NHH13. The Companionship of Men The Epic of Gilgamesh

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1 WC 4595 NHH13. The Companionship of Men The Epic of Gilgamesh Cuneiform for Gilgamesh In April 2003 the BBC announced 1 that archeologists believed they had found the lost tomb of Gilgamesh, the hero- god- king of Uruk in Mespotamia and the subject of the oldest book in history. The book, the Epic of Gilgamesh was written almost 5000 years ago to commemorate the life of a ruler of Uruk, arguably the first city in human history. Gilgamesh with Enkidu (coll. Louvre) The land between the Rivers Mesopotamia is the ancient name for what today is called Iraq and is the Ancient Greek word for the land between the two rivers, in this case, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The ancient historian Arrian of Nicomedia coined the term when giving his account of the campaigns of Alexander the 1The archaeologists found the site of the grave they are fairly certain is that of Gilgamesh by following the account of his burial in another epic. Wikipedia says Fragments of an epic text found in Me- Turan (modern Tell Haddad) inform that Gilgamesh at the end of his life was buried under the waters of a river. The people of Uruk deviated the flow of the Euphrates river crossing Uruk, for the purpose of burying the dead king within the riverbed. ( 1

2 Great 2. Long before Alexander however, people had settled there and begun to establish the first cities. Among these were Babylon of course, but even older were those of Ur and Uruk. It was Uruk, also known by its Biblical name, Erech, which was the setting of this oldest book in history. Uruk in the land between the rivers, ancient Mesopotamia 3. When we read the Epic of Gilgamesh, we need to know that the story takes place against a background of huge social and economic change in Mesopotamia: human settlements were growing from villages to cities, large buildings including palaces and temples were being erected for the first time, and perhaps most importantly, a canal system of irrigation was under construction which made possible the production of sufficient food to feed the growing cities. This degree of change created a constant tension between the cities in the fertile river valleys on the one hand and on the other, the ancient ways of the nomadic and hill people who still lived outside the urban areas. Adding to this was the uncertainty of the climate in that Mesopotamia was subject to intermittent drought and violent flooding. It is worth noting en passant that even in ancient times, there were few forests in Babylonia and wood had to be imported. Gilgamesh, Fragment 11 in the British Museum. 2 However, he was referring specifically to the region which nowadays would be eastern Syria and Northern Iraq, the area known as The Island or Jezira. It was Pliny the Elder who first used the name to include southern Iraq. The Romans later applied this to their province east of the Euphrates. 3 ogre.blogspot.com/2009/02/gilgamesh.html 2

3 Gilgamesh ruled the city of Uruk around 2,700BC. Although probably already a legend in his own lifetime, his reputation has grown over the centuries so that by the time we hear of him he had become a god- like hero of many stories which were eventually woven into the Epic. Some scholars even argue he was the prototype of Hercules. Reconstruction of the city of Nineveh. The walls of Uruk were probably similar 4. The legends which grew up around Gilgamesh were written down on clay tablets in the Sumerian language in cuniform script sometime around 2000 BC. Some of these clay tablets still survive. Interestingly, Sumerian the language in which they were written is unrelated to any other known language. However, these Sumerian legends were eventually integrated into a single long poem which has survived only in Akkadian, a Semitic language related to Hebrew, which was the language spoken by the Ancient Babylonians. They too used the cuniform script 5. Uruk today Although there are other fragments, the most complete version exists on clay tablets found in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria B.C., at Nineveh. Miraculously, they survived, albeit all damaged, after the library was sacked by the Persians in 612 BC. Remarkably, the tablets not only survived but also named the author, Sin-leqe-unninni, the For more detail, see Richard Hooker at 3

4 earliest author whose name is known in the entire history of literature. In reading The Epic of Gilgamesh, if we keep our eyes open, we can see something of the earliest meanings of homosexuality in a culture. However, many translations of The Epic have been published and many of these, especially the older ones, deliberately remained blind to the homosexual references in the poem. For example, one of the most respected authorities on Babylon was HWF Saggs. In his book The Babylonians A Survey Of The Ancient Civilization Of The Tigris- Euphrates Valley 6 published first in 1962 and revised in 1988, he makes one reference to homosexuality and that only in parentheses: Some texts, mainly proverbs and omens, provide details about love-making: they indicate that both the normal behaviour from love-play to consummation, and the typical perversions (such as sodomy, transvestism, cunnilingus, masturbation), were much the same in ancient Babylonia as in modern Europe. Of the many translations of Gilgamesh, the two most commonly referred to in academic reading lists are The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs 7, or a slightly earlier translation, Gilgamesh, by John Maier and John Gardner 8. To check line- by- line translations, it is also well worth looking at the 1998 online literal translation by Maureen Gallery Kovacs 9. However, one of the most readable is not a literal translation but a rendering called Gilgamish: a New Rendering in English Verse by David Ferry 10. The renowned scholar, William L Moran 11 in his Introduction, says of this beautiful work: 6 HWF Saggs. In his book The Babylonians A Survey Of The Ancient Civilization Of The Tigris-Euphrates Valley, London, The Folio Society 1999, p (the emphasis is mine). 7 Stanford: Stanford University Press, New York: Vintage, Maureen Gallery Kovacs: The Epic of Gilgamesh, Electronic Edition by Wolf Carnahan, I998 at 10 David Ferry: Gilgamish: a New Rendering in English Verse, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, Note that Ferry uses a different spelling. 11 Ibid p. xi. Moran was the Andrew W Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, Harvard University. 4

5 . And let it be stated at once: it is David Ferry s poem. It is not Sin-leqe-unninni s or anyone else s He has given us, not a translation.but a transformation. He does not compete, therefore, with the earlier translators, whose contribution to his own work he generously acknowledges, not should his work be compared with theirs. He has given us what they have not and what as authors of word-for-word translations they could not aspire to. He has given us a work of verbal art. He has thereby communicated to us some of the sense of the beauty of the original and some sense of the emotions that reading or hearing the original must have aroused. In this respect, however free his version on one level may be, on another and deeper one it seems remarkably faithful to the original. It is this version I will be using from here on although where necessary I will refer to Maureen Gallery Kovacs on- line translation. The Epic falls naturally into two parts. In the first, we meet the heroes of the poem, Gilgamesh and Enkidu and hear the story of their meeting, the relationship which develops between them as they carry out their heroic deeds. And we hear of the death of Enkidu and the great sorrow Gilgamesh felt at his passing. In the second part, the narrator tells us about Gilgamesh s determination to discover the secret of immortality, his journey to meet Utnapishtim who had built an ark and filled it with two of every living thing and so escaped the destruction of the terrible flood the gods had sent. Finally, we see Gilgamesh, his quest a failure, return to Uruk, the great city of his making. Our concern is the relationship between the two super- heroes, so we will limit ourselves to the first section of the poem, but remember, the remainder is well worth reading because, although we are concentrating on what the poem reveals about sexuality, it s great strength is the more metaphysical theme, the quest for the meaning of life and how to face death. 5

6 The Epic of Gilgamesh The story opens with a conventional prologue which sets the frame for the story to follow. In this an unnamed narrator proclaims, in the Ferry rendition: The Story of him who knew the most of all men know; who made the journey; heartbroken; reconciled; who knew the way things were before the Flood, the secret things, the mystery; who went to the end of the earth, and over; who returned, and wrote the story on a tablet of stone. As an aside, this tablet of stone, generally said to have been of lapis lazuli, was one of the sources of information for the rediscovery of the tomb of Gilgamesh. This prologue summarises the great achievements of Gilgamesh in building Uruk: He built Uruk. He built the keeping place of Anu and Ishtar. The outer wall shines in the sun like brightest copper; the inner wall is beyond the imagining of kings..this is Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh the Wild Ox, son of Lugalbanda, son of the Lady Wildcow Ninsun, Gilgamesh the vanguard and the rear-guard of the army.... It is he who opened passes through the mountains and he who dug deep wells on the mountainsides; 6

7 who measured the world; and sought out Utnapishtim beyond the world; it is he who restored the shrines; two-thirds a god, one third a man, the king. This mighty king, for all his wondrous achievements in building Uruk, was not a good shepherd to his people but oppressed them beyond their endurance. There is no withstanding the aura or power of the Wild Ox Gilgamesh. Neither the father s son Nor the wife of the noble; neither the mother s daughter nor the warrior s bride was safe. The old men said: Is this the shepherd of the people? Is this the wise shepherd, protector of the people? And the burghers of Uruk exclaimed to the goddess Arun who made Gilgamesh: "You have indeed brought into being a mighty wild bull, head raised! "There is no rival who can raise a weapon against him. 12 Some commentators suggest that the oppression was the corvée, the forced labour required to carry out the building program, others that he forced young men into the army and too many were killed in his ambitious battles. However, as we will see, Gilgamesh claimed jus primus noctis, the right of the first night with all the brides of the town and so this was as much about sexual oppression as any other. He is indeed a wild bull, forever erect, from whose sexual assault no father s son, no mother s daughter, no warrior s bride or noble s wife is spared. Personally and there are as many interpretations of a poem as there are readers I think the Gilgamesh of legend (if not the real man) here becomes the personification of the connection between power and sex, just as later, we will see the relation between aggression and sex personified in the mighty battle between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Whatever the origins of this nexus, and no 12 Kovacs translation 7

8 matter which came first, the power or the insatiable sexual drive, history keeps repeating itself with the JFKs, Bill Clintons and Tiger Woods of this world. Meanwhile, the gods heard the people s complaint and decreed that since it was the goddess Aruru who had made Gilgamesh, she should now create a duplicate You made this man. Now create another. Create his double and let the two contend. Let stormy heart contend with stormy heart That peace may come to Uruk once again. Aruru listened and heard and then created Out of earth clay and divine spittle the double, the stormy-hearted other, Enkidu, the hairy-bodied wild man of the grasslands, powerful as Ninurta the god of war, the hair of his head like the grain fields of the goddess. He feeds upon the grasslands with gazelles; visits the watering places with the creatures whose hearts delight, as his delights, in water. Enkidu in cuneiform 13 If Gilgamesh was two-thirds a god, one third a man then Enkidu was as it were his mirror- opposite, created to tame the great and wilful king. Where Gilgamesh was sophisticated and beautiful, Enkidu was hairy and ran with the wild animals who treated him as one of their own. But whereas Gilgamesh was beautiful on the outside, inside he was abusive and self- seeking; Enkidu on the outside was beast- like but inside he was compassionate and caring. 13 Cuneiform rendering by Joseph Pagan Ph.D., UCLA 8

9 Then, one day, a trapper s son rushed to his father, exclaiming that Enkidu was setting free the wild animals he has caught in his traps. His father told him to go to Gilgamesh in Uruk and bring back a temple prostitute who would seduce Enkidu after which her smell on him would scare away the animals. And, as the father predicted, this all came to pass. Gilgamesh sent a temple harlot, Shamat, back with the hunter and she seduced Enkidu as planned, and thereafter the wild animals fled from Enkidu who had once been at one with them. Once more, there are many interpretations beyond just the literal story, most concurring that it was through his intercourse with the woman that he lost his wildness and gained understanding and knowledge. It is interesting for us to see just how non- moralistic the Epic is about the temple harlot: she is simply regarded as a professional woman who does her job well. Because she is associated with the temple and the temple is so much part of the city, it is tempting to interpret Shamat as a symbol of the civilizing effect of urbanisation. Remember, early in this session I said that this Epic is set against the background of tensions between the old nomadic way of life and the newer, urban lifestyle which had followed the development of agriculture. The trapper and his son, and the fact that Enkidu ran wild upon the grasslands, all belong to the earlier way of life for which not only the inhabitants of Uruk, but even those in modern cities, must have felt some kind of lingering nostalgia. Whatever she stood for, Shamat was a wise and kind woman who understanded the loss Enkidu seemed to feel. She attempted not only to cheer him up but also to get him to reconsider who and what he was now that for him, the world has changed. So she persuaded Enkidu to go with her to Uruk where, she told him, lived Gilgamesh the king who was the strongest of all, whose power no one could withstand. Enkidu replied he would go to Uruk with Shamat and challenge Gilgamesh. In modern parlance, Enkidu scrubbed up well and with his hair cut and clothed, he was as beautiful as Gilgamesh and, judging by his threat to challenge the great king, he was no less assured of his own manly prowess. Note one thing, however: at this point in the narrative Enkidu is said to long for a companion. The shepherds he had met with Shamat, good fellows all, most probably simply did not 9

10 measure up to his god- like strength and beauty. He needed a soul- mate So Shamat told Enkidu that While you were grazing beastlike with gazelles, before your mind had any understanding, his mind, a gift to the gifted of the gods, had a dream of you before you knew of him. In the early morning Gilgamesh arose and told his mother his dream: 'I had a dream. A star fell from the heavens, a meteorite, and lay on the empty plain outside Uruk. The men and women came and wondered at it. I strove with it to lift it but could not. I was drawn to it as if it was a woman.' All-knowing Rimat~Ninsun spoke to him, the lord of Uruk, Gilgamesh. His mother, All-knowing Rimat~Ninsun, spoke and said: 'The star that fell from the heavens, the meteorite that lay on the empty plain outside Uruk, the star you could not lift when you strove with it, the star you were drawn to as if drawn to a woman, is the strong companion, powerful as a star, the meteorite of the heavens, a gift of the gods. That you were drawn to it as if drawn to a woman means that this companion will not forsake you. He will protect and guard you with his life. This is the fortunate meaning of your dream.' Then Gilgamesh the lord of Uruk said: 10

11 'May the dream as you interpret come to pass And there was a second dream: in this, a gigantic axe appeared at Gilgamesh s door. It was so big he could not move it. While the people gathered round, singing and dancing, he embraced it as though it were a woman. Once again he asked his mother what his dream might mean. She told him that a man of great strength would come to his door and that he, Gilgamesh will embrace him as he would a wife, and that this man will help him achieve great things. A bull, Uruk (Warka), ca BC (coll. Louvre). Then, one day, while Shamat and Enkidu were staying in the shepherds camp, a young man entered carrying a richly decorated platter. Enkidu asked him where he was going and the stranger answered that he was going to Uruk, to a wedding feast. But, he added: Before the husband, Gilgamesh will lie in pleasure with the bride in the marital chamber. There is no withstanding the aura or power of the desire of the Wild Ox Gilgamesh, the strongest of all." This enraged Enkidu who insisted on going to Uruk to challenge Gilgamesh. By the way, you will notice that every now and then, particularly when someone important is mentioned, their name is followed by a kind of formulaic phrase. So, for example, we often see..enkidu. The strength of the wild man born in the wilderness cannot be withstood 11

12 These, known in Homeric studies as ornamental epithets 14 are common- place in oral epics and serve a couple of important functions: first, there are often several different stock phrases which the narrator has in his memory which can be applied to a particular hero and which he can draw upon as he tells the story, selecting the one which best allows him to finish a line in the correct meter. So, the choice of epithet depends on the meter, something which we won t notice here because we are reading in translation although Ferry has made an effort to preserve some metrical structure. The second function of such phrases, sometimes running to several lines in length, is to give the narrator a breathing spell in which he an plan out what he will say next. The important point in much of this is that the original story- tellers were not illiterate bards who recited huge poems word- for- word but improvised much of each tale as they went along. When Enkidu entered the city, the crowds were amazed at his size, strength and beauty and his likeness to Gilgamesh. When the wedding feast was ready and Gilgamesh came to claim his right to the bride, Enkidu blocked his way into the bridal chamber: At the marital threshold they wrestled, bulls contending; the doorposts shook and shattered; the wrestling staggered, wild bulls locked-horned and staggering staggered wrestling through the city streets; the city walls and lintels shuddered and swayed, the gates of the city trembled as Gilgamesh, the strongest of all, the terror, wrestled the wild man Enkidu to his knees. And then the rage of Gilgamesh subsided. He turned his chest away. Enkidu said: "You are the strongest of all, the perfect, the terror. 14 See Bernard Knox Introduction to Robert Fagles (trans): Homer: The Odussey, London; The Folio Society, 1998 xxiv-xxx.. 12

13 The Lady Wildcow Ninsun bore no other. Enlil has made you sovereign over the city." Then Enkidu and Gilgamesh embraced, and kissed, and took each other by the hand. Enkidu listened as Rimat-Ninsun spoke to Gilgamesh her son: "Enkidu has neither father nor mother; there is no one to cut the wild man's hair. He was born on the grasslands and grazed with gazelles and the other beasts on the grass of the grasslands; Enkidu, the companion, will not forsake you." Enkidu listened, and wept, and felt his weakness. Then Enkidu and Gilgamesh embraced, and kissed, and took each other by the hand. Having found the companionship they both needed, Gilgamesh proposed to Enkidu that they set out together on a great adventure, to kill the demon Guardian of the Great Cedar Forest 15, Humbaba or, in Ferry s rendition, Huw awa. The fearful face of Humbaba (Huw awa) 16 So, having had special armour and swords made by the city s most skilled craftsmen, the two heroes set out. For each of six days during the journey to the great cedar forest in the south of Mesopotamia, Gilgamesh prayed to Shamash 17, the 15 Although called the Great Cedar Forest, this seems to have been only one great tree, so big it was the home of the gods ogre.blogspot.com/2009/02/gilgamesh.html 17 Of the many gods, those mentioned in the Epic are: Anu (god of the firmament); Ishtar (goddess of sexual love); Adad (god of storm); Aruru (goddess of creation); 13

14 Sun- God, and received oracular dreams. They were all ominous but Enkidu interpreted them more hopefully. At the entrance to the Cedar Forest, Gilgamesh quaked with fear and Enkidu lost his courage and tried to turn back. Gilgamesh fell upon him and they fought, the noise of which attracted Huw awa who challenged them. However, Gilgamesh convinced Enkidu they should stand and fight, that together they were unbeatable but when Huw awa turned his face into a hideous mask, Gilgamesh ran away and tried to hide. Enkidu shouted courage to Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh returned and together the heroes fought the Demon. Shamas, the sun- god, who had promised Gilgamesh s mother to protect her son, entered the battle and Huw awa was defeated. This is modern clay impression of a VII century BC Babylonian cylinder seal depicting a scene in which Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay the Bull of Heaven 18 On his knees before the mighty Gilgamesh, the Demon offered them all the trees in the beautiful Cedar Forest and promised to be loyal forever. However, Enkidu persuaded Gilgamesh to kill the Demon. Screaming a curse upon Enkidu, Huw awa died. His curse was that Enkidu would die before Gilgamesh. Their battle done, the heroes cut down all the trees and floated them down the Euphrates river to Uruk where they built a huge gate to commemorate their victory over the Demon. Ninurta or Sumuqan (the god of war); Nisaba (goddess of corn) and Enlil (the father of the gods)

15 Filled with fame and glory and resplendent in new clothes and crown, Gilgamesh was unfortunate enough to attract the interest of Ishtar, the goddess of love. She came to him and offered to be his lover but he, knowing the cruel fates which awaited other heroes she had taken in her arms, declined with rather fulsome insults. Infuriated at being refused, the goddess turned to her father, the sky- god Anu, to lend her the Bull of Heaven so she could be avenged. The Bull of Heaven was a gigantic beast whose every breath was fire which caused huge craters in the earth to open up. Together, Gilgamesh and Enkidu fought and destroyed the Bull of Heaven. Although it was bad enough that the goddess plans for vengeance were thwarted, Enkidu made things worse by saying that he and Gilgamesh would kill her next and so saying, he threw the thigh- bone of the Bull in her face. The goddess retaliated by calling a meeting of all the gods who decided that someone must be punished for killing the Guardian of the Forest and the Bull of Heaven, and of the two heroes, they decided it should be Enkidu who should die. Enkidu suffered a long and lingering death for 12 days, at the end of which he commended himself to Gilgamesh and entered the Underworld. Gilgamesh was heartbroken; in his sorrow he ceased to take care of himself, refusing even to bathe. The death of his companion made him realise that he too was mortal. In the hope of finding immortality, he undertook the perilous journey to the mouth of all the rivers at the end of the world to find Utnapishtim and his wife, the only mortals on whom the gods have ever bestowed eternal life. It is this journey and the struggles Gilgamesh has, not only with supernatural forces but also with himself, that the remaining tablets, 9 through 11, are concerned 19. Gilgamesh lives on in anime! Considerations Well, what are we in the 21 st Century AD to make of this story which has come 19 There is a 12 th tablet, but this is generally regarded as not properly part of the Epic of Gilgamesh although it is similar to the Sumerian version. 15

16 to us from the 30 th century BC? And what is there specifically homosexual in it? I think this is ample demonstration that it is not only beauty which is in the eye of the beholder. All manner of interpretations over and above the bald plot have been advanced ever since it was first translated. I am not the only one reading homosexual love into this poem but there are many others who would disagree. Modern scholars who actually can read Akkadian and Sumerian written in cuniform on clay tablets are more inclined than scholars in the past to read this as a homosexual love between super- heroes, but they don t have it all their own way. And there are other scholars who look for different things: one analysis of the Epic combs it for evidence of the status of women and totally ignores the possible homosexual aspects. Truth is, this is not one single voice but a chorus of voices from our remote past and we hear what song we want to hear. For me and that is all I have to offer you it seems evident that Gilgamesh was known to enjoy sex with fathers sons as well as with the many women he commandeered to his own pleasures, but his homosexual exploits seem to have attracted no more disapproval than his heterosexual ones, except that they were all abusive. He longed for companionship, but companionship in those days necessarily meant with a man or men, one s equals. But who was the equal of the super- hero, the great king Gilgamesh? To provide him with someone his equal in strength and beauty, the goddess Aruru created, if not a better half then the other half, the wild man, Enkidu. He too longed for companions and found them at first with the wild beasts of the grasslands, but after being seduced by the wise and caring temple harlot, Shamat, he needed human companionship. After they fought each other (perhaps a reference again to the nexus between sex and aggression), as often happens between men, the earth moved for them and they went in holding hands. This was a love, a companionship between equals in which the two men were the same age, the same strength, the same beauty as each other. How could one hope for such a match unless the gods had taken a hand? I see Enkidu in several ways: in one, as the mirror reflection of Gilgamesh, an expression of the narcissism which lies within all homosexual desire, the desire to commune with a fellow being so like oneself that you know intuitively where he is at; but this mirror reflection is more than that Enkidu is caring and concerned for 16

17 others whereas Gilgamesh is self- centred and driven by ambition. Put them together and you have a rather more rounded whole person. At another level, I see Enkidu as the personification of the nomadic, hunter- gatherer lifestyle which existed before agriculture was invented and cities began to form. Gilgamesh is the builder of cities, of great temples and palaces, and he exploits city life to the full. There is a theory that rulers kings must be the ultimate consumers in a society and that their conspicuous consumption displays the collective pride and social cohesion of the community. If this were so, then Gilgamesh made his subjects proud of their city even if they were rather troubled by his excesses. In a sense, Gilgamesh represents a consumerist material lifestyle, Enkidu the life with fewer material possessions but richer emotional life. Poster for a 2006 production in Paris Whatever all these levels of analysis might yield, there is however no overlooking the main point: the two men loved each other and whether they had genital sex with each other is really beside the point. Gilgamesh refused even the goddess of love, perhaps not only because he knew of bad things which had happened to her previous mortal lovers but also because he was happy with what he had with Enkidu. After all, he had had sex with many, many women before Enkidu came into his life and he embraced him like a woman. 17

18 Although that was a phrase from a dream well, two dreams actually I think personally it meant they were lovers in the full sense of the word. But if that were not so, then the relationship between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, perhaps the first super- heroes, must still stand as one of the most enduring love stories the world has ever known. 18