Global Lit Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh

Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Creation Myth

Enuma Elish is an ancient Babylonian text (18^th century BC / 1100 BC) which deals with the creation of the world, a war between the Gods, and the creation of humanity.

Apsu and Tiamat (fresh water and salt water, respectively) mingle and give birth, through their mingling (sexy times!), to the early Gods: Ea and the rest (these are the Anunna gods).

Ea and the younger gods are so noisy that Apsu decides to destroy them (because he can’t get any sleep), but Tiamat, wanting to save her children, warns Ea, who kills Apsu.

Ea then takes over as the main God (this probably reminds us of Chronos and Zeus). He has many children with his wife, including Marduk.

Tiamat rises against Marduk and these younger gods (the Igigi gods) with her new husband, Qingu, but is defeated in a battle against Marduk. She is torn into pieces, and her body is used to make the earth; Qingu is slaughtered, and from his blood, humanity is created.

(Why create humanity? Well, someone has to serve the Gods! You can’t expect them to feed and clothe themselves! ß This is why we exist, according to Enuma Elish: to bring offerings to the Gods, and to do their bidding and be their servants.)

This can profitably be compared to a number of creation stories – not just the Greeks. What do we make (for instance?) of the fact that here people are created from the blood of a rebel god?

Compare that to the Norse creation myth, in which people are created from driftwood – an ash tree and an elm tree, respectively. (Both of these trees are magic, take note.)

Compare this to Genesis, where people are created from dust and the breath (the anima, the spirit) of God.

Gilgamesh

This is one of our earliest epics. It’s from about 2500 b.c., or just under five thousand years ago.

An epic is a long narrative poem about a cultural hero, usually containing gods, that explains, or defines, the culture’s ethos: it gives, that is, rules about how one should behave. It also usually answers some of the big questions we always want answered: where did we come from, why are we here, why do we die.

Gilgamesh is king of one of the earliest cities, Uruk, there in the Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates River.

The Fertile Crescent

This was the cradle of civilization, the area and time when organized agriculture, writing, and bureaucracy first allowed cities to form; and so this is the time when we first begin to see written literature.

Gilgamesh is written in cuneiform, one of the earliest forms of writing (used as early as 4000 BC), a series of wedge-shaped symbols made on a clay tablet. Not until the 19^th century did we learn how to decipher cuneiform.

Cuneiform

In the epic, which is recorded in various versions, we have Gilgamesh, the part human / part God king of Uruk, failing to be a good king. According to most versions, he fails for specific reasons: he uses the children of the people badly, sleeping with their daughters in ways he shouldn’t, and using the strength of their sons in ways he shouldn’t.

The people cry out to Anu, their god, asking for help. Anu sends help by asking his Aruru, the fertility goddess, to make Gilgamesh a friend, someone to stop his loneliness.

She creates Enkidu, his double, who is one-third god and two-thirds human: Enkidu is like an animal at first, as Gilgamesh is like a God at first.

Enkidu thinks he is an animal, just as Gilgamesh mistakes himself for a god. He runs wild with the animals, and Gilgamesh must send a woman, a temple prostitute, out to lure him into humanity’s camp.

[Note: A temple prostitute does not have the same connotation as prostitute does for Americans – in Mesopotamia at this point, there was a religion dedicated to sex, a fertility religion, sacred to Aruru. Think also of Ishtar and Easter. (There’s a reason you have bunnies and eggs in your Easter basket.) Think of Mardi Gras. These are all fertility celebrations, connected very directly to a fertility religion. In Mesopotamia, in this culture, there were not just festivals but priests and priestesses who dedicated themselves to the goddess. “Temple prostitute” is a kind of translation of what they did. Basically, they had religious sex, in dedication to the goddess. (There was, indeed, an offering involved.)

[This is almost certainly why, by the way, there is a commandment against prostitution in the Christian and Hebrew Bible, as well as commandments against same-sex sex – not so much because these sort of sex are naughty, as because having that kind of sex involves worshipping another god(dess).]

So Aruru’s priestess goes out into the wilderness, where she uses the power of both sex and her civilizing influence – as a woman, as an agent of Aruru – to teach Enkidu to be human. She doesn’t just have sex with him, that is. She teaches him how to eat, how to bathe, how to dress. She more or less does what women have been doing to humans all through history: she raises him up. 

And she also teaches him justice: here is an unjust act, she says, telling him what Gilgamesh is doing to the young people of Uruk, and calling upon him to right that act.

Enkidu goes into the city and stands against Gilgamesh. He keeps him from acting unjustly. He can’t defeat him – he’s not strong enough – but Gilgamesh can’t get past him either. The act of opposing injustice is enough. More importantly, Gilgamesh now has an equal: someone to stand up and to stand with him.

(In the bit we are not reading, Gilgamesh and Enkidu are friends for a long time; then Gilgamesh decides they should go cut down the Cedars of Humbaba, to use them to build the gates of the city. Enkidu argues against it, but Gilgamesh, who wants fame and everlasting glory, won’t listen. Off they go, and they cut the cedars and slay Humbaba.  Humbaba curses them as he dies.

On their return, Ishtar approaches Gilgamesh, asking for sex, which he refuses – the texts differ as to why, but it’s probably because he loves Enkidu – and Ishtar sends the bull of heaven to kill him; Enkidu and Gilgamesh fight and kill this bull; during the sacrifice of its carcass, Ishtar threatens death to Gilgamesh, and Enkidu flings the hindquarters of the bull at her.

Ishtar, in a fury, strikes Enkidu with a fatal disease. He lingers twelve days, describing in great details the horrors of the underworld (which he sees in his fever dreams) before dying.

Overcome by grief – and, more essentially, by terror at the realization that he too is going to die – Gilgamesh sets out on a quest to find immortality.

Gilgamesh’s Quest

Something to notice about Gilgamesh’s quest is that, although he is grieving for Enkidu, and although in one sense he does want immortality for Enkidu, he truly is primarily upset about his own mortality.

That is, just as all along it is his own everlasting fame that has motivated him to engage in great deed and to build the high walls and immense gates of the city of Uruk, it is now his own life he fears to lose – his own death that terrifies him.  In seeing Enkidu’s death, he sees his own oncoming doom.

The hero's journey is a common motif for an epic, and common events happen as a hero moves through a journey – the hero will

·        Leave the ordinary world

·        Pass tests (or fail to pass them) / deal with gate-keepers (We see this with Gilgamesh when he deals with the Scorpion Men and Woman; in Oedipus, it’s when he answers the Riddle of the Sphinx; in Odysseus, it’s when he deals with the Cyclops)

·        Cross through an underworld (we see this happening when Gilgamesh goes through the dark tunnel under the mountain; Odysseus goes to the literal underworld;)

·        Meeting Wise Helpers / Advisors / Guides (in Gilgamesh’s case, Siduri, the Ferryman, and Utnapishtim)

·        Crossing a boundary / a liminal space (when Gilgamesh goes across the Sea of Death)

·        Achieving a treasure / piece of wisdom / something useful for the people which – sometimes – is brought back from the journey (In Gilgamesh’s case, the plant which gives life – except, of course, he loses it)

·        The return, with the treasure / knowledge

Gilgamesh goes out on his hero’s journey, seeking to become like a God. He wants immortality.

This is, of course, the story of many heroes’ journeys – many heroes want to be like gods, knowing good and evil, and being immortal. The story of many epics and many mythic cycles are stories about why humanity can’t have those things.

Which – why not? Why can’t we be immortal? Why can’t we live forever in Eden?

Notice that Genesis gives us one answer, and Gilgamesh gives us a different answer.

In Genesis we can’t live forever because Eden is no place for humans to live – we can’t stay there, because we want to know good and evil, and humans can’t both know good and evil and live forever. (Because if you have both those things, then you’re a god, and you’re no longer a human.)

Mythically, that kind of makes sense, I guess.

In any case, we have to leave Eden for the same reason we have to leave the womb – you can’t stay innocent (ignorant) and be human. And the only way to be ignorant of death is to be innocent (ignorant) – to be a child.

In Gilgamesh, apparently, we can’t have immortality because we don’t have the stamina for it. Gilgamesh crosses the Sea of Death to ask Utnapishtem for immortality. Utnapishtim says he has to stay awake if he wants it. But Gilgamesh, exhausted from rowing across the Sea of Death, falls asleep right away, and sleeps for seven days.

In both these cases, notice that you have to be like a god to be immortal. And humans just aren’t like gods.

Then Utnapishtim gives Gilgamesh the next best thing – a plant which, when eaten, lets you renew your youth.

Notice he doesn’t exactly give Gilgamesh this plant. He tells him where to find it. It’s at the bottom of a body of water (an ocean, in some translations, a pond in others). Gilgamesh must tie rocks to his feet, and go way down deep to get it, and bring it back up with him.

That is such an odd detail – binding rocks to his feet. So bizarre that it keeps stopping us when we read it. (How would he swim back up to the surface with rocks bound to his feet? …I suppose he could cut them off, first, maybe? But why would he even need to bind rocks to his feet? Why not just dive down? That’s just…that’s odd.)

Something that is so odd like this in literature, that it makes us stop, and won’t let our minds rest, and won’t make sense, is called an aporia.

Literally, aporia means a pathless path. In literary theory, it means a weird bit, a snag, a strangeness in the text that makes the reader stop and think; the very inability to find meaning makes us look for meaning. (And we will, interestingly enough, often find it.)

What is going on here, with this pond, these rocks, this plant that might (or might not) give immortality?

Not to mention the snake that comes and steals the plant when Gilgamesh is not paying attention?

Well, what do these collection of symbols (plant, snake, symbolic drowning, rebirth, a promise immortality) make us think of?

Like Eve in the Garden with her snake, Gilgamesh makes an error. Thus, snakes become immortal instead.

(This reflects, by the way, both the belief, common in the Ancient Mideast, that snakes were immortal, and that snakes were magic and wise. That’s why you found their shed skins everywhere – they shed their skins whenever they cast off an old life and were reborn into a new one. Being thus immortal, they were obviously wise, and probably magic too.)

This, in the end, is why humans can’t be (like gods) immortal. We just can’t pay attention. We doze off. We get distracted. We make mistakes. We’re flawed.

The Flood Myth

You’ll have noticed that Utnapishtim’s flood story bears some resemblance to the flood story in Genesis. (The boat is something like the ark, there are birds, Utnapishtim takes along his household – though he also takes along people not in his household – and seeds and animals, and precious metals; the flood lasts seven days, instead of 40, but still.)

Many cultures around the world have flood myths. The ones in the Mideast have some common features, with gods often requiring a favored man (or men, or a man and a woman) to build a boat. (Sometimes it is stocked with animals and goods; sometimes not.)

Some effort has been put into finding historical roots for these floods. Interesting theories abound, which really aren’t the focus of this class – though might favorites include a meteor that hit the Indian ocean in 3000 BC, causing Tsunamis; or rising sea levels after the end of the ice age in 8000 BC, which would have caused wide-spread flooding in the area around the Tigris and Euphrates River (as well as in some of the other areas that have flood myths).

In any case: some aspects of Utnapishtim’s story match the story we have of Noah in Genesis. Others are different. It is interesting to consider the similarities as well as the differences.

This account of the flood in Gilgamesh, by the way, seems to come from an even earlier account – from the Atrahasis Epic, in which the god Enlil destroys all humanity because they are just too noisy. (This may remind us of why the first gods wanted to destroy the younger gods.)

Enlil finds that there are just too many people – we are breeding, and breeding, and making too much noise. So first he sends disease, and then a famine, and then a drought. But still there are too many people, making too much noise. So finally he decides on a flood, to kill everyone.

Enki, a younger god, warns the hero Atrahasis, and tells him to build a boat. Atrahasis saves his family and his own animals (not all the animals in the world). Afterwards, Enki and Enlil decide on better ways of controlling humans than periodic mass extermination. (No more floods!)

We can see some of this in Utnapishtim’s story, and some of it in Noah’s.

No real reason is given for the slaughter of all humanity in Utnapishtim’s story. No real reason is given for choosing him as the boat-builder, either. (Noah, you’ll recall, was a righteous man, the best of his age.) He’s told to build a boat, and he saves his family, and some other useful people and animals and things.

Another difference is that in Gilgamesh the gods – once the storm begins, and the people die – regret what they have done. They’re horrified both by the force of the storm and by the immense destruction they have caused among humanity. The heaps of death, the bodies lying about “like clay” appall them. They wail in grief at what they have done; they flee up to heaven and “cower like dogs.” This (their horror) is what causes them to declare that they will never slaughter humanity this way again.

Following the flood – for reasons not made clear – both Utnapishtim and his wife are granted immortality. The literal translation, in fact, says that they are “made like gods,” which is to say, they are made immortal. (It may be because the gods had decreed that “no man” was to survive the flood. So if Utnapishtim and his wife are made “like gods” then no man has survived, and the gods aren’t liars. BUT: The problem with this interpretation is that, obviously, their entire family and all those craftsmen also survived.)