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 1970s, there was a popular character on U.S. television called Geraldine. She was the creation of the comedian Flip Wilson. I remember laughing uproariously with my parents as we watched Geraldine’s antics. Whenever she got herself into trouble, she said her famous line, “the Devil made me do it!” This phrase came to mind while I was trying to make sense of Shamash, the Sun God - a puzzling character in The Epic of Gilgamesh. A line from David Ferry’s rendering was the impetus for my puzzlement. In Tablet VII, after Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull of Heaven, Enkidu has a foreboding dream in which the gods decide the fate of the companions. Anu, the Father God, declares one of them must die for their actions. Enlil, the Sky God, demands that Enkidu be killed. Shamash, the Sun God, dissents.
“And Shamash said: ‘The two of them went together,
companions on my errand into the Forest.
Why then should Enkidu, who went, companion,
into the Cedar Forest on my errand,
why should he die?’ Angry Enlil said:
‘You went with them as if you were companion,
day after day as they went upon their journey
to violate the Forest and kill the guardian.’” (Ferry 37)
Until now, it had seemed obvious that Gilgamesh and Enkidu had acted on no one’s errand but their own. Gilgamesh was stubborn and foolish despite wise advice from both the humans and gods around him. Had David Ferry made a poor choice of words, ‘my errand’? Ferry’s book is, after all, an interpretation, not an exact translation. He says, “There are many gaps in the tablets and therefore in the literal translations, and these gaps have provided both problems and opportunities for me.” (Ferry 94) Upon reviewing both Andrew George’s Penguin Classics and Stephanie Dalley’s Oxford World Classics translations, I discovered that Ferry’s word choice was not necessarily true to what is written on the tablet. To be fair, however, the tablet itself is fragmentary. I reviewed earlier tablets to determine if there had been hints that Gilgamesh had not acted solely on his own accord.
Tablet III, which is less fragmentary, describes the lead-up to the murder of Huwawa. Before Gilgamesh heads out to the Cedar Forest, his mother, the goddess Ninsun, pleads with Shamash. Ferry’s rendering, and the literal translations by George and Dalley, all hint that Shamash bears some culpability. From Ferry:
“Why have you given my son a restless heart?
No one has ever undergone the journey
that he will undergo. Huwawa’s mouth
is fire. O Shamash, my son Gilgamesh
is going to the Forest on your errand,
to kill the demon hateful to the sun god.” (Ferry 19-20)
The implication that Shamash had put the King up to the dastardly deed puzzled me. A puppet-on-a-string Gilgamesh, doing Shamash’s bidding, did not jibe with the portrayal of him as a ‘dingy hero’, designed to teach people a lesson about how to behave civilly. It was almost as preposterous as Geraldine saying, “the Devil made me do it!”
Andrew George, in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, said, “The Gilgamesh epic is one of the very few works of Babylonian literature which can be read and enjoyed without special knowledge of the civilization from which it sprang.” (George xxxii) When I first read Gilgamesh, I read purely. I did not research the story and had far less knowledge of the epic genre than I do today. While I enjoyed the tale, I did not understand it. I made the typical mistake of trying to comprehend this most ancient piece of literature from a modern reader’s point of view. Why, for example, would Shamash put Gilgamesh up to killing Huwawa? Without any context, the characters’ actions seemed haphazard, juvenile, and stereotypical. Boys, with the gods egging them on, destroying things because they are boys. I better enjoyed, and dare I say better understood, the story in subsequent readings after having developed at least some knowledge of its religious and cultural context.
Shamash is not the devil who made Gilgamesh do anything. Instead, he is the “arbiter of justice and patron of travelers, so responsible for Gilgamesh’s welfare on his adventures.” (Ferry 224) He has enmity toward Huwawa, the protector of the Cedar Forest. Understanding the motivation for his actions starts with understanding his enmity. He is the son of Sîn, the Moon God, who in turn is the son of Enlil, the Sky God. Enlil, therefore, is Shamash’s grandfather. While a fragmentary gap in Tablet II leaves us to guess as to how Gilgamesh got the idea to kill Huwawa, guessing is unnecessary in the case of who put Huwawa up to his job, as Enkidu explains:
“Enkidu spoke these words to Gilgamesh:
‘Huwawa’s mouth is fire; his roar the floodwater;
his breath is death. Enlil made him guardian
of the Cedar Forest, to frighten off the mortal
who would venture there. But who would venture
there? Huwawa’s mouth is fire; his roar…’” (Ferry 14)
Gilgamesh’s act of killing the creature who was simply doing the job the Sky God asked him to do is a literary device designed to show us how immature and un-kingly his behavior is. But is there more to it? Why did Shamash send Gilgamesh on the errand to kill the forest protector that his grandfather installed? Is the source of Shamash’s enmity not Huwawa, but his grandfather Enlil instead?
Enlil’s back story offers some clues. According to David Leeming, in The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, “Enlil is attracted to his natural counterpart, the young and beautiful Ninlil (“Lady of the Air”). Her mother … advises her to … avoid the canal called Inunbirdu, where Enlil will be lurking, ready to seduce and impregnate her. Naturally, Ninlil goes directly to the canal. Enlil is, in fact, waiting there, and he begins to attempt the seduction. Ninlil at first resists but later Enlil finds her at a more hidden place and rapes her, engendering the moon god [Sîn].” (Leeming 121-122) Could this act, the rape of his grandmother, have been the source of Shamash’s enmity toward him? Perhaps Shamash wants Huwawa killed out of revenge? This idea feels lacking because of its modern prejudice toward free will and a hatred of violence against women. If this was a modern novel, with modern conceptions of psychology, Shamash’s act of revenge would make sense.
More likely, Shamash’s behavior speaks to something of its time. Leeming provides us with an additional clue. Shamash is the brother of Ishtar, the Goddess of Fertility. When Ishtar returns from a visit to the underworld, her husband, Tammuz, is unaware that she has been missing. “An enraged [Ishtar] condemns him to the sacrifice. Terrified, [Tammuz] begs his brother-in-law [Shamash] for help, but even when he is turned by the sun god into a snake, he cannot escape. He, too, must experience the dark world of [Ishtar’s] other side…” (Leeming 197) Why would Shamash turn his brother-in-law into a snake? What meaning did snakes have in ancient Babylonian culture?
As Leeming says, “Serpent myths are ubiquitous in world mythology. They are phallic and they penetrate the earth, making them frequent associates of the goddess in her many forms and objects connoting fertility… In some traditions, such as those of Babylon and Greece, the defeated serpent reflects the rise of patriarchy over the old earth-based religion. Thus … Apollo defeats the Python associated with the former dominance of Earth (Gaia) at Delphi.” (Leeming 350)
According to Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley, “Kingship [patriarchy] was the only form of government in ancient Mesopotamia, ordained by the gods for the guidance and prosperity of people and cities, to maintain order and to protect the weak in society… Whenever kingship broke down, so did law and order, with terrible consequences. Gilgamesh as a young king behaved badly, but this was no reason to depose him… For the ancient Mesopotamians, The Epic of Gilgamesh showed that kingship must be supported even though individual kings are imperfect.” (Dalley 49)
Shamash, a god in the ‘new’ pantheon, represents the rise of the patriarchy over the older, Neolithic worship of the Earth mother. Huwawa’s mission is to protect the Earth (represented by the Cedar Forest as the earth-dwelling of the gods). Shamash’s mission is to protect kingship, else society would fall apart. Huwawa represents the old, outdated ways whereas Shamash represents the new, modern ideas of civilization. This is why he is portrayed as protecting and supporting Gilgamesh, even when the king behaves egregiously. The devil, or a god in this case, did not make Gilgamesh do the thing, however, Shamash protected him while he was doing it because Gilgamesh, and kingship, must survive.
Bibliography
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.
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