadian counterparts
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Chapter 1
The Epic of Gilgamesh
On the banks of the Euphrates River, not far from what is today known as the Persian Gulf, there once stood the great Sumerian city of Uruk. Its monumental defensive walls and magnificent temple of Inanna, Queen of Heaven, attested to the superlative kingship of its legendary king, Gilgamesh, whom later Sumerians believed to have reigned in 2750 BCE. Over 600 years later, during the reign of an ambitious king who identified closely with his âbrother and friendâ Gilgamesh, five verse narratives about Gilgameshâs adventures, which no doubt drew on a long oral tradition, were composed, recorded on stone tablets, and deposited in royal libraries, or Tablet Houses.1 These poems, which apparently ranged in length from 115 lines to over 300, soon became widely known and were translated from the Sumerian into Akkadian, which was now becoming the dominant language throughout Mesopotamia.
We have in the original Sumerian, which was a dead language by 1800 BCE, substantial portions of these epic poems. They establish Gilgamesh as no ordinary king. He has a divine mother, Ninsun, and a royal father, Lugalbanda. His protector gods are Enki, the wise god of the deep waters, and Utu, the sun god. All five epics include his beloved servant and steadfast comrade, Enkidu, but only one, The Death of Gilgamesh, mentions beloved but nameless wives and children. The stories tell of victory in a defensive war (Gilgamesh and Akka); of a deadly quarrel with Inanna, Queen of Heaven, that is resolved by Gilgameshâs killing the Bull of Heaven and making flasks for her of its horns (Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven); of Gilgameshâs leading a perilous expedition across seven mountain ranges to cut wood in the Cedar Forest, a task which eventually entails Gilgamesh tricking into submission and Enkidu brutally slaying its monstrous but divinely placed guardian (Gilgamesh and Huwawa). What is most interesting about Gilgamesh and Huwawa in terms of later epic is Gilgameshâs motive for undertaking the dangerous venture: the need for fame to counteract the inexorable coming of death. Because of this motivation, one ancient copyist made Gilgamesh and Huwawa the sequel to another of the epics, Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld, in which Enkidu brings back a grim report from the Netherworld after getting trapped there for seven days. Other copyists did not make this link, which leaves open the possibility that Enkiduâs return to upper-world, which Gilgamesh procures through the help of Enki and Utu, is only a temporary reprieve.
The last of the five, The Death of Gilgamesh, conveniently sums up the dying heroâs achievements, which include, first, unspecified combats, deeds of strength, words of wisdom, climbing mountains and traveling all roads, and then, more specifically, journeying to the Cedar Forest, killing its guardian Huwawa, founding many temples of the gods, reaching the impossibly distant home of the immortal survivor of the Flood, and subsequently reestablishing forgotten rituals for worshiping the gods. The gods decree that despite this accumulation of superlative achievements and despite his being part god, Gilgamesh must still undergo death, the fate of all human beings. Although they do reward him with a prestigious judgeship and make him a lesser god in the Netherworld, there are indications that he is not as fully consoled as both the gods and his counselors think he ought to be.2 He does, however, rally enough to make sure that his tomb is prepared correctly, which allows the poem to end with funerary ritual and offer a concrete means (statuary) for ensuring that a manâs name, at least, will survive his death.
These Sumerian stories are the literary antecedent to the epic that was created in Akkadian, or Old Babylonian, around 1700 BCE and was reworked around 1200 BCE by a scholar-scribe named Sin-leqe-unninni. His Middle Babylonian version, which we call either the Standard Version or the Eleven Tablet Version, was preserved in a Babylonian copy made around 700 BCE. Between the different copies, we now have about 60 percent of the epicâs approximately 3,000 lines.3
The Old Babylonian epic was known as Surpassing all other kings from its first line, which in the Standard Version comes after the twenty-eight-line preamble, or proem, added by Sin-leqe-unninni. The Standard Version was known as He who saw into the depths, a title again taken from its first line. Although both epics include basically the same adventures, Sin-leqe-unninni appears to have contracted and expanded some scenes in addition to adding the prologue. All translators fill in lines lost from the tablets of the Standard Version by turning to fragments from the Old Babylonian, some more than others. Some popular translations also use the Old Babylonian fragments to expand what Sin-leqe-unninni contracted. More rarely, a translator will turn to the five Sumerian epics to fill in blanks or add material, a technique that, while aiming at completeness, can undermine the tragic arc of Sin-leqe-unninniâs masterpiece. I will base my discussion here on A. R. Georgeâs translation of the Standard Version, which comes as close as is possible today to revealing the story that its ancient audience knew.
The Babylonian poets kept key elements from the popular Sumerian stories. Gilgamesh is still protected by the god of deep waters (Ea) and the sun god (Shamash), and he has a difficult but enduring relationship with the Queen of Heaven (Ishtar), whose temple is at the center of his city. The roles of these Babylonian counterparts to the Sumerian Enki, Utu, and Inanna, however, are deepened and altered in ways that create new tensions. The expedition to the Cedar Forest, the slaying of Huwawa (Babylonian Humbaba), the killing of the Bull from Heaven, and Enkiduâs vision of the underworld are all reworked to form a tight sequence of action rather than a simple series of adventures. Gilgameshâs journey to the ends of the earth to talk with the immortalized Flood hero, to which we have only an allusion in the extant Sumerian stories, is elaborated to include a detailed story of the great Flood itself and two tests which Gilgamesh fails. The knowledge Gilgamesh brings back from this journey, especially in Sin-leqe-unninniâs version, centers not so much on restoring lost rituals as on understanding â and coming to terms with â the unbridgeable difference between man and god.
Significantly, the Babylonian epics omit two of the Sumerian stories entirely: that of Gilgameshâs military victory over an attacking army and that of Gilgameshâs death, promised deification, and funerary ritual. Although they take Gilgameshâs prowess in battle for granted, neither the Old nor the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh is interested in warfare. The introductory lines of the Old Babylonian version briefly exalt a brave hero who protects his warriors and can smash through walls, but the poem then devotes twice as many lines to praising his cultural achievements: digging wells, opening mountain passes, his immense journey to the distant home of Flood survivor Utanapishtim, and his subsequent restoration of cult centers and their rituals (SV I.31â44). Although violence pervades the epic, Gilgamesh uses it to conquer âmonsters,â not cities, and he never kills another human being. As for death and funerary ritual, they are displaced onto Enkidu, and the promised deification is ignored so that the poemâs stark focus on mortality will not be diluted.
The proem created by Sin-leqe-unninni gives his epic an intellectual aura that it did not have in the Old Babylonian version. The first six lines, beginning with âHe who saw into the depths,â that is, he who saw into the underground realm of the god Ea, mark the story as primarily one of mental achievement and align its hero, Gilgamesh, with the god of life-giving waters and wisdom, rather than, for example, with the sun god who will help him kill monsters. His immense physical achievement, the journey to Utanapishtim, is described in intellectual terms: he âsawâ what had been secret, âuncoveredâ what was hidden, and brought back a âstoryâ of what happened before the Flood. Not only did he bring Utanapishtimâs story back, he composed his own story, inscribing all his adventures on a tablet of stone (SV I.7â10). As readers discover later at the end of the proem (lines 25â28), the book they are holding in their hands purports to contain the actual words of Gilgamesh himself, an autobiography written in the third person.
There is no real division between brain and brawn here, however. Gilgamesh did not become wise through his ability to read a book, but through the physical stamina and strength that enabled him to complete a heroic journey to the ends of the earth. Immediately after mentioning the story that came out of this journey, Sin-leqe-unninni moves on to a material accomplishment that was made possible by Gilgameshâs skill: he built the great wall of Uruk and, inside it, a magnificent temple of Ishtar, feats that no one has ever been able to equal. Taking readers on an imaginary tour of the wall, the poet dwells on the solidity of its fired-brick foundations, the large city, date grove and clay pit it encloses, and Ishtarâs huge temple. The wallâs foundations, he exclaims, must have been laid by the Seven Sages, mythic figures who were believed to have taught newly created humankind the arts of civilization.
Let us stop for a moment and think about the word âcivilized.â It comes from the Latin word for city, civitas. Let us think also about city walls. What is their function? In Greek and Roman culture, they signify mainly defense against attacking enemies, and that would certainly have been their main function in ancient Sumer. It is not, however, their main function in this text. In addition to human enemies, a city wall keeps out the wild creatures of nature, just as the sheepfold, which is an important metaphor for the city in Sin-leqe-unninniâs version of the epic, keeps wolves and lions away from domesticated animals. City walls separate controlled and civilized society, which includes religion, agriculture, and artifacts, from the uncontrolled world of nature, which contains, as we will see later, beasts, tempests, and the terrifying unknown. Symbolically speaking, the city wall demarcates the human from the bestial. It also encloses gods alongside humans, claiming them for civilization. However, as Gilgamesh will learn to his sorrow, the divine belongs to both sides of the wall.
To Sin-leqe-unninni, these two cultural achievements, the story and the walled city, are what make Gilgamesh âsurpass all other kings,â as the opening words of the Old Babylonian poem assert. Gilgamesh is the supreme king because he not only protects his city, but enhances its culture. All the deeds that his story recounts are done on behalf of the city in the sense that they open up the wilderness to exploration and exploitation and bring under control the heretofore uncontrollable. Even his quest to Utanapishtim, which achieves no material gain, produces essential knowledge â of history, of unknown realms, of the nature of the gods â and adds an important story to his peopleâs culture.
What Gilgamesh learns from his epic journey has to do with his nature as man and his role as king. Gilgamesh is two-thirds god and one-third human. He inherits extraordinary size, beauty, strength, and energy from his mother Ninsun (âLady Wild Cowâ), a minor goddess, and he inherits social position and mortality from his human father. The unlimited potential of the one clashes with the limitations inherent in the other, putting him and his people through much turmoil throughout the epic.
As the story begins, Gilgameshâs superhuman energy is getting in the way of his being a good king. His energy expresses itself physically in appropriating the energy of the young men, probably for building projects or athletic competitions,4 and sexually in exercising the god kingâs right to sleep with all virgin brides before the bridegroom. His people, exhausted and annoyed, call on the gods for help, and the gods respond by creating for him an equal upon whom he can expend his energy. This is Enkidu, and he is not only his equal in strength but also his exact opposite. If Gilgamesh is two-thirds god, Enkidu seems more than half animal with his hairy body, diet of grass and water, and alliance with wild gazelles whom he protects against human hunters. The rest of Tablets I and II describe the process whereby Enkidu becomes fully human and how, when two heroes come together, their friendship begins to humanize Gilgamesh.
The process of humanizing Enkidu begins with heterosexual sex. At the request of a hunter, Gilgamesh sends a temple courtesan to entice Enkidu to bond with his own kind in the most basic biological way. Enkidu lies with the woman Shamhat for seven days, at the end of which time he tries to rejoin his gazelle friends. They bolt away, and he, physically weakened, cannot follow. At the same time, Enkidu becomes capable of new understanding, which makes him receptive to Shamhatâs invitation to come with her to Uruk the Sheepfold and to Gilgamesh. Significantly, his first response to Shamhatâs description of Gilgamesh as the strongest man in Uruk is to vaunt that he will challenge him and change the order of things, much as one alpha male might challenge another in the wild. Shamhat responds that Enkiduâs destined relationship with Gilgamesh, who is stronger and loved by the gods, is that of counselor and friend. She then begins the process of civilizing Enkidu by first giving him clothing and then taking him to a shepherdâs encampment where she teaches him to eat bread and ale, that is, cooked and therefore specifically human food. The cloth garment, like the bread and the ale, is a product of human technology, as is the barberâs tool that grooms him and the weapon Enkidu later takes up to protect the shepherdsâ domesticated animals from wild lions and wolves. No longer merely biologically human, Enkidu is now a civilized man, fit to enter the city.
Enkidu is motivated to leave the shepherdsâ camp for the city specifically to stop Gilgameshâs exercising his divine right to sleep with a new bride. Just as sex with one woman transformed Enkidu from animal to human, so being restricted from sex with all women is the first step in Gilgameshâs becoming more human than god. It is a step toward communality: that is, recognition of the claims of other males as a limitation on âmight makes right,â the law of raw nature.
The wrestling bout, then, is what marks the shift of each into humanity. For Enkidu it marks full humanity â he is now established in the city, the locus of civilized life. Gilgamesh, on the other hand, has met his near equal in strength, who has restricted his divine sexual license, and who will now be his friend, something he has never had. Friendship, in fact, seems to be the mark of the fullest humanity (as opposed to divinity and bestiality) in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Note that this friendship is maleâmale and specifically supplants the maleâfemale bonding that marks basic humanity. While Enkidu was being prepared for city life, Gilgamesh had dreamed of picking up a meteor and an axe and loving each âlike a woman.â His mother interpreted these dreams as foreshadowing the coming of a comrade whom Gilgamesh would love âlike a woman.â What are the implications of this transference of male devotion from female to male? From a relationship with a woman comes renewed life of the body, of the biological species, which puts the heterosexual relationship into the category of biology, of nature. No offspring can result from a relationship between two men. What does result, at least in this epic, is a restrained, more civilized behavior, which puts the masculine homosocial relationship firmly into the higher realm of culture.
The wrestling bout and the resultant friendship, which mark the end of what I will call the first movement of the epic, are only the beginning of Gilgameshâs becoming fully human. In the next movement, which covers the last third of Tablet II through Tablet VI, the poet depicts Gilgamesh and Enkidu asserting themselves against the forces of nature in order to overcome their own human nature, that is, in order to overcome death by achieving fa...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title page
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Chronologies
- Map
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Epic of Gilgamesh
- Chapter 2: The Context of Homeric Epic
- Chapter 3: The Iliad
- Chapter 4: The Odyssey
- Chapter 5: The Argonautika of Apollonios of Rhodes
- Chapter 6: The Context of Roman Epic
- Chapter 7: The Aeneid of Virgil
- Chapter 8: The Metamorphoses of Ovid
- Appendix: Chart of Olympian Gods and their Akkadian Counterparts
- Glossary of Greek and Latin terms
- Index