Book Information
Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse
David Ferry
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
Copyright 1992
ISBN: 978-0-374-52383-1
When I started the blog, Banks Western Canyon, I envisioned it to be the place where I documented my reading journey through the literary works considered to be canonical in Western culture. I assumed I would read linearly and comment on each book in a blog post or two. I would start with the first work in Bloom’s Western Canon, Epic of Gilgamesh, continue to the next, and so on. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that, instead, my path has meandered. So far, I’ve written ten blog posts about Gilgamesh, and with two or three more to go. Why so many? Well, I’ve learned something important about myself – I enjoy exploring beyond a work’s face value and want to understand its mythological, historical, and literary contexts. This process helps me slow down and ensures that I don’t develop the habit of simply checking the book off the list once I've read it. For example, with Gilgamesh, I’ve read David Ferry’s contemporary rendering of the poem and scholarly translations of it, along with additional books about Sumerian and Babylonian archaeology, history, and mythology. They have helped me understand the epic and have, frankly, helped me enjoy Gilgamesh so much more as a character than I did when I first read about him.
One of the supplementary books I read is The Curious Lore of Precious Stones by George Frederick Kunz. Kunz was one of the first gemologists in the United States and his work, published in 1913, is a classic on mineralogy and gems. How did I come to read this book while studying Gilgamesh? It was because of a magical place described in the story of which I could not make sense. After Gilgamesh completes his long and lonely journey through the pitch-black mountain pass on his way to find Utnapishtim, he emerges in a garden with trees dripping with gemstones:
“He emerged from the mountain into a wonderful garden.
Gilgamesh looked at the garden and wondered at it.
The fruit and foliage of the trees were all
the colors of the jewels of the world,
carnelian and lapis lazuli,
jasper, rubies, agate, and hematite,
emerald, and all the other gems the earth
has yielded for the delight and pleasure of kings.
And beyond the garden Gilgamesh saw the sea.” (Ferry 53)
The garden is described so beautifully that I wanted the story to linger there. Instead, the hero moves on quickly with no explanation of the importance, if any, of this magical place. I couldn't let this garden go. What did it mean? Do its gems symbolize something important? Does the garden’s location by the sea hold any clue to what Gilgamesh might discover in his interactions with Utnapishtim? Does it have anything to do with the immortality Gilgamesh seeks?
I turned to one of the first experts on Sumerian mythology, Samuel Noah Kramer, hoping to find information about the symbology of gardens or gems. Kramer reminds us about the difficulty of interpreting ancient literature. “…we cannot understand exactly and exhaustively the messages sent by the persons closest to us - those with whom we share a common language and a common culture. How, then, can we hope to understand complex literary works written three, and in some cases four, thousand years ago - in the case especially of Sumerian, which has no relatives among the thousands of languages known to us today?” (Kramer 1)
Interpretation of ancient literature is difficult because of the challenges that translation presents. Interpreting Gilgamesh is even more difficult because of the medium on which it is preserved – clay tablets. The tablets have missing pieces, called lacunae, which require the translator to fill in the gaps. On Tablet IX (of the Standard Version), there is a large lacuna in the section that describes a garden dripping with sparkling, yet, lifeless jewels. Does the lacuna hold the key to what this garden might symbolize? Until, or if, we find the missing pieces, we must make our own interpretations.
In my personal interpretation, gems hold the first key to the importance of the garden. According to George Frederick Kunz, “Very early, and very naturally, the religious nature of man led to the use of precious stones in connection with worship - the most valuable and elegant objects being chosen for sacred purposes.” (Kunz 275) He points out, “The tendency to give a substantial visible form to an abstract idea is so deeply rooted in humanity that it must be looked upon as responding to a human necessity. It is only very rarely that purely intellectual conceptions can satisfy us; they must be given some external, palpable and visible form to exert their greater influences” (Kunz 26)
A precious stone consistently referred to in Sumerian mythology is lapis lazuli. Gilgamesh himself recorded his exploits on tablets made from this material. From Assyriologist Andrew George's translation of the Epic:
“A carnelian tree was in fruit,
hung with bunches of grapes, lovely to look on.
A lapis lazuli tree bore foliage,
in full fruit and gorgeous to gaze on.” (George 75)
Kunz discusses the symbolic meaning of lapis lazuli in mythology. “Both in Babylonia and in Egypt, lapis-lazuli was very highly valued, and this is shown by the use of its Assyrian name (uknu) in poetic metaphor. Thus, in a hymn to the moon-god Sin, he is addressed as ‘the strong bull, great of horns, perfect in form, with long flowing beard, bright as lapis-lazuli.” (Kunz 92)
It was the reference to lapis lazuli that made me wonder at the significance of the jewel-filled garden. To make sense of it, I read other Sumerian myths and came across a clue in Enki and Eridu: the Journey of the Water-God to Nippur. According to Samuel Noah Kramer, “One of the oldest and most venerated cities in Sumer was a Eridu... According to one Sumerian tradition, it was the oldest city in Sumer, the first of the five cities founded before the flood... In this city, which in ancient times must have been situated on the Persian Gulf, the water-god Enki …builds his ‘sea-house’:
After the water of creation had been decreed,
After the name hegal (abundance), born in heaven,
Like plant and herb had clothed the land,
The lord of the abyss, the king Enki,
Enki, the lord who decrees the fates,
Built his house of silver and lapis lazuli;
Its silver and lapis lazuli, like sparkling light,
The father fashioned fittingly in the abyss.
…
The pure house he built, he adorned it with lapis lazuli,
He ornamented it greatly with gold,
In Eridu he built the house of the water-bank,
Its brickwork, word uttering, advice giving,
Its... like an ox roaring
The house of Enki, the oracles uttering.” (Kramer, Sumerian Mythology 62)
After Enki builds his sparkling house under the sea, he raises it and places it on the banks of the Euphrates.
“Then Enki raises the city Eridu from the abyss and makes it float over the water like a lofty mountain. Its green fruit-bearing gardens he fills with birds; fishes, too, he makes abundant.
When Enki rises, the fish …rise,
The abyss stands in wonder,
In the sea joy enters,
Fear comes over the deep,
Terror holds the exalted river,
The Euphrates, the South Wind lifts it in waves.” (Kramer, Sumerian Mythology 63)
I have interpreted the garden that Gilgamesh encounters as Enki’s raised Sea House. Until now, Enki has been only passingly mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Nothing has shown Enki’s importance in the Sumerian pantheon or to Gilgamesh's fate. According to The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, “Enki is the Sumerian name for the Akkadian-Babylonian Ea. Enki was one of the most important Sumerian gods. Lord (en) of soil or earth (ki) whose home was the underground sweet waters (abzu), he was a god necessary to irrigation, a practice important in his home, appropriately, the city of Eridu in the southern marshlands of what is present-day Iraq... Enki possessed the me, the essential elements of culture, social order, and civilization.” (Leeming 121)
Given Enki’s importance in the Sumerian pantheon, it makes sense that he will have an important part to play, even indirectly, in Gilgamesh’s fate. One day the missing pieces of the tablets may be filled in and we will have a better understanding of the garden’s symbolism. I believe its purpose in the story is to foreshadow Enki. The Sea House’s representation as a garden is significant. According to The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, Gardens… “are often sacred places in myth. Typically, gardens represent paradise, as in the Garden of Eden in the biblical creation myths of Genesis. In part they derive their mythic energy from their association with the earth, perhaps with the earth goddess herself. Like temples and walled cities, they are protective places, metaphors for cosmos in the face of chaos… It might be said that generally what comes to the hero in the garden represents archetypically that which comes from within as opposed to that which comes from outside, or above in mountain revelations.” (Leeming 143)
Until now, Gilgamesh has been a misguided character and Enki has played no part in his maturation. Because Enki is the keeper of social order and culture, it makes sense that he will influence Gilgamesh’s journey. As Gilgamesh passes through the glittering garden of jewels, we shall see if Enki has anything to do with Gilgamesh’s quest to discover the secret to immortality.
Bibliography
Ferry, David. Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992.
George, Andrew. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. London: Penguin Books, 1999.
Kramer, Samuel Noah. Myths of Enki, The Crafty God. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1989.
—. Sumerian Mythology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972.
Kunz, George Frederick. The Curious Lore of Precious Stones. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1913.
Leeming, David. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
This reading was easier for me to understand.
I have often wondered if the definitions of the writings of those times were understood by those of the readers today.
You have done that research and I appreciated the clarifications.
I also, for myself, appreciated the font used.
Loved your post!