Gilgamesh (20 page)
p. 46,
“the epic of the fear of death:”
See note, p. 202.
p. 48,
Abu Yazid al-Bistami:
Stephen Mitchell, ed.,
The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose,
HarperCollins, 1991, p. 76.
p. 49,
Shiduri:
“This character is mysterious, and otherwise unknown. She is a married woman, as is indicated by the âveil' that she wears; and she belongs to the supernatural world, since her name is preceded, in cuneiform, by the sign that indicates a god. She is a âtavern keeper': that is, according to a custom current until the second half of the second millennium (afterward, the role was taken over by men), she runs a sort of bar in which she sells to the public beer-the country's national drinkâthat she has made (her professional apparatus is mentioned in verse 3). Besides being a drinking establishment, the tavern also represented the âcommerce of the crossroads,' where many commodities of primary necessity were sold, and whose managers were better qualified than anyone else to give information, not only about their clientele, but also about the country. Shiduri is the model, projected into legend, of these âbusiness people of the crossroads,' even if it's difficult to see who her clients could be, here at the edge of the world ⦠The author needed her as a figure who could give information to GilgameÃ, and folklore can do without logic” (Bottéro, p. 165).
p. 52,
the same questions Shiduri asked:
Urshanabi asks them as well, but I have omitted that part of the dialogue between him and Gilgamesh.
p. 52,
Tell us how not to believe what we think:
See Byron Katie, with Stephen Mitchell,
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life,
Harmony Books, 2002.
p. 53,
for St. Paul to tell the Thessalonians that they were
not
going to die:
Paul believed that the “second coming” would happen during his lifetime. “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel's call, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first, then we who are alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
p. 53,
tells him about the Great Flood:
His speech has been adapted from an older poem called
Atrahasis.
Most scholars (e.g., Tigay, pp. 238 ff.) think that the adaptor was Sîn-lëqi-unninni, but since no fragments of the Old Babylonian version of Book XI have survived, we don't know whether it too contained the long Flood story.
p. 54,
clustering around it like flies:
This image, unlike many of the others, was borrowed from the
Atrahasis.
p. 54,
abridge the Flood story:
Here is one way it might be abridged:
“You know Shuruppak, that ancient city. I was its king once, long ago, when the great gods decided to send the Flood. Ea informed me, and I built a large ship. I loaded onto her everything precious that I owned. Very soon the Flood burst forth. For six days and seven nights, the storm demolished the earth. On the seventh day, the downpour stopped. The ocean grew calm. No land could be seen. There was no life at all. The human race had turned into clay.
When the waters had dried up and land appeared, the gods assembled. Enlil blessed us, me and my wife. âYou gods, from now on Utnapishtim and his wife shall be gods like us, they shall live forever.' Then they brought us to this distant place at the source of the rivers. Here we live.”
p. 55,
to experience all that terror, and the death of almost every living thing:
Utnapishtim's compassion and sorrow for the people left behind are more explicit in the
Atrahasis:
“He invited his people [ ⦠] / [ ⦠] to a feast. / [ ⦠] he put his family on board. / They were eating, they were drinking, / But he went in and out, / Could not stay still or rest on his haunches, / His heart was breaking and he was vomiting bile” (Dalley, p. 31).
p. 56,
the “unsleeping, undying” gods:
From Utnapishtim's speech:
“At night the moon travels across the sky, the gods of heaven stay awake and watch us, unsleeping, undying. This is the way the world is established, from ancient times.”
p. 56,
“an animal [or a god] can't know”:
From Book I:
He [Enkidu] turned back to Shamhat, and as he walked he knew that his mind had somehow grown larger, he knew things now that an animal can't know.
p. 59,
“At four hundred miles they stopped to eat, / at a thousand miles they pitched their camp:”
See note, p. 283.
p. 60, “
satisfied with good things” ⦠“youth is renewed like the eagle's:”
Psalm 103:5.
p. 63,
managed to “close the gate of sorrow:”
From the conclusion of Gilgamesh's first long speech to Utnapishtim in Book X:
“Now let the gate of sorrow be closed behind me, and let it be sealed shut with tar and pitch.”
p. 63,
“When I argue with reality, I lose:”
Byron Katie,
Loving What Is,
p. 2.
A
BOUT
T
HIS
V
ERSION
p. 65,
literal translations:
For the complexities of decipherment and translation, see George,
EG,
pp. 209 ff.
p. 66,
“Sestina:”
Elizabeth Bishop,
The Complete Poems, 1927-1979,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983, pp. 123-24.
P
ROLOGUE
p. 69,
He had seen everything:
Literally, “He who saw the Deep” or “He who saw everything” (in Akkadian, Sha naqba ïmuru). The poem's first line also served as its title. “The word
naqbu
has two meanings, (a) âtotality' and (b) the deep body of underground water believed to supply springs and
wells, that is, the cosmic realm of Ea better known as the Apsû” (George,
BGE,
I, p. 444).
p. 69,
had restored the holy Eanna Temple and the massive / wall of Uruk:
Literally, “had built the wall of Uruk-of-the-Sheepfold and the sacred storehouse of holy Eanna.” Here Sîn-lëqi-unninni seems to say, by the sequence of actions, that Gilgamesh built the wall and the Eanna Temple
after
he returned from his journey to Utnapishtim. But of course the wall and the temple are very much present during the action of the poem, and Gilgamesh proudly points out the wall to Urshanabi on their return. In fact, the next line asserts that the wall was founded by the Seven Sages long before the Flood. (Literally, “Isn't its masonry made of kiln-fired brick, and didn't the Seven Sages themselves lay its foundations?” The Seven Sages were antediluvian kings who, themselves taught by the god Ea, had taught humanity all the arts of civilization.) Obviously there were other builders of the wall, though Gilgamesh was considered the most famous. So I have said “restored” rather than “built.”
p. 69,
gleam like copper:
Following Kovacs.
p. 70,
observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens, / the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops / and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares:
Literally, “One Ãär (1½ square miles) is city, one Ãär palm gardens, one Ãär clay-pits, half a Ãär the Ishtar TempleâUruk measures three and a half Ãär .”
B
OOK
I
p. 71,
Surpassing all kings
(in Akkadian, Shütur eli sharrï): The first line of the Old Babylonian version, and its title.
p. 71,
two-thirds divine and one-third human:
My friend Philip Ording points out that this is as mathematically impossible as being two-thirds English and one-third French. I have moved the line forward; it occurs a bit later in Tablet I.
p. 72,
he brought back the ancient, forgotten rites, / restoring the temples that the Flood had destroyed, / renewing the statutes and sacraments / for the welfare of the people and the sacred land:
Literally, “he restored the sanctuaries that the Flood had destroyed and reestablished the rituals for the human race.” I have added a few clarifying phrases from the Sumerian poem “The Death of Gilgamesh” (version from Me-Turan, segment F, ll. 14 ff.). Literally, “establishing temples of the gods, reaching Ziusudra (=Utnapishtim) in his abode, reestablishing the rites of Sumer, forgotten since ancient times, the ordinances and rituals, you carried out the rites of purification, you understood everything that was needful for the land, from before the Flood.”
p. 72,
The goddess Aruru, mother of creation, / had designed his body, had made him the strongest / of menâhuge, handsome, radiant, perfect:
Literally, “Bëlet-ilï (=Aruru) drew the image of his body, Nudimmud (=Ea) brought his form to perfection. [ ⦠] was majestic [ ⦠] stature [ ⦠].” I have omitted a brief fragmentary description of Gilgamesh as a giant: “His feet were 3 cubits (4½ feet) long, his legs 6 cubits (9 feet) tall, his stride 6 cubits, his thumb was [ ⦠] cubits, his cheeks were bearded like [ ⦠],
the hairs of his head were as thick as barley.” According to the later Hittite version, he was 11 cubits, or more than 16½ feet, tall. (Interestingly enough, this is about the height of the magnificent human-headed winged bull from the throne room of Sargon II in Khorsabad, now at the Oriental Institute in Chicago, http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/
OI /MUS/HIGH/OIM
_A7369_72dpi.html.) By contrast, Goliath was 6 cubits and a span (93/4 feet) tall (1 Samuel 17:4).
p. 72
takes the son from his father and crushes him:
The nature of this oppression is unclear; it may be some kind of forced labor or military service.
p. 73,
But the people of Uruk cried out to heaven, / and their lamentation was heard, the gods / are not unfeeling, their hearts were touched, / they went to Anu, father of them all, / protector of the realm of sacred Uruk, / and spoke to him on the people's behalf: / “Heavenly Father, Gilgameshâ/ noble as he is, splendid as he isâ/ has exceeded all bounds. The people suffer / from his tyranny, the people cry out / that he takes the son from his father and crushes him, / takes the girl from her mother and uses her, / the warrior's daughter, the young man's bride, / he uses her, no one dares to oppose him. / Is this how you want your king to rule? / Should a shepherd savage his own flock? Father, / do something, quickly, before the people / overwhelm heaven with their heartrending cries.”:
Literally, “[The women (George's conjecture)] their [ ⦠] soon, [ ⦠] complaint [ ⦠] before [them]: âPowerful, preeminent, expert, [ ⦠] Gilgamesh does not leave a girl to [her bridegroom], the warrior's daughter, the young man's bride.' The goddesses kept hearing their complaints. The gods of heaven, the lords who command, [to Anu], âYou have created an arrogant wild bull in Uruk-the-Sheepfold, he has no equal who can raise a weapon [against him], his companions are always ready to obey his orders (
or
are kept on their feet by the ball), he
oppresses [the young men of Uruk], he does not leave a son to his father, day and [night his violence grows] worse. Yet he is the shepherd of Uruk-the-Sheepfold, Gilgamesh, [who guides the] teeming [people], he is their shepherd and their [ ⦠], powerful, preeminent, expert, [ ⦠]. Gilgamesh does not leave a girl to her bride[groom]-the warrior's daughter, the young [man's] bride.'”
p. 74,
Anu heard them, he nodded his head, / then to the goddess, mother of creation, / he called out: “Aruru, you are the one / who created humans. Now go and create / a double for Gilgamesh, his second self, / a man who equals his strength and courage, / a man who equals his stormy heart. / Create a new hero, let them balance each other / perfectly, so that Uruk has peace.”:
Literally, “[Anu] listened to their complaints. They summoned the great goddess Aruru: âAruru, you are the one who created [mankind], now create one like him. Let him be equal to his stormy heart, let them be a match for each other so that Uruk has peace.'”
p. 75,
a trapper:
“The word is commonly translated âhunter,' but âtrapper' seems more accurate here because the animals are captured in traps or pits, not killed by weapons” (Kovacs, p. 6).
p. 76,
then follow his advice. He will know what to do:
I have omitted the father's specific instructions about Shamhat, which are repeated word for word in Gilgamesh's speech. I have also omitted, in the trapper's speech to Gilgamesh, the description of Enkidu, repeated word for word from his speech to his father.
pp. 76-77,
“Go to the temple of Ishtar, / ask them there for a woman named Shamhat, / one of the priestesses who give their bodies / to any man, in honor of the goddess. / Take
her into the wilderness. / When the animals are drinking at the waterhole, / tell her to strip off her robe and lie there / naked, ready, with her legs apart. / The wild man will approach. Let her use her love-arts. / Nature will take its course, and then / the animals who knew him in the wilderness / will be bewildered, and will leave him forever:
Literally, “Go, trapper, take Shamhat, the £arïmtu, with you. When the animals are drinking at the waterhole, have her take off her robe and expose her vagina. When he sees her he will approach, and his animals will be estranged from him, though he grew up in their presence.”
p. 78,
They looked in amazement. The man was huge / and beautiful. Deep in Shamhat's loins / desire stirred. Her breath quickened / as she stared at this primordial being:
Literally, “Shamhat saw himâthe primeval man, the savage from the midst of the wilderness.”
p. 78,
Stir up his lust when he approaches, / touch him, excite him, take his breath / with your kisses, show him what a woman is:
Literally, “Don't hold back, take his vital force. When he sees you he will approach you. Spread out your robe, let him lie on top of you, and stir up his lust, the work of a woman.”