2. Gilgamesh — historical introduction

Civilizations in Ancient Iraq

The first civilization for which written records have survived was in Mesopotamia, the land between he Tigress and Euphrates rivers. Mesopotamia is from the Greek for “between the rivers.” The modern name of the land is Iraq.

Geography

Lack of rainfall made agriculture on a small scale impossible, but the land was fertile and productive with irrigation. Irrigation required social coordination, or civilization. Canals had to be dug; this required organized labor, systems of storage and distribution, records and inventories. This necessitated writing, schools, libraries, economics, and government. Government as a means of social organization and control required legitimacy. Ideologies and mythologies developed to legitimate the role of the king as ruler of the land.

Archeology Recovers the Past

Colonialism in the 18^th and 19^th centuries brought European intervention and influence to the Middle East, or Near East as it is also called (as opposed to the Far East in India and China). Many of the British, French, and German army officers occupying the land had a good general education, natural curiosity, and time on their hands; so they explored the ancient sites and began to collect artifacts. Soon historians joined them, and the discipline of archeology was born.

Tablets written on baked clay, written in a strange form of wedge-shaped writing, were discovered in the sands. The writing was called cuneiform, from the Latin “cuneus, ” meaning triangular or wedge-like, and “form.” The discovery of the Behistun led to the decipherment of the cuneiform script. The Behistun was an inscription in ancient Persian (modern Iran) carved in a stone cliff about 100 yards off the ground. The inscription was a monument to the Persian king Darius and was written in cuneiform in the Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian languages. In 1835 a British army officer serving in Iran, Henry Rawlinson climbed a high ladder and began copying the Persian portion of the inscription, which he was later able to decipher with the aid of other scholars. Rawlinson was transferred to Afghanistan for a few years, but returned to the Behistun in 1843. He copied the Akkadian portion and set to work translating it.

The ancient city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian army was discovered and excavated, revealing a great library of cuneiform tablets. These Assyrian tablets were the first cuneiform studied, catalogued, and translated systematically; and the discipline of studying cuneiform literature came to be known as Assyriology.

Cuneiform Writing

Sumerian

The study of cuneiform documents is still known as Assyriology, although it was eventually revealed that the Assyrians had not invented cuneiform writing but inherited and adapted it from the Sumerians. The Sumerian writings are older, but they were discovered later.

The Sumerian developed the first great civilization in Mesopotamia, and as far as written records exist, in the world. Sometime before 3000 B.C. they invented writing. The oldest Sumerian tablets are simple lists and inventories with pictures representing, for example, baskets of grain and strokes representing numbers.

The Sumerian language is unique, not related to any other known language. The language is based mostly on one-syllable roots that are joined together to form more complex ideas. For example, “lu” in Sumerian means man; “e” means house; and “gal” means big. So “lu-gal” is the “big man,” that is, the king; “e-gal,” the big house was first of all the palace, then later the great house of the god, or the temple.

The Sumerians developed signs for every syllable, based on a common word. The syllables could then be combined to spell other words.

The Egyptians developed their own writing system about the same time as the Sumerians. Egyptian writing began with pictures representing single words, but the signs soon came to represent syllables and could be combined to represent other words. The Egyptians carved inscriptions on stone monuments. They also invented papyrus, the forerunner of modern paper, from a reed-like plant that grew along the Nile. Stone is obviously more durable than papyrus, but in the dry sands of Egypt many papyrus documents have been preserved for thousands of years.

In Mesopotamia the one material that was abundant was clay. The Sumerians wrote on clay tablets. When baked in the sun, or fired in ovens, the clay tablets were able to survive for thousands of years.

The Egyptians kept the pictorial forms of their writing for inscriptions on monuments. It is known as hieroglyphic, Greek for “sacred carvings.” The Sumerians, on the other hand, soon abbreviated their signs. Instead of drawing continuous lines in the clay, they punched in the outlines in separate wedges. The stylus left a triangular indentation followed by a singular line, looking something like an arrow without a head, as it poked into the clay and then was drawn across it.

The Sumerians developed a great civilization centered in cities such as Ur, Kish, and Uruk. They had two-stories houses with indoor plumbing, intricate artwork and jewelry, schools, and libraries. They were the first to write down poems describing the story of Gilgamesh, one of their ancient kings and heroes.

Akkadian

The Akkadian empire moved into the northern part of Mesopotamia in the 3^rd millennium B.C. They spoke a Semitic language, related to Arabic and Hebrew, and the forerunner of the various dialects of Babylonian and Assyrian. The Akkadians learned Sumerian cuneiform and adapted it to writing their own language. The syllables of the Sumerian signs could represent Akkadian syllables, but the signs no longer looked like the things they represented. For example, “lu” (man in Sumerian) originally looked like a stick man; but “lu” in Akkadian may mean “not.” Consequently the signs became arbitrary phonetic symbols. It must have been harder for a young Assyrian scribe in training to memorize the hundreds of signs than it had been for a Sumerian.

The signs became further abbreviated. Each of the signs represented a combination of a consonant and a vowel, or a consonant plus a vowel, plus a final consonant; e.g. bu, bi, ba, bub, bug, bud, etc. It never occurred to them to make separate signs for individual vowels or consonants, so the sign list was quite long, including several hundred signs at any given time. Moreover, the signs developed and changed forms over time, so someone who wished to read ancient literature would have to master old signs as well. Because there were so many signs, it took several years to master the list. The signs do have the advantage of accurately representing the phonetics of the language.

Summary and Review

Cuneiform refers to the system of wedge-shaped writing on clay tablets. Sumerian and the Akkadian language and dialects (including Old Akkadian, Old, Babylonian, Old Assyrian, and New Assyrian and Babylonian), as well as other languages. The discipline of studying cuneiform writing is known as Assyriology.

Babylonians

The Babylonians developed schools and libraries. One of their favorite texts was the Gilgamesh epic, which they translated from Sumerian and continued to develop. Babylonian schools continued to teach Sumerian, in the same way that Latin was once a regular part of the high school curriculum in the United States.

Assyrians

The Assyrians also had schools and libraries, including their own version of Gilgamesh. The discovery of the great library of Ashurbanipal led to the development of Assyriology and our knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian history, civilization, and literature.

The Oldest Literary Classic

The Gilgamesh epic was preserved, translated, and studied for over two thousand years. It is the oldest literary classic. When the great Assyrian and Babylonian empires fell, the great epic was buried for 2500 years in the ruins of their libraries. Even the Akkadian language and the cuneiform writing system died out by the first century A.D. and were lost until the work of Rawlinson and others. The themes of epic literature, however, the quest for meaning in life and for immortality, survived in the epic literature of other peoples.

The Development of the Gilgamesh Epic

Gilgamesh was a real Sumerian king in the city of Uruk around 2700 B.C. As people retell the stories of ancient heroes, legends and myths about them grow. Ancient heroes, especially kings, were worshiped after their death as divine. Gilgamesh became a god of the underworld, and was worshipped with rituals including pouring water (libations) on the ground. Stories were told to account for his divine status. His mother was a goddess, the “wild cow” Ninsun. The Sumerians composed separate poems about incidents from the life of Gilgamesh. Several of these Sumerian poems have survived on cuneiform tablets. In addition to the written poems, we can assume that stories were told or sung in official performances and were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth.

Kingship in Ancient Iraq

Kingship was considered a gift from the gods. Ancient poems exist describing how kingship first descended from heaven. The first kings ruled over city states which sometimes rivaled each other and went to war. The winning kings became rulers of a great empire. Citizens of the victorious cities were proud of their kings. They also realized that the role the king provided in organizing irrigation projects and leading armies to defend them against their enemies made life possible. They also realized that kings could become oppressive tyrants.

The Civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia and the Bible

The history of the people of Israel begins with the call of Abraham to leave his home in Ur, an ancient Sumerian city. The history of the Hebrew Bible ends with the people of Israel once again in Babylon. The sources of their earliest traditions go back to Mesopotamia, and it was in Mesopotamia that the various writings of the Israelites were collected and edited to form the book we know as the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament). Tablets of the Gilgamesh epic have been discovered in the Israelite city of Megiddo. Throughout their history the Israelites were well acquainted with Mesopotamian civilization.

The Gilgamesh Epic and the Bible

Apart from its literary merit, the Gilgamesh epic first attracted attention because of its parallels with the Bible, most notably the story of the flood. There are archeological records of a widespread and disastrous flood in ancient Mesopotamia, around 3500 B.C. Ancient Mesopotamian documents, both historical records and mythological poems, also record this great flood. The Sumerian king lists are divided between the kings who lived before the flood and those who ruled later. A major epic in the Gilgamesh epic is the hero’s journey to visit with the sole survivor of the flood Utnapishtim. Another Babylonian poem known as Atrahasis tells the whole story of the flood.

Biblical scholars differ on how to interpret the relationship between the Mesopotamian flood and the biblical account of Noah. Some believe both accounts go back to the memory of a real event, passed on in separate traditions. Others believe the biblical account is a “corrected” version of the Mesopotamian myths. The Mesopotamian stories portray the gods as fickle and capricious; the Bible presents God as holy in his judgment and merciful in his salvation.

Still others believe there is no relationship: the Bible describes a flood that covered “the whole earth,” while the Mesopotamian flood was limited to the land between the Tigress and Euphrates rivers. It is true that the Hebrew word eretz can be translated either “land” or “earth.” (In Hebrew Eretz Israel means “the Land of Israel.” The Israeli Newspaper Ha-Eretz is the paper of Eretz Israel.) It is also true that even when ancient people spoke of “the whole earth,” they referred to the world as they knew it, the civilized and inhabited land. As you read the Gilgamesh Epic, you can decide how you think the Mesopotamian version of the flood relates to the biblical account.

There are many other points of interest in relating the story of Gilgamesh to the Bible, points of contact and contrast. Gilgamesh begins with the story of a king who is not fully human because he lacks a partner and companion, an equal who corresponds to him. The partner given him by the gods is not a wife but a man, a hero of equal stature. A strong point of contrast is the dignity the Bible gives to woman as the equal partner of man.

Interestingly enough, the friend Enkidu has to become fully human, to be civilized, before he can fulfill his role. This time it is a woman, not a wife but the prostitute Samhat, who tames and civilizes the wild Enkidu. Before he meets her, Enkidu lives with the wild animals and grazes on grass. When Samhat introduces him to human society he gains knowledge, but now his animal friends fear and flee him. The story of Enkidu and Samhat has a vague correspondence to Adam and Eve. Adam searches for a companion among the animals but finds none fully suitable until God introduces him to Eve. Here too the contrast is notable: Samhat the prostitute plays a temporary role and then is no longer needed. Adam finds Eve as his life partner and soul mate.

You may find other points of contrast and comparison as you read Gilgamesh. More than parallel incidents, though, we find in Gilgamesh many of the same themes found in other great literature; themes that are ultimately religious in nature. What is the meaning and purpose of life? Is there any hope beyond death? What does it mean to be human?

Assignment:

After reading the above, look up the following links. Together these will prepare you for Test 1.

Go to the Encyclopaedia of the Orient at lexicorient.com/e.o/ and find the index on the left. Scroll down and click on Uruk. Read the article, and then the link to Gilgamesh.

Read about cuneiform writing and see some examples of the Tablets at wsu.edu/~dee/GLOSSARY/CUNEI.HTM or

richeast.org/htwm/cune/cune.html

Read about the ancient Sumerians at http://home.cfl.rr.com/crossland/AncientCivilizations/Middle_East_Civilizations/Sumerians/sumerians.html. After reading about the Sumerians, click on the link to the Babylonians and Assyrians.

Visit the Louvre and see examples of Sumerian art at www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm. Click on Collections, then Curatorial Departments, then Near Eastern “Antiquities.Uruk

For Babylonian and Assyrian art, try a visit to the University of Chicago’s Oriental institute at http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/default.html