ΑΚAΔΗΜΙΑ ΘΕΣΜΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΣΜΩΝ ACADEMY OF INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURES

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Στοά των Επιστημών-Επιστημονική Επιθεώρηση Stoa of Sciences-Scientific Review Ο θάνατος και η κάθοδος στον Άδη στο έπος του Γιλγαμές και στη νέκυα (λ) της Οδύσσειας Death and the descent to the

Παπαγιάννης, Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης Dr. Lampros I. Papagiannis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki E-mail: lampros.

1 Στοά των Επιστημών-Επιστημονική Επιθεώρηση Stoa of Sciences-Scientific Review Ο θάνατος και η κάθοδος στον Άδη στο έπος του Γιλγαμές και στη νέκυα (λ) της Οδύσσειας Death and the descent to the underworld in the epic of Gilgamesh and Odyssey rhapsody λ. A philosophical approach ISSN: : Ακαδημία Θεσμών και Πολιτισμών-Academy of Institutions and Cultures Δρ. Λάμπρος Ι. Παπαγιάννης, Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης Dr. Lampros I. Papagiannis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki lampros.p@hotmail Περίληψη Ο προβληματισμός πάνω στο ζήτημα του θανάτου υποδεικνύεται ήδη με την ανάπτυξη της λογοτεχνικής παραγωγής του αρχαίου κόσμου ακόμα και πριν το ξεπήδημα του ακραιφνώς φιλοσοφικού στοχασμού κατά τον 6ο αιώνα. Εδώ εξετάζεται ο θάνατος ως κατάβαση στον κάτω κόσμο αφενός στην Οδύσσεια (λ, Νέκυα) και αφετέρου στο έπος του Γιλγαμές. Παρατηρούνται ορισμένες ενδιαφέρουσες ομοιότητες, αλλά και ειδοποιοί διαφορές ως προς τη σύλληψη της έννοιας του θανάτου ως γεγονότος, αλλά και ως προς τον τελειωτικό (και τελεολογικό) του χαρακτήρα. Επιπλέον θα πρέπει να συσχετιστεί το τελευτάν με την ηθική του ανθρώπου κατά την (ενσαρκωμένη) ζωή του στα δύο υπό εξέταση έργα ως προς τη θεώρηση της ηθικής ως η αιώνια μάχη του καλού με το κακό. Abstract ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 1

2 The issue of death appears as a popular topic at the beginning of man s literature production even before the sheer philosophical development of the 6th century B.C. this article examines death as descent to the underworld in Odyssey rhapsody l on the one hand and the epic of Gilgamesh on the other. Interesting similarities as well as significant differences are observed throughout the analysis of the particular topic in the two ancient texts. Death is seen as a fact and at the same as something which may give hope for what is not an ultimatum. In addition death must be related to the notion of morality and thus with man s place within the eternal battle of the ethical good against evil. Λέξεις-Κλειδιά: Όμηρος, ομηρικά έπη, θάνατος, ηθική, γνώση, γίγνεσθαι, είναι, Ελλάδα & Περσία, Οδύσσεια, Ιλιάδα, Αβέστα, Ζωροαστρισμός, έπος του Γιλγαμές Keywords: Homer, Homeric epics, Odyssey, Iliad, epic of Gilgamesh, death, Zoroastrianism, Avesta, knowledge, ethics, Greece & Persia, becoming, being ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 2

3 Introduction The issue of death has always fascinated man and has been put under investigation in all aspects of human spirituality. From the epics of the ancient civilizations and folklore songs and poetry to science and philosophical interpretation and from the most recognized plays to modern cinema death is seen not strictly in its biological aspect, but rather as a charming, yet fearful condition, from which no one can escape. However it is not death itself, but mostly the fear of the unknown that has triggered the human mind and provoked it into keep asking the fundamental question, for which no answer is to be found. What happens afterwards? Is there afterlife and if so in what conditions does man continue to live? Death may be understood as the final frontier for the materialists or a short interval towards the eternal life for the believers of a specific religious dogma; on the other hand death could indicate nothing more than a natural rupture within the continuation of an endless circle, within which no beginning and no ending truly exist. As far as Greek literature is concerned it is possibly in the Iliad that the issue of death is first mentioned, as the epic speaks of the tremendous deeds of heroes of Greece and Troy only to distinguish them from the immortals, the gods who live in Olympus. Homer, the author of the Iliad 1 uses the term βρωτοί (vroti), a word that can be translated as they who are condemned to die, in order to describe the humans. This word is never used for the gods, although the latter may still experience human emotions (mostly anger or envy) or even physical pain, as they often take part in the battles 2. In addition the heroic death in the bloody fields outside the castle of Troy gave birth to the idea of fame, an idea that was meant to follow the Greeks for the centuries to come. Die in the battlefield and you shall be remembered by the future generations. However the first description of the underworld takes place in the Odyssey; in rhapsody λ 3. The journey of the Greek mind in the land of the dead continues for centuries after; Euripides, the great poet, wonders about the difference between life and death 4, Plato and Aristotle set a more philosophical and scientific basis on this very matter respectively, whereas the comic poet Lucian faces death in a more relaxing and humoristic way. 1 For the Homeric issue (about whether Homer was the author of both the Iliad and the Odyssey) see Wace A. & Stubbings F., A companion to Homer, McMillan Press Ltd., Cambridge, UK, By and large the Olympian gods were divided; Hera, Athena and Poseidon helped the Greeks, whereas Artemis, Aphrodite and Apollo helped the Trojans. Zeus showed a preference to the Greeks, but was forced to remain neutral, as he was the ultimate king of gods and humans. 3 Iliad and Odyssey are divided into twenty-four chapters each, called rhapsodies and are recognized by the twentyfour letters of the Greek alphabet. A capital letter signifies a rhapsody of the Iliad, whereas a small letter signifies a rhapsody of the Odyssey. 4 Euripides, Helen. ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 3

4 It is likely that in ancient Greek philosophy the several understandings of death have their origin in eastern traditions about afterlife, as found in the Orphic 5, from Thrace or Egypt, whereas in Chinese philosophy the idea of afterlife seems to derive from the belief in the world of spirits, a world equally real with that of humans. The worshiping of the spirits of the deceased ancestors set the basis for a more social philosophy focusing on the rituals in order to honour the dead, music and the relation between the citizen and the emperor in the Confucian version of Chinese tradition, whereas in Taoism this spirituality possesses the feature of mysticism and is to be understood within the idea of eternal flux and the never-ending circle of things. 5 Kirk G. S., Raven J. E., Schofield M., The pre-socratic philosophers, Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 1987 (e. p. 1957), p. 37. ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 4

5 Death in the epic of Gilgamesh and Nekya 6 The epic of Gilgamesh is considered the first written form of literature and it tells the story of a man, Gilgamesh, who had been created in an extraordinary manner by the gods of Babylon and thus he may be considered as half-human and half-god 7. His deeds and the emotions he expresses indicate a person superior to man, but eventually his fate was sealed and death came to him. And it is precisely due to death that Gilgamesh must be considered as inferior to the supreme gods of Babylon, as he lacks the gift of immortality. The notion of death rules over the whole epic, however it is not until the fourth chapter that the philosophical idea of death and afterlife kicks in. In the third chapter Gilgamesh weeps for the loss of his dearest friend, Enkidu, who died of a disease 8 and right after (chapter 4) he sets out to discover the secret of everlasting life. In his quest he runs into Siduri, a female deity and complaints to her about the loss of his friend and wished to know the secret of eternal life. Siduri then reveals what is the main philosophical aspect of the epic. Those were her words:' Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man 9. The hero remains unsatisfied and decides to find the answers in the land of the dead. He descends to the underworld, the place where the dead rest, travels in the boat of Urshanabi, the ferryman in order to find, Utnapishtim the keeper of the dead, who lives in the place of the transit of the sun, to the eastward of the mountains. He is the only human whom the gods have gifted with 6 The epic of Gilgamesh, often referred to as the Babylonian epic of creation, is a text of scattered verses. We can assume that those verses are part of a greater poem, but the biggest part has been lost and thus we can only rely on the modern restoration by the translators. It seems that there was one great poem and various other versions of it, as some of the stories are retold more than once, but with different endings. This is possibly owing to the alteration of the main story by the civilizations nearby Babylon that presented their own version of the story. Therefore it is rather impossible to say in absolute certainty which version is the original one. This article uses the translation in English by N. K. Sandars for the Penguin Classics editions. The word Nekya derives from the ancient Greek word νέκυς (nekys), which means dead and signifies Odyssey s rhapsody λ. 7 According to the English translation by N. K. Sandars (see above) Gilgamesh was a god by two thirds and human by one third, The epic of Gilgamesh, Prologue. 8 In the previous chapter Ishtar, a goddess, fell in love with Gilgamesh, but he refused to marry her. Isthar could not take such an insult from a mortal and asked her father, Anu, to give her the bull of heaven so as to destroy Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Enkidu managed to kill the bull, but Enkidu got very ill and soon died. 9 Chapter 4. ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 5

6 immortality 10. Gilgamesh eventually asks Utnapishtim about eternity only to receive the same negative reply: 'There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand for ever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep for ever, does the floodtime of rivers endure? It is only the nymph of the dragon-fly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory. From the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death. What is there between the master and the servant when both have fulfilled their doom? However thirsty to unlock the mysteries of life Gilgamesh cannot escape his destiny; he dies and death now acquires a notion of permanence. It is more than the divide of soul and body and no mention is there that the former is undying for death is the end; it is the equivalent of nothingness, the abandonment to the eternity of darkness 11. On the other hand the Greeks seemed to have acquired a fairly good understanding of the imminent end and thus they attempted a propitiation of the underworld by creating myths possibly so as to ease the transition from the state of living to that of death. From a philosophical perspective the soul has been considered immortal and thus specifically separated by a - subject to limitation - body during biological death. Although as mentioned above such theories might have derived from eastern traditions (Egypt, Persia or Mesopotamia) 12, it was within the Greek tradition that the transition from a strictly theocratic level to a philosophical one took place. Apart from that the general idea of ὑστεροφημία 13 played a tremendously significant role in the ancient Greek understanding of life. Odysseus managed to earn his remembering by showing courage as well as intelligence in the battlefields of Troy; besides had it not been Odysseus the war would have been won. He was the one who thought of the Trojan Horse and he was among the eight heroes who entered Troy hidden in the belly of the wooden statue only to release an unspeakable fierceness against the troops of king Priamus. However he would have to wait for another ten years before he could touch the ground of his beloved land, Ithaca, due to Poseidon s rage against him. For ten years 10 Ibidem. 11 The king has laid himself down and will not rise again, The Lord of Kullab will not rise again; He overcame evil, he will not come again; Though he was strong of arm he will not rise again; He had wisdom and a comely face, he will not come again; He is gone into the mountain, he will not come again; On the bed of fate he lies, he will not rise again, From the couch of many colours he will not come again. The epic of Gilgamesh, Chapter Kirk G. S., Raven J. E., Schofield M., The pre-socratic philosophers, Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 1987 (e. p. 1957), p The idea that the deceased may continue to live spiritually in the minds of the generations to come thanks to the legacy he has left to the world, e.g. a poem or an architectural structure; however the main reason for someone to be remembered was the bravery he would show in the battlefield. ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 6

7 the hero wandered in the seas and the only way to find his way back was to receive the oracle from Teresias; and for that Odysseus was the first ever to walk down the land of the dead, Hades 14, though alive, so as to offer sacrifice to the fortune-teller in exchange for his oracle. The verses of the epic are descriptive and intimidating 15. The soul does exist, though not in a materialistic understanding. It is ghostly and transparent. For instance Odysseus in the underworld saw the soul of his mother, Antiklea, who died during Odysseus s absence and tried to embrace her, but the soul slipped away like a shadow or smoke 16. The same goes for when Achilles tried to catch the soul of his beloved friend, Patroclos, whom Hector had killed in a duel 17. In addition the souls are obliged to drink the water from the fountain of oblivion in order to leave behind the past of their incarnated life. The only way for the soul to remember is the offering of blood 18. It becomes rather apparent that the two great epics of antiquity share a lot of similarities in the sense that both have raised death from a purely natural fact to a means of imagining and fantasizing the transition to a world of a potentially other sort of living. The descent to the underworld in both epics indicates man s insurmountable urge to witness afterlife and put an end to the greatest mystery of what comes after life. This primal fear of death works as a motive to knowledge and to the extent that such knowledge is forbidden to the limited human mind, man discovers other paths towards the solving of the mystery. Those are the paths of imagination. Since man is impotent of being fully aware of afterlife he is left only to create it in his mind the way he can fit into it. Therefore mythology in possibly every ancient civilization is built according to the human need for confrontation of death as the final terminus. It becomes an obsession, which according to Jung is a primitive phenomenon 19. Needless to say, though, different civilizations face the same matter in different ways. In the case of the epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey, although the descent to the underworld derives from the very thirst of man to experience afterlife and potentially shape it according to his needs and expectations, death itself is not faced identically; on the contrary there is a quite significant difference. For the Babylonian epic of creation death indicates permanence and should be seen as the final boundary for man, whereas in the Odyssey on the other hand the soul continues to live 14 The Greek underworld, kingdom of Pluto. 15 Homer, Odyssey, λ 84 onwards. 16 Ibidem, Homer, Iliad, Ψ, 99 onwrds. 18 Burkert W., Griechise Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, (in Greek by Mpezantakos N. & Avagianou A., Kardamitsa, Athens, Greece), 1993 (e. p. 1977), p Jung C. G., L homme et ses symbols, Aldus Books Ltd., London, 1964 (in Greek by Chatzitheodorou A.), p. 47. ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 7

8 even after death, though it may be transparent and condemned to oblivion. The transparency signifies a form of impotency and oblivion it is to be identified as other version of permanence. Regardless though the fact that the soul still possesses life in Hades strikes as the main dissimilarity between the Greek and the Babylonian epic. In other words it is a kind of diversity in terms of dealing with the given dominance of fate. The fulfilling of fate for Gilgamesh is his abandonment to nonexistence, whereas for the deceased individual in Greek mythology it is the assumption of what not even Zeus dared to interfere with: destiny. ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 8

9 Βιβλιογραφία Wace A. & Stubbings F., A companion to Homer, McMillan Press Ltd., Cambridge, UK, 1962 Kirk G. S., Raven J. E., Schofield M., The pre-socratic philosophers, Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 1987 (e. p. 1957) The epic of Gilgamesh English version by N. K. Sandars Penguin Classics ISBN X Burkert W., Griechise Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, (in Greek by Mpezantakos N. & Avagianou A., Kardamitsa, Athens, Greece), 1993 (e. p. 1977) Jung C. G., L homme et ses symbols, Aldus Books Ltd., London, 1964 (in Greek by Chatzitheodorou A.) ISSN: stoaofsciences@academy.edu.gr 9

ΑΚAΔΗΜΙΑ ΘΕΣΜΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΣΜΩΝ ACADEMY OF INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURES

ΑΚAΔΗΜΙΑ ΘΕΣΜΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΣΜΩΝ ACADEMY OF INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURES Στοά των Επιστημών-Επιστημονική Επιθεώρηση Stoa of Sciences-Scientific Review Η ηθική στον Αριστοτέλη εν συγκρίσει προς τα ύστερα κομφουκιανά κείμενα Aristotle on ethics in comparison to the later Confucian