Gilgamesh summary

Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven
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He has seen everything, had experienced all emotions, from exaltation to despair, had been granted a vision into the great mystery, the secret places, the primeval days before the Flood. He had journeyed to the edge of the world and made his way back, exhausted but whole. He had carved his trials on stone tablets, had restored the holy Eanna Temple and the massive wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal.
-- beginning of the Prologue in Gilgamesh: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell

The 4,000+ year old story of a legendary king is still being printed, translated, and studied today. It took a while to grow on me but I eventually succumbed to its lyricism and insights. The quest for understanding fate, death, and human nature speaks to us today just as it did to people all those centuries ago. Here are my posts on the tale:

Gilgamesh online resources

Gilgamesh discussion

Gilgamesh discussion: Gilgamesh by Joan London

Update (15 Jan 2012): I'm not sure how long this link will work, but Contra Mundum Press has a sizeable part of the new translation by Stuart Kendall available online.

Next up-The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne.

Gilgamesh discussion: Gilgamesh by Joan London

I waffled on whether or not to have a separate post on Gilgamesh: A Novel by Joan London and finally decided to do so. I happened to stumble across this book at my local library when I was checking out the epic and thought I would give it a try. Unfortunately I never really connected with it...I'm not sure if it was the book or me. Or maybe my expectations were too elevated based on the summaries I read.

From the dustjacket:

Edith and Frances, living with their mother on a tiny farm in the south-west of Australia, are visited by their cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram. The two young men are taking the long way home after working on an archaeological dig in Iraq. It is 1937. The modern world, they say, is waiting to erupt. Among the tales they tell is the story of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh's great journey of mourning after the death of his friend Enkidu, and his search for the secret of eternal life, is to resonate through all their lives. ...

Moving between rural Australia, London, the Caucasus and the Middle East, from the last days of the First World War to the years following the Second, Joan London's stunning novel examines what happens when we strike out into the world, and how, like Gilgamesh, we find our way home.

The tie-ins to Gilgamesh felt superficial most of the time. The emphasis of the novel seemed to be on journeys, which to me was not a central focus in the epic. Yes, there is the travel to the Cedar Forest, but it is to rid the world of evil and achieve glory. Gilgamesh does travel to the edge of the world in order to find "the secret of eternal life", only to be disappointed. In his disappointment he realizes that he should cherish life and the things he does have. The novel does tie in to this latter theme, but not to the depth that is advertised. There are some parallels with deep friendship and the resulting "completion," but the novel didn't really spend much time on this either. I don't want to be too negative on the novel since it is generally well written and obviously has won awards. I guess my main disappointment (aside from not caring too much about the characters) comes from realizing the advertised central tie-in with the epic felt (to me) esoteric and strained.

Gilgamesh discussion

Picture source
(which has additional online links)

I won’t go much into recapping the story since I think I’ve provided some summaries and study guides in this post.

So instead I’ll focus on a few of the points in the story that interested me. Upon first reading the story, I found parts of it contradictory at times. Finding out the history behind the epic, or rather the various stories combined into one, helped explain some of what I was seeing. For all that follows, I am using Stephen Mitchell’s Gilgamesh: A New English Version

Some of the topics I found interesting:

• Gilgamesh is recognized by the people as oppressing them, yet they also recognize his wisdom and leadership abilities. The trapper who asks his father what to do about the wild man (Enkidu) he has seen is told to go to Uruk. The leader there, Gilgamesh, “will know what to do.” The other interesting point was that some of the oppression, the ius primae noctis, was claimed to be ordained by the gods. The role the gods play in Gilgamesh in comparison to Greek mythology makes for a complex comparison and is worthy of a post or paper in its own right. For those new to the epic, look at the attitude the gods have toward humans, how interactive they are in their lives, and how the gods deal with a human’s fate in both approaches (for starters).
• Gilgamesh is described as two-thirds god. Such a fraction is never explained, but definitely causes a chuckle. The only thing I can figure is that his mother was the goddess Ninsun and his father was Lugalbanda, a human later turned into a god. Maybe that conversion factors into the ratio.
• The civilization of Enkidu: who knew that sex civilizes? I guess not in the sense of Gilgamesh’s ius primae noctis though. The beasts that Enkidu had lived with rejected him after he had been with the priestess Shamhat. How does human sex civilize where animal sex does not? The approach raised more questions for me than it answered, although the key may be Enkidu’s consciousness appears to have been awakened at this point (“he knew that his mind had somehow grown larger, he knew things now that an animal can’t know”—an interesting comparison to Adam and Eve). A little clearer was Enkidu’s eating the bread and drinking the beer made by humans, consuming things that humans had achieved, in order to reach a civilized state.
• After Gilgamesh and Enkidu become friends, Uruk finds peace because the two “balance each other perfectly”. There is something pre-Freudian regarding id, ego and superego and their balance in what they achieve.
• Gilgamesh’s desire to go to the Cedar Forest and kill Humbaba is to “drive out evil” even though the forest is sacred, as is the placement of Humbaba there. In debating Enkidu, Gilgamesh directly states “we are mortal men. Only the gods live forever [note: even though that doesn’t seem to be the case in other places]. Our days are few in number, and whatever we achieve is a puff of wind.” Recognizing that he will die does not bother him here, although it will later on. What he fears most is not realizing a hero’s death. In this respect, Gilgamesh echoes the concept of kleos seen over and over in Greek epics. Since Gilgamesh rebukes the goddess Ishtar’s advances later on, I think he makes it clear that dying at the hands of a sexually bored goddess does not qualify as a hero’s death.
• Gilgamesh trying to twist Enkidu’s dreams of death into something heartening is a great touch. After the repeated translation by Enkidu of Gilgamesh’s dreams (dreams that seemed to portend an awful fate) into something positive, it was hard not to laugh out loud at his grasping for good news.
• That the epic is a collection of stories seems apparent by the last section, Gilgamesh’s search for the secret of immortality. His reaction to his friend’s death is completely out of character with his earlier statements regarding being human. Of course, some of it may be that he is just seeing it up close and personal for the first time, but still it feels at complete odds with his earlier declarations. In addition, Enkidu "completed" Gilgamesh so it is like a part of Gilgamesh died. Utnapishtim is an interesting character and the parallel nature of the Great Flood with the Bible is striking despite some differences (the most notable being Utnapishtim and his wife being granted immortality).
• Ultimately the most interesting thing to me are the topics this epic addresses. What does it mean to be human? What separates us from the animals? Since man must die, how should he spend the time he is given? What part does friendship play for people? What is the ultimate journey that man makes? No easy answers are provided, but that people almost 5,000 years ago were raising these questions and celebrating what makes us human gives insight into the human condition.

Gilgamesh: online resources

Picture source
I never imagined there would be so many sites that focused on the epic of Gilgamesh, the story of a 28th century BC king. What follows is only a small portion of what is available.

Wikipedia's entry on the epic of Gilgamesh

Texts for the epic:

   From Project Gutenberg, which has "an old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic, by Anonymous, Edited by Morris Jastrow, Translated by Albert T. Clay" (includes a lot on the history of the epic, along with an interesting chicken/egg question on which myths came first)

   Standard Akkadian edition filled in with Babylonian excerpts, courtesy of Timothy R. Carnahan, Academy for Ancient Texts

Summaries:

   An excellent summary from Michael McGoodwin, complete with source, notes, cast of characters as well as a summary of the tablets.

   Summary by Paul Korte, with additional detail on what sections are missing

Study guides:

   From Diane Thompson at Northern Virginia Community College

   Questions from the College of DuPage study guide

   A University of Texas course's study guide

   Online English Degree's study guide has additional links, too

Additional links:

   Storytelling, the Meaning of Life, and The Epic of Gilgamesh by Arthur A. Brown

   A UC Berkely course's web resources on the epic (not all links are still active)

   A site exploring the similarities between Gilgamesh and the Old Testament

   A Sumerian mythology FAQ page by Christopher Siren

   A nice overview by Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta at Creighton

   An excerpt read in Akkadian

Books

   Among the various translations, I read Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh: A New English Version Don't confuse this with a translation--it is a literary version based on other translations. This seems to be a good introductions as his opening essay covers the work and the history of the epic. (Question for a future post: why do academics insert political comment on literary works? Fortunately it is only one line in the intro, but it grated and made me wonder if his adaptation skills are just as faulty.)

   The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epicby Jeffrey Tigay--more for textual evaluation by scholars, but interesting for the history of the epic as well as how a text evolves.

   The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religionby Thorkild Jacobsen. There are a couple of chapters that cover the Gilgamesh epic, but even more interesting it puts the epic in context with the evolving religion of the area.

Update: Steven Riddle at A Momentary Taste of Being gives his highest recommendation to The Buried Book by David Damrosch in this review. In Mr. Riddle's words:

So, what's the big deal? Gilgamesh. But not just Gilgamesh. In the course of discussing how the epic was written, lost, and eventually rediscovered, the author shares insights about Victorian Archeology, Victorian prejudice, Asshurbanipal, Sumerian, Akkadian, Old Persion, Aramaic, Philip Roth, Saddam Hussein, among other things. The book analyzes the writing, preservation, discovery, and decoding of an epic that we have come to take for granted as part of our heritage. All the while one contemplates its potential loss and the question of how much more may be out there waiting recovery/discovery.

I see that our library has this book and I hope to review it soon. (Update added November 28, 2010)

Update 2: An excerpt from Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem by Michael Schmidt at Lithub titled "Who Were the Scribes Who Actually Wrote Down the Epic of Gilgamesh?" (Update added November 21, 2019)



One of the Gilgamesh tablets
Picture source