Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld and the Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle

Alhena Gadotti

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781614518549
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Alhena Gadotti offers a much needed new edition of the Sumerian composition Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, last published by Aaron Shaffer in his 1963 doctoral dissertation. Since then, several new manuscripts have come to light, prompting not only a new edition of the text, but also a re-examination of the composition. In this book, Gadotti argues that Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld was the first, not the last of the Sumerian stories about Gilgamesh. She also suggests that a Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle, currently only attested in old Babylonian manuscripts (ca. 18th century BCE), was in fact developed during the Ur III period (ca. 2100-2000 BCE). Providing a new way to look at the Sumerian Gilgamesh stories, this book is relevant not only to scholars of the ancient Near East, but also to anyone interested in epic and epic cycle.

CHAPTER I

“Gilgameš Enkidu and the Netherworld”: An Overview

“Gilgameš Enkidu and the Netherworld” (hereafter cited as GEN) was known to the ancients from its incipit, ud ri-a ud sud-rá ri-a, “In those days, in those faraway days”.¹ GEN is ca. 330 lines long and is at present known from seventy-four (74) manuscripts originating from various sites. It appears to have been a favorite in the curriculum of the schools of Nippur and, to a lesser extent, Ur.² The majority of the manuscripts comes from Nippur (55). Others have been excavated at Isin (1), Sippar (1), Ur (17), Uruk (1) and, more recently, at Tell Haddad, ancient Meturan (2).

GEN is one of the five extant Sumerian compositions relating the deeds of Gilgameš,³ the legendary king of Uruk.⁴ The others are “Gilgameš and Huwawa” (versions A and B),⁵ “Gilgameš and the Bull of Heaven”,⁶ “The Death of Gilgameš”,⁷ and “Gilgameš and Akka”.⁸ That there existed other Sumerian compositions about Gilgameš is to be discussed by G. Rubio (forthcoming) and additional stories certainly circulated, as suggested by the “Death of Gilgameš” ll. 52-60 and parallels. ⁹ The question remains, however, as to what relation, if any, these Sumerian literary compositions actually had with one another.

The central thesis of the present investigation is that, during the Old Babylonian period, there existed a Sumerian Gilgameš Cycle, which included not only GEN but also “Gilgameš and Huwawa A” (GH A), “Gilgameš and the Bull of Heaven” (GBH) and the “Death of Gilgameš” (DG). Although the position of GH A and GBH is debatable, it is certain that GEN opened the cycle and DG, for obvious reasons, concluded it. “Gilgameš and Akka” (GA) did not belonged to this cycle. Rather, it is closer in themes, language and imagery to the so-called “Matters of Uruk” cycle.¹⁰

In order to demonstrate the validity of this thesis, I will discuss GEN as a text in itself (chapters II-IV) and within the conjectured Old Babylonian Sumerian Gilgameš Cycle (chapters V and VI). First, I will focus on the composition as a whole. Long ago, scholars suggested that different tales had been conflated into GEN (e. g. van Dijk 1964, 17; Edzard 1994, 13), and, at a first glance, the narration can be subdivided into three main sub-tales, each characterized by two sections:

1. A mythological prologue (ll. 1-27) divisible into two parts: ll. 1-13 and ll. 14-26, which serve as a prelude to the actual narrative involving the episode of the ḫalub-tree (ll. 27-146);
2. The episode of the pukku and the mekkû (ll. 147-171), which introduces Enkidu’s descent to the Netherworld and his report of it to Gilgameš;
3. Enkidu’s descent to the Netherworld to retrieve the pukku and the mekkû (ll. 172-end) divided into the preparations for the journey (ll. 172-205) and the actual journey (ll. 206-end). This part corresponds to Tablet XII of the Standard Babylonian Version of the “Epic of Gilgameš”.

dp n="18" folio="2" ?

Despite the above-mentioned scholars’ claims about the composite nature of GEN, no attempt has thus far been undertaken to systematically investigate the validity of these arguments. On the one hand, the idea that GEN lacks internal coherence is superficially supported by the textual tradition after GEN. First, there is the independent transmission of ll. 172-end, which were translated into Akkadian.¹¹ Secondly, the episode of Gilgameš’s oppression of Uruk by means of the pukku and the mekkû was extracted from GEN and reworked in the Standard Babylonian Version, Tablet I, ll. 65-74.¹² Finally, the theme of the ḫalub-tree may have been the inspiration of the episode of the eagle and the snake narrated in the “Etana Epic”, although not included in the Standard Babylonian Version. This is due to the fact that much of the first half of the composition deals with another tree, in the Cedar Forest.

On the other hand, when one considers each of these allegedly autonomous tales, which may have coalesced into GEN, it emerges that none is known to have existed independently of the Sumerian text in the form we have it. In other words, there is no independent transmission of the ḫalub-tree incident, in Sumerian, outside of GEN. And the same is true for all other episodes.

In Chapters II, III and IV, I set the foundations to demonstrate that, far from being a patchwork of different stories, GEN is one coherent narrative. Specifically, in Chapter II I provide a detailed analysis of GEN’s mythological prologue, and show not only that the prologue is an integral part of GEN, but that it also functioned as a cosmologic introduction to the Sumerian Gilgameš Cycle as a whole.

To further strengthen my central thesis, in Chapter III I investigate the nature of ḫalub-tree. This is relevant for two reasons: first, the prologue is connected to the episode of the ḫalub-tree by a temporal expression – ud-bi-a “at that time”. As a matter of fact, l. 27 operates on three levels: it isolates the mythical organization of the world described in the initial twenty-six lines; it introduces a completely new topic, the ḫalub-tree, the main subject of the next one hundred lines or so; and it links the following events to that primeval time thus providing the background to the main action. Secondly, the episode of the ḫalub-tree and the episode of the ball and the stick are intimately related by the fact the former sets the scene for the latter. The ḫalub-tree is the trait d’union of GEN. The internal cohesiveness of GEN is further evidenced by its narrative and poetic structure, discussed in depth in Chapter IV.

With Chapter V, I begin to present the evidence for the existence of the Sumerian Gilgameš Cycle by demonstrating that Enkidu is alive when he comes back from his Netherworld journey. This solution solves the apparent inconsistency of the Meturan tradition, which situates GEN before, and not after, GH A. In Chapter VI, I introduce further evidence for the existence of an Old Babylonian Sumerian Gilgameš Cycle, of which GEN was the first composition. Such evidence is both textual and, to a lesser extent, archaeological.

Chapter VII discusses the complex section about the Netherworld’s denizens and is followed by a detailed analysis of the manuscript tradition (Chapter VIII). The critical edition of the composition (eclectic text, translation and textual matrix), a commentary and an appendix conclude the investigation.

The remaining of the introduction is devoted to a survey on the extant literature about GEN. A summary of the story follows, aimed to providing the reader with a more direct knowledge of the composition under investigation. This will offer the background within which to set the present study.

dp n="19" folio="3" ?

1. Status Quaestionis

Studies on GEN began more than a century ago. In 1909, H. Radau published the first fragments of GEN, which were indeed the first Sumerian Gilgameš fragments published altogether. Radau did not recognize these texts as belonging to a Sumerian Gilgameš composition. It was only in 1913 that H. Zimmern concluded that a Sumerian version of the already well known Akkadian Epic indeed existed, and, in 1924, E. Chiera assigned the fragments published by Radau to this group of texts.

The first extensive discussion of...

Table of contents

• ‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld’ and the Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle
• Untersuchungen zur Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• On Transliteration and Conventions
• CHAPTER I  - “Gilgameš Enkidu and the Netherworld”: An Overview
• CHAPTER II  - The Prologue of “Gilgameš, Enkidu and the Netherworld”
• CHAPTER III  - The Ḫalub-Tree
• CHAPTER IV  - Narrative and Poetic Structure
• CHAPTER V - Enkidu Redivivus
• CHAPTER VI  - The Sumerian Gilgameš Cycle
• CHAPTER VII  - Enkidu’s Return and The Catalogue of Ghosts: GEN ll. 255-end
• CHAPTER VIII  - The Manuscripts
• The Edition
• Translation
• Eclectic Text
• Textual Matrix
• Commentary
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Indexes
• Plates