In the second half of the third millennium B.C. (ca.
2500–2000), stories and poems about the halflegendary
god-king Gilgamesh came to be widely
told in Sumer.Within a few hundred years, these
stories were compiled and edited into a long Babylonian
poem, known today as the Epic of Gilgamesh.
It can be considered the oldest surviving
literary masterpiece in the world.
The Sumerian civilization is the oldest known to
history. It emerged in the southern Tigris-
Euphrates valley of Iraq (Mesopotamia) sometime
in the fourth millennium B.C. Large city-states appeared
by the third millennium, boasting massive
civic and religious structures, elaborate irrigation
systems, long-distance trade, a written language, and
all the other attributes of a sophisticated culture.
Hereditary kings, who attained semidivine status in
the eyes of later generations, ruled the major cities.
One such king was Gilgamesh of Uruk (Erech
of the Bible). According to inscriptions, he ruled
sometime between 2700 and 2500 B.C., building up
the walls of the city and dedicating a temple in
Nippur. A body of oral legends soon grew up about
his superhuman achievements; these tales began to
be recorded on clay tablets soon after, written in
cuneiform script in the Sumerian language.
By around 2000 B.C., Sumerian ceased to be a
widely spoken language.However, the Babylonians,
the neighboring people who eventually conquered
all of Mesopotamia, accepted most elements of
Sumerian civilization, including the literary and religious
heritage. Babylonian scholars and scribes
adapted their own language, Akkadian, to the
Sumerian cuneiform script. They also kept Sumerian
alive as a literary language,much the way Latin
was kept alive in Europe long after the fall of Rome.
Fortunately, they also preserved many old Sumerian
texts by rendering them into Akkadian.
Though archeologists have found and deciphered
several Sumerian-language Gilgamesh
tablets, they have found many more such poems
and stories in other, later languages at digs across
the ancient Near East. The most famous and
widely copied version of the Gilgamesh story was
written in Akkadian, a Semitic language. That version
was probably first composed in the Old Babylonian
period (ca. 2000–1600 B.C.). It went through
various permutations and adaptations in subsequent
centuries, both in Akkadian and in Hittite
and Hurrian translations.
Eventually, toward the end of the Middle Babylonian
period (ca. 1600–1000 B.C.), the work seems
to have settled into its final form. This revised edition,
which included a new introduction and an additional
section tacked on to the end, is generally
known today as the “standard version.”Ancient catalogues
referred to it as the Gilgamesh “series” because
it was written across several tablets. It was also
known by its first line,“He who has seen everything.”
A catalog from the library of Assyrian king
Ashurbanipal attributes the standard version to a
scholar/priest named Sin-Leqi-Unninni. His exact
role in writing, editing, or transmitting the epic is
not known, but scholars tend to agree that the work
as we know it bears the stamp of a single writer.
Many ancient copies of the standard version
have been uncovered in recent years, including a
later Assyrian translation and a rendition in
Elamite that may have been intended for performance
as a religious ritual. The latter discovery has
led some scholars to speculate that at least parts of
the epic may have been performed at religious festivals
in Babylonia too. The standard late Babylonian
edition is the basis of all modern translations.
Critical Analysis
It should be noted that a complete text of Gilgamesh
has not yet been found. Scholars have labored
to piece together the existing fragments like
a jigsaw puzzle and to fill in the remaining gaps
with inspired literary guesswork. They know that
the full text ran to 12 numbered tablets, with six
columns of text on each.
Enough survives to make the work engaging
even today.As it opens, the reader is drawn into the
tale through a tour of the majestic walls of Uruk,
built by the mighty Gilgamesh.Hidden in the walls
is a copper box containing the tablets that tell the
tale of “he who has seen everything . . . but then
was brought to peace.”
Though a great king, son of gods, supremely
strong and beautiful, Gilgamesh oppresses the
young men and women of Uruk. The gods decide
to create a rival, Enkidu, who is depicted as an innocent
child of nature, at home with the animals.
Enkidu is soon seduced by a prostitute; he then
makes his way to Uruk and challenges Gilgamesh.
The king wins the hand-to-hand combat, but the
two become fast friends despite the vast difference
in status and personality. (Professions of friendship
and love are a recurrent theme in the rest of
the poem.)
Gilgamesh proposes a joint quest to visit the
Cedar Forest and slay its demon protector Humbaba,
thus gaining a kind of immortality through
eternal fame. After a long journey, they succeed in
slaying the demon, and Enkidu also fells the tallest
cedar to use as a door in the famous temple at
Nippur.
Feminist critics claim that the next episode,
about the goddess of love, Ishtar, may signal a
change in gender relationships in Babylon. After
Gilgamesh rejects Ishtar’s proposal of marriage,
Ishtar has the gods send down the destructive Bull
of Heaven. The hero slays the beast, reducing
Ishtar and her priestesses to impotent grief.
The gods decide to kill Enkidu in punishment
for the slayings of Humbaba and the Bull.When
Enkidu asks for revenge against those who had seduced
him away from his original state of innocence,
the sun god Shamash lectures him on the
simple civilized pleasures of food, wine, clothing,
and friendship he has known, and assures him he
will be properly mourned.
Gilgamesh cannot be consoled after the death
of his friend. Consumed with despair about his
own mortality, he decides to seek out Utnapishtim,
the only human who ever achieved eternal life.
On the way, surviving a series of dangerous adventures,
Gilgamesh is lectured on the futility of
his quest. He is admonished to
“Make every day a delight,
Night and day play and dance . . .
Look proudly on the little one holding
your hand,
Let your mate be always blissful in
your loins,
This, then, is the work of mankind.”
Ignoring this advice, the hero eventually succeeds
in crossing over the Waters of Death. Utnapishtim
recounts how he himself survived the
great flood, which had been designed by the gods
to exterminate all of mankind.He was granted immortality;
perhaps if Gilgamesh can remain awake
for seven nights, he, too, will receive the gift. But
Gilgamesh drops off to sleep the moment he sits
down. When a serpent then makes off with a
youth-restoring herb that Utnapishtim has given
him, Gilgamesh accepts that he must return to
Uruk and reconcile himself to mortality.
Accompanied by the ferryman Urshanabi, Gilgamesh
returns to Uruk. He invites Urshanabi to
ascend and traverse the walls, in language that recapitulates
the opening device; thus, the poem
comes full circle.
As it has come down to us, Gilgamesh is an
amalgam of many different elements. The basic
Sumerian hero tales were enriched with motifs
taken from royal hymns and temple hymns, independent
creation myths, sacred marriage rituals,
curse texts, and stories about deliverance from unjust
rulers. The flood story seems to have been
taken, albeit in modified form, from the Old Babylonian
tale of Atrahasis. The style of the writing
does not depart from tradition; there are many
parallelisms and repetitive chant-like phrases, and
a great deal of hyperbole.
Modern critics note that all these elements were
gracefully unified to focus on a number of themes,
centered on the problem of mortality. As more
fragments are discovered, and more translations
are made into modern languages, one conclusion
becomes hard to evade. This ancient work, dating
back almost to the dawn of literacy, shows a level of
psychological and philosophical awareness that
can speak to contemporary readers.
Gilgamesh the king became one of the most
popular heroes of ancient times, at least amongst
the scholarly elite. His bearded face and muscular
body were depicted on cylinder seals, monuments,
and other works of art. He was the model of the
courageous but tragic figure whose search for
fame, glory, and eternal life was doomed to ultimate
failure.
Echoes of Gilgamesh have been discerned by
some scholars in Greek mythology and in HOMER.
Possible references to the king show up in the DEAD
SEA SCROLLS and in a Syrian Christian manuscript
from the seventh century A.D. Parallels with the Hebrew
BIBLE have been widely debated, for example
concerning concepts of life after death. The biblical
story of Noah and the flood almost certainly drew
on Gilgamesh or related Babylonian material.
When the civilization of Mesopotamia died by
the end of the first millennium B.C., a moving and
thought-provoking narrative that had entertained
listeners and readers for some 2,500 years faded
into oblivion. Thanks to the accumulated work of
archeologists, historians, scholars, and poets, and
the epic has been reborn.
English Versions of Gilgamesh (Including
Notes and Analysis)
Gilgamesh: Translated from the Sin-Leqi-Unninni Version.
Translated by John Gardner and John Maier.
New York: Knopf, 1984.
Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse. Translated
by David Ferry.New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1992.
The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translated and edited by Benjamin
Foster. New York:W.W. Norton, 2001.
The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translated by Maureen Gallery
Kovacs. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1989.
Works about Gilgamesh
Maier, John, ed. Gilgamesh: A Reader.Wauconda, Ill.:
Bolchazy-Carducci, 1997.
Tigay, Jeffrey H. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1982.