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
In the previous post on Gilgamesh Tablet I – Episode i, we learned that for the ancients, the epic format of fiction was an educational tool. For the poet, Gilgamesh was to be a literary character from whom the reader would learn important life lessons. But before we review Gilgamesh’s next episode, understanding his story set against more familiar events in the ancient past will be helpful.
Literary Chronology
~2650 BCE lifetime of the real King Gilgamesh of Uruk (Leeming 149)
2600 BCE beginnings of written literature in the Sumerian language, a language with no known relatives that became the lingua franca of the ancient world
2300 BCE written literature in Akkadian, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic
2094-2047 BCE reign of Shulgi, King of the Third Dynasty of Ur in Mesopotamia; Sumerian literature written down in Babylonian scribal schools (George xvi-xvii)
1950 BCE Hebrew patriarchs migrate from Mesopotamia to Canaan (Tarnas 446)
1792-1750 BCE reign of King Hammurabi; Sumerians and Akkadians ruled by Babylon. (George xvii)
1250 BCE Exodus of Hebrews from Egypt under Moses (Tarnas 446)
From the late second millennia to the early first, Semitic people migrated from Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) to Canaan. These Hebrew-speaking people would have been steeped in the stories of ancient Mesopotamia. We will recognize these stories as we review the Epic of Gilgamesh, and we will read of ideals that seem familiar and pertinent to the present day. This is because the myths and legends of ancient Mesopotamia influenced later writers, including the so-called J writer of the earliest books of the Bible.[1] For example, note the similarities between the origin legend of Sargon, Emperor of the Mesopotamian empire around 2300 BCE, and that of Moses. First, Sargon:
“My mother, a priestess, conceived me, and bore me in secret,
She put me in a basket of reeds, sealed its lid with pitch;
She cast me adrift on the river from which I could not arise,
The river bore me up and brought me to Aqqi, a drawer of water.” (George xvii)
And 1,000 years later, the origin of Moses in Exodus 2:2-2:3:
“And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.” (Carroll 66)
The Kingship Ideal
The ancient ideal of kingship, and how one might fail to live up to it, is the starting point of Gilgamesh’s story. When we first meet him, he is immature, violent, and entitled. No man is safe from his fighting-nature and no woman is safe from his sexual advances. Gilgamesh is not behaving like a king should behave. “In Babylonian ideology, as throughout the ancient near east, the king should be to his people as a shepherd to his sheep, guiding them, protecting them and ruling them with a just and equitable hand. Far from that, Gilgamesh is a cruel tyrant, whose brutality calls for the complaint of his people.” (George xlvi) While the form of political rule called kingship has evolved, the ancient ideal of leadership remains relevant to modern society. People still believe an ideal leader should demonstrate ancient traits – wisdom, protection, justice, and fairness.
Gilgamesh’s behavior is so egregious that the city’s elders ask the gods for help. After hearing the elders’ plea, the gods call upon the goddess Aruru to create a wild and strong man for Gilgamesh to compete with. Aruru is an unusual character. All the other gods in the Epic have clear identities and their origins are traceable to the Sumerian and, later, the Babylonian pantheons. However, Aruru’s origins are unclear. Andrew George, Professor of Babylonian at the University of London, says that the name Aruru is another name for the Mother Goddess, and he associates her with Belet-ili, the “Lady of the Gods.” (George 222) Stephanie Dalley, retired Assyriologist at Oxford, says her name means “great mother goddess” and she is associated with Ninhursag, the “mountain lady.” (Dalley 318)
Aruru complies with the gods’ command and performs the task requested of her. She creates Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s foil, in the same way she creates humankind - from the clay of the earth, like Yahweh created Adam from the dust of the earth:
“out of earth clay and divine spittle the double,
the stormy hearted other, Enkidu…” (Ferry 5)
This couplet by David Ferry’s is brilliant. Ferry’s poem is not a word for word translation but is instead a rendering of the Epic of Gilgamesh in English verse. In both Andrew George’s and Stephanie Dalley’s word for word translations of the Epic, there is no mention of “divine spittle.” Aruru washes her hands before creating Enkidu from clay. But she does not spit. Through Andrew George, and his excellent introduction to the Epic in his translation for Penguin Classics, we learn that the ancients believed “…[t]he divine element in mankind's creation explains why, an obvious distinction from the animals, the human race has selfconsciousness and reason.” (George xl) There are surviving Mesopotamian myths that indicate humans were created by the gods with a mixture of earthly materials, like dust or clay, and divine elements, like saliva, blood, or breath. I appreciate Ferry’s creativity – he takes a complex idea and summarizes it in four words: earth, clay, divine, and spittle. Enkidu is representative of the divine creation of human beings.
When he comes to be, Enkidu is hairy and full-grown but wild and powerful. He is naked and unaware, like Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:25: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” (Carroll 3) There is a juxtaposition between Enkidu and Gilgamesh that suggests Gilgamesh will have to learn hard lessons about kingly duties. The young King beats up men and sexually accosts women while surrounded by luxury. The just-born Enkidu runs naked and free like a gazelle in the grasslands completely unaware of human foibles. “The innately rebellious and unruly nature of man encapsulated in this myth of his creation also informs one tradition about early human history… that the first men roamed free and lawless and were not subject to kings helped to give rise to a myth that kings were created as distinct beings, significantly different from other mortals in appearance, capabilities and duties.” (George xl-xli)
Life Lessons
Recall Frye’s theory about the purpose of the thematic epic. The Epic of Gilgamesh is an educational story. It is not really Gilgamesh and Enkidu, fictional characters, who have lessons to learn. The educational value is for us the readers. Thus far we have learned that the tradition of a leader as wise, protective, and just is so ancient that it could be considered innate to the human species. We have also learned that there is something special that sets human beings apart from animals – self-awareness and the ability to reason. The ancients believed that the cause for this difference was because humans were created from a combination of earthly and divine stuff. Billions of people continue to believe so to this day.
By the end of Episode ii, we know Enkidu will be Gilgamesh’s foil. But we do not yet have a sense of his personality. Is he wiser than the youthful and boorish King? Or is he another violent Wild Ox? We do sense that Gilgamesh has more to learn from Enkidu than Enkidu does from Gilgamesh. But we are not yet sure exactly what those lessons will be…
_____________________
[1] “J (from Jahvist, German for Yahwist) … is usually understood to be the earliest source, and to have been written in Judah.” (Coogan 2277)
Bibliography
Carroll, Robert and Prickett, Stephen. The Bible: Authorized King James Version. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Coogan, Michael D., Editor. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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.
Leeming, David. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.
Comentarios