Passport from Paradise: Earliest Urbanization of

Transcription

1 Passport from Paradise: Earliest Urbanization of Wilderness as a Lens for Reading Gilgamesh and Genesis Geoffrey Dyer Gilgamesh is considered to be one of the first stories ever written by anyone, period. But this statement is a gross oversimplification. What matters is that it s one of the very oldest extant narratives, because it s one of the oldest ones to ever be written down in a way that could be preserved for thousands of years. The evolution of written language and media to preserve it on allowed for a lasting story in decipherable characters to be known by readers in the twentyfirst century. In the case of the Standard Akkadian Version of the text, the medium is stone tablets, though the narratives and character have been found in both Sumerian and Akkadian, with different versions spanning an estimated range from about 2600 B.C.E. to 668 B.C.E. The fact that we re reading a story that may be nearly five-thousand years old does not mean that it was the first story; this knowledge only confirms that the story is one of the first that we know about today. And to say that the epic was written is also misleading, at least insofar as many of us today consider the act of writing or the task of the writer some lone genius, staring into an ipad late at night, did not conjure a muse, create a pitch, an agent, and get a cash advance to create a novel as his or her brainchild. Rather, historians believe that there was real King Gilgamesh, who ruled over a real Mesopotamian city called Uruk (in present day Iraq), whose legacy was repeated, rumored, written, changed, repeated, rumored, and changed again, giving rise to the earliest lasting epic poem, complete with its own unique mythologies and truths that seem to seep into and shape so many subsequent texts (Knox and Clinton 9). So to presume that 1

2 one man or woman authored the tale in the way that we say F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby or Stephenie Meyer wrote The Twilight Saga would not only be inaccurate, based on the bulk of historical evidence to the contrary, but missing the greater point that for Gilgamesh a whole culture and tradition is author. Why was this story told again and again, carved into stone, and altered? What purpose did it serve for its audience? Was the poetic narrative an historical document, detailing a forgotten life of a tyrant king, a forest giant, verbose gods, a great flood, a deceptive serpent, and a great city? Or did the story at least begin as fact, taking on ever more mythic proportions as it was passed on, embellished, and elaborated? Could it be that verbal systems of representation were once so radically different so inherently culturally referential, figurative, allegorical, or circumlocutious that we might never discern the original meaning of Gilgamesh? Did it begin as an homage to a great king, and through the early art of storytelling become a source of metaphorical truth, wherein readers or listeners could find answers to the problems of mortality, society, friendship, and the balancing of the natural with the man-made world? Certain elements of Gilgamesh are indeed based in fact. Inscriptions in remnants of the great stone walls which once enclosed the city of Uruk attribute to King Gilgamesh the creation of the walls (Mark). We know also that Uruk is one of the earliest cities ever, located between the Tigris and Euphrates, and that it may have been established as early as 4000 B.C.E. Michael Wood calls it the first city ( Iraq: Cradle of Civilization ). Based on archaeological evidence, historians speculate that by 3200 B.C.E. Uruk may have been the largest city in the world (Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art). But before Uruk was one of the world s largest cities, it was also one of the world s first cities. What could it have meant to those initial kinsfolk or tribes that banded together, realizing 2

3 that it was easier to produce means of subsistence and tools for living together than by wandering through nature, chasing game and gathering grains? As the mythological context of Gilgamesh was evolving, perhaps as the gods Shamash and Ishtar were being born to govern the winds of the Fertile Crescent and control the waters of the Euphrates, life for the people who hunted and gathered in the Fertile Crescent was becoming less nomadic and tribal and more communal and concentrated. As social groups moved from family groups roving together to larger tribal communities combining resources and eventually into a stable, geographically immobile citystate complete with new social structures and classes, certainly the consciousness of the Sumerian people evolved too. And to those first generations who entered into city life, with their own customs and family traditions now being replaced with the benefits and sacrifices that come with living in a larger community, the change must have been profound. It seems only logical that their literature, their beliefs, and the stories that they perhaps shared over a meal and passed through generations would reflect not only the shift in social structure from small groups to larger ones, but also probably lament the loss of the freedom of the days wandering through uncultivated wilderness, eating what the earth provided and following the game where it led them. At its boom, Uruk increased four times in size in just a few generations. Presumably, then thousands or even tens of thousands of people were moving in from the countryside to this new city life... Scholars now believe that the population of the Euphrates Plane may have increased tenfold in these crucial two-hundred years ( Iraq: Cradle of Civilization ). In light of this information, we can also surmise that many people were coming to the city of Uruk fresh from a pre-urban existence in nature and learning a city way of life that had been established for some time. It stands to reason that the beliefs and values of these more recent immigrants would have clashed with, refreshed, and melded with the existing urbanites, whose direct ancestors had been 3

4 in Uruk for generations. This culmination of experiences would contribute to Uruk s citizenry s consciousness of the transition to city life, the loss of the freedom of roving through nature, and the political and social burdens that city life brought with it. Marx wrote that the division of labor and its further development [lead] to the separation of commercial from industrial labor... there develop further, inside these various branches, various divisions among the individuals cooperating in different kinds of labor. The relative position of these individual groups is determined by the methods employed in agriculture, industry and commerce (patriarchalism, slavery, estates, classes) ( ). With the birth of immobilized, communal living came the birth of politics the determination of who gets how much of what. In other words, even though the city-state s division of labor would provide more food and resources for the people of Uruk, it would also bring about all new types of ugliness a class system, strict social roles, a military system to protect agricultural society, and even slavery. After all, Enkidu is seduced and taken from his free wandering in the wild by Shamhat, a temple prostitute sent at Gilgamesh s behest (I.162). What mode of living, besides city life, could allow for prostitution as a legitimate occupation? My interpretation that the allegorical and mythic representation of the loss of pre-urban modes of living is played out by Enkidu s induction and assimilation into the city of Uruk and Gilgamesh s world is central to my reading of Gilgamesh, and it also has caused me to reconsider the fall from grace as depicted in Genesis, allowing me to see that perhaps Adam and Eve s expulsion from the plentiful bounty of paradise and mandate to cultivate the soil for their subsistence might perhaps be the same idea expressed by another Semitic people that city life isn t all it s cracked up to be. Maybe the Eden story in Genesis is really just saying that we used 4

5 to be hunters and gatherers, but now, living in groups that perform agricultural and other varied functions, we have to suffer because of the demands and complexities of many people living together. Maybe chapter three of Genesis began as an allegorical record of the transition from roaming, nomadic life to centralized, urban life. In the undisputedly earlier Gilgamesh, because of the characters and structure of its narrative, the contrast between pre-urban and urban life is emphasized, more than once. After all, Enkidu, who is made from clay, finds everything he needs in the wilderness, outside the city, and with beasts he drinks at the water hole... his fill of water (I.102, ). His indoctrination into city life begins with a fight (II ), and although he reaps the social benefits of a friendship and personal growth previously unimagined, he also suffers irreparable consequences chiefly death by spiritual unrest (VII. 126, 185) consequences so great that they even take a spiritual toll on Gilgamesh himself, who, prior to meeting Enkidu, seemed happy in his unchallenged might and lack of caring for others (I.47). In the same fashion, Adam and Eve s expulsion from the garden is irreversible, and just as Enkidu has sacrificed his wild nature for the benefits of civilization, as indicated by his lost ability to communicate with animals (I.197), mankind can never return to its garden of plenty, now forever faced with the challenge of providing for ourselves not to mention the ongoing challenges of fitting in to an ever increasingly complicated society of different people, working together doing different jobs, and squabbling over resources. The parallels between Gilgamesh and Genesis are significant. The fall from grace and Enkidu s transformation from wild man, made from clay, to king s closest confidant both show the transition from pre-urban to city life. But in Gilgamesh, different emphases are placed on the distinctions between and balancing of a hunting and gathering (or perhaps nomadic tribal) way of 5

6 life and an urban way of life. Unlike Genesis, Gilgamesh contains two intentionally balanced characters, Enkidu and Gilgamesh, one clearly representing life in harmony with nature and the other depicting the most powerful king of the most powerful city to date. Enkidu and Gilgamesh are foils, and the gods even create Enkidu specifically to balance the dangerous extreme Gilgamesh has come to embody (I ). On the contrary, Adam and Eve are thrown from the garden simultaneously, and their differences seem to be based more on gender (Gen. 3:24, 3:16-17). In the Genesis narrative, though both parties are complicit in breaking divine mandate, the fact that knowledge itself which might have closely related to the progress of more developed means of production was defined as sin still presents a conflict between living in nature, innocently, and the development of agriculture, or working for bread by the sweat of your brow (3:19). In both narratives, the reader can see the lament for the loss of the way people once were, living in nature in small groups, with seemingly all they needed, and an even greater lament for centralized city life. For Adam and Eve, leaving behind a life of plucking fruit from trees meant labor, suffering, and awareness. For the people of Uruk, living in the city meant being subject to the whims of a power-crazed dictator. But there are other constants between the two tales that lead our discussion in a new direction. Forgetting for just a moment the evils of social evolution, we can see at least two other direct, glaring consistencies that might make us reconsider what the texts convey and their relationship to each other. The most shocking for some, considering the dates the texts were created, is the matter of a flood which ravished the earth, sparing only a few. But before we row through those turbulent waters, we must also talk about a common antagonist, one who robbed Gilgamesh of immortal life and who also tricked Eve into losing the best thing to ever happen to 6

7 humanity. As I m sure you ve guessed, the little guy I m talking about is none other than our all too beloved snake. We all know the story of the serpent in the Genesis tale. He has been interpreted by many as the devil, but the text says no such thing. He s just a snake. But, he is called most cunning of all beasts of the field that the Lord God had made (3:1). He s even more cunning than Adam and Eve, because he already has the knowledge of good and evil. In the earlier Gilgamesh tale, Enkidu, representing harmony with nature, is balanced against Gilgamesh, embodying civilization and the control of nature. The dichotomy between nature and pre-sin humans in Genesis is different, because at the outset of the story, the snake, who himself is a beast of the field, is initially poised in a position of greater power than the people in the story. However, Gilgamesh and Enkidu defeat Humbaba the tree giant, putting humans in a position of power over nature but it goes against Enkidu s inherent characteristics of being a creature of the wild himself, and Humbaba the tree giant even says so, implying that Enkidu is a traitor and bastard (V.29). To add to the human versus nature theme, Enkidu and Gilgamesh do some logging before they leave the forest, hacking down ancient trees to make a raft and build a temple entrance (V ). The fact that the trees provide not only their means of expeditious passage home but also a doorway to religion is critical. Religion or more specifically, the temple was central (figuratively and literarily) to early city life. Excavations prove that Uruk itself was filled with temples (see fig. 1), and perhaps the earliest settlement of people, the Mesopotamian site called Eridu, had at its center the temple of Abzu, possibly the very first worship cite of an organized people ( Iraq: Cradle of Civilization ). And then of course, there s the fact that Enkidu and Gilgamesh transform trees into a boat, which is significant in two ways: A boat is a manufactured device to overpower the force of nature, and shipbuilding also spares Utanapishtim 7

8 and Noah from the waters of the flood (Gilgamesh XI.24, Gen. 7:21). Gilgamesh, a symbol of blossoming civilization, and Enkidu, who has forsaken his wild ways and become an integral component of the highly urbanized Gilgamesh s life, defeat nature. If we accept the serpent in the Genesis story as representing nature, we see that in the Genesis story, nature wins the battle. The snake outwits the people, and afterward people are driven to the backbreaking task of agriculture, as God tells Adam, By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread. There is also an implication that the serpent has robbed Adam and Eve of immortality, as God expounds, before expelling them from paradise, that they will return to the soil, from there you were taken, for dust you are and to dust shall you return (3:19). And of course, we must acknowledge that in Sumerian the word Eden (edin) simply means wild grassland of the south, Eridu being located in the south, that site at which Sumerian peoples believed humanity originated ( Iraq: Cradle of Civilization ). This fact supports even further the interpretation that the Genesis tale, like Gilgamesh, is the literary record of the transition to city life from earlier ways of living. The work that Adam and Eve must do to survive, post banishment, seems clearly enough to be agricultural. The binary opposition between living in harmony with nature (hunting and gathering) and controlling nature as part of a more immobilized, city-driven life (agriculture) is highlighted in both tales by the snake, that cunning, elusive creature who already knows what we know. But the snake also becomes a clear symbol for the finality of mortality, as it is by his intervention that Adam and Eve shall decompose in the dirt, and it is by his cleverness that Gilgamesh too is robbed of the immortality he so desperately seeks in tablets nine through eleven. After Gilgamesh is unable to meet Utanapishtim s challenge of staying awake for six days in exchange for immortality, on the advice of his wife, Utanapishtim gives Gilgamesh one more crack at life- 8

9 everlasting. He tells Gilgamash about a boxthorn plant at the bottom of the sea that can impart immortality. With a little help, Gilgamesh obtains the plant, but before he can bite into it and become immortal, a snake takes the plant from him, shedding its skin as it slithers away (XI ). In the Genesis story, when God acknowledges that his creatures have been deceived by the serpent, he remarks, Now that the human has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he may reach out and take as well from the tree of life and live forever, this realization sealing the Almighty s resolve to banish the transgressors (3:22). In both stories, the snake outsmarts the humans. In both stories, the consequences of the serpent s power include the loss of immortal life. In both stories, the snake is a thing of nature, and the human protagonists seek to gain a previously unheld advantage. Nature wins. We die. Evidently, the authors had figured out that we are stuck with our mortality and that an ongoing threat to our longevity is nature itself. Mortality and the power of nature are also explored through the even more similar flood narratives of both Gilgamesh and Genesis, but in these stories the role of a higher deity as both destructive and merciful becomes more important. The Gilgamesh flood story matches up so closely with the Gensis flood narrative, it s uncanny. Both stories involve a god (Ea in Gilgamesh) telling a chosen representative what s going on, the exact building plan for a seafaring vessel, and to take animals with him. In both stories, birds are used to determine if the waters have sufficiently subsided for the passengers to depart the ship. And never mind which story was recorded first (it s Gilgamesh), because at least one other historical piece of literature, the Babylonian Atrahasis, (which is nearly the very same story in Gilgamesh, but with more information) also records the flood on a tablet dated in the middle of 1600 B.C.E. (Lendering), following the earliest Gilgamesh record by not quite a thousand years and preceding the earliest 9

10 surviving record of the Hebrew Bible by at least three hundred and fifty years. So to hell with authorship. The possibility that a great flood did indeed occur in the Middle East may be yet another fact of the Gilgamesh story. Although the collaboration of the three distinct narratives Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, and Genesis cannot be accepted as historical evidence, many geologists and researchers now believe, based on scientific evidence, that the Black Sea did in fact rise, creating a great flood approximately 7,600 years ago a few millennia prior to the earliest known record of the Gilgamesh epic. A 1996 study by researchers from Columbia University confirmed that the Black Sea rose, but geologists debate whether the rise in sea level was gradual or sudden (United States Department of Commerce, National Climatic Data Center). Suffice to say that scientific evidence proves that part of the landscape of the distant ancestors of the Gilgamesh authors was once submersed in water. Does this fact elucidate the presence of a great flood in different records of different peoples? At the very least, the historical evidence of the rising of the Black Sea coupled with the story of a great flood in this region shows that people were aware of the destructive potential of water. This information might partly explain the theme of nature in opposition to mankind and civilization in Gilgamesh and Genesis. Natural disasters in which the elements unleashed their fury on early peoples certainly bring us to consider our fundamental relationship to the earth, and it s no surprise that earliest literatures reflect this. It s interesting though, that in all three parallel narratives, an object of human production a ship so massive that it could hardly be created effectively without the amenities of a centralized society allows a chosen few to literally rise above the destruction of nature. 10

11 But those few lucky survivors didn t escape nature solely of their own agency. The flood narratives also bring a third party into the equation in Genesis, there is only one, the Lord God; and in Gilgamesh, there are at least three notable gods involved in the flood story: Ea, who warns Utanapishtim of the flood, Belet-ili, the mother goddess who grieves the destruction wrought by the flood, and Enlil, who instigates the flood and remunerates Utanapishtim and his wife with immortality (XI.8-208). What was these gods motivation for creating such a flood, and what does their role in preserving a strand of humanity after obliterating most of us tell us of early peoples relationships with and conceptions of their gods? The Standard Akkadian Version of Gilgamesh does not reveal Enlil s motivation for unleashing the flood, but Bernard Knox and Jerome Clinton cross-reference the Babylonian Atrahasis epic, in which the gods sent the flood because the human race had multiplied to such an extent that their clamor was unbearable to Enlil (qtd. in Gilgamesh 72), while Genesis tells us that the Lord saw that the evil of the human creature was great on the earth and that every scheme of his heart s devising was only perpetually evil (6:5). Enlil sends the flood because there are too many people, but a lot hinges on the definition and translation of the word clamor. Did he really attempt to wipe out the human race because we were loud? Or is clamor meant to connote an ugliness or to perhaps even imply an impurity of spirit? Another textual hint that tilts the scale toward this latter interpretation is Ea s speech to Enlil after the flood, stating, Punish the wrongdoer for his wrongdoing, / Punish the transgressor for his transgression, / But be lenient (XI ). Ea s choice of wrongdoing and transgression support the reading that the clamor which enrages Enlil was a moral malaise. In both stories then, we can clearly see that the flood equates a punishment for a behavior offensive to a god. Another parallel is that Enlil and the Hebrew God both make some reparations for the natural 11

12 destruction of their flood. In Genesis, God promises never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth, offering the rainbow as his covenant (9:14-15), while Enlil, after being criticized by Ea and hearing the protests of the merciful goddess Belet-ili, grants Utanapishtim and his wife immortality. Belet-ili says her colorful necklace which bears some semblance of a rainbow will serve as a reminder for the genocide (XI , ). Perhaps the easiest explanation and interpretation for the tale is didactic, that wickedness begets destruction. Utanapishtim was a favorite of Ea, and Noah was a favorite of God, and perhaps for this reason they were spared. But it is interesting also to compare the cast of deities in Gilgamesh with the single God of Genesis. This critical difference, which distinguishes faiths arising from the Hebrew Bible from known theological systems preceding them, allows for a different reading of the tale. The God of Genesis decides to take action, acts, and then makes a promise to never commit such destruction again. As a single entity, the one God is presented as contradictory, willing to wipe out nearly an entire race but then, as if out of regret, promising to never commit the same atrocity again (though one might argue that it is merely a device to reinforce the chosen nature or supremacy of the Hebrew bloodline). The motivation for Enlil in Gilgamesh is clear, for Enlil wants to abolish all people with no exceptions and only by Ea s intervention on Utanapishtim s behalf is anyone spared (XI.20-31). Nor does Enlil feel remorse for his actions, when after the flood, he is angered that Utanapishtim has survived, as filled with fury, he screams to the other gods, No man was to survive destruction! (XI ). The compassion for humanity arises not from Enlil but Belet-ili, who laments the destruction of humanity (XI ) and was oblivious to Enlil s plan in the first place (XI.14-19). The polytheistic belief system of the people of Uruk highlights key values associated with different gods compassion for the goddess Belet-ili, wrath and power for Enlil, and cunning for Ea 12

13 while the Hebrew principle of monotheism creates a more mysterious, unpredictable, and perhaps even contradictory God. (Although, we should note, God is referred to alternately as Elohim and YHWH in Genesis, raising more questions about authorship, the text s history, and to what extent monotheism might have emerged for purely political reasons). Perhaps for both cultures, emphasizing key values was critical (mindfulness, cunning, reverence, and mercy for Mesopotamians; obedience and purity for Hebrews); or, equally likely, the differences between polytheistic and monotheistic belief systems limited interpretive possibilities of texts which actually predated in importantly different forms our existing earliest records of each. How important are these differences? For all monotheistic traditions that sprang from the Hebrew Bible and that have lasted until today including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam the difference is critical. But how much sense does it make to examine the differences between the Standard Akkadian Version of the flood story and the New King James version? We know that the Gilgamesh narrative has been discovered in different pieces and languages, and cobbled together. We also know that the Standard Version translated by Benjamin Foster still includes lacunae (see fig. 2) and portions that are unclear (Knox and Clinton 9-10). And the creation, transformation, and revisions of the Hebrew Bible cited by scholars such as Harold Bloom (qtd. in Geddes) also raise questions regarding the directness of its translation. So with ancient texts that have been translated and changed, how much sense does it make for readers to debate the connotations of the word clamor, gender implications of pronouns, or even the names of the deities themselves? Chinese tattoos have become very popular for contemporary Americans who don t read Chinese hanzi, and recent news stories have highlighted the comedy of Americans wearing badly translated tattoos that don t mean what their bearers think they mean (Chang). I ll admit, it isn t fair to compare Benjamin Foster, a respected authority on ancient Mesopotamian 13

14 languages, or King James translators in 1611 to some bad tattoo artists, but I think you get my point. A lot can get lost in translation. How can we know what s true? Some things are clear. It s clear that much of the stories is the same, even though they were recorded by different people at different times. If they weren t discussing the same events, at least we know they share the same expressions and consciousness. If it is really just the same story, having been passed along further, changed slightly but importantly, and written in a different language, we still must acknowledge the magnitude of the tale itself. We know also that the Black Sea did rise, whether gradually or suddenly. We know too that Gilgamesh is the literature of the people of one of earth s earliest cities, the city of Uruk, and that the not too distant ancestors and even first-generation immigrants of the city were living an altogether different kind of life before society began to exist. The flood narratives, like the expulsion from the garden and Enkidu s indoctrination into the ways of city life, pit people against nature. And we should acknowledge too that the authors and audiences of these early tales faced some of the same daily worries that we do today: how to put food on the table, how to balance our own needs and desires against others, and how to reconcile ourselves with the inevitability and inescapability of death. But what strikes me the most about these tales and what we know of their historical context is that perhaps for thousands of years readers have overlooked what might have been the most important message of the stories: that once, before people lived together in centralized societies, life was better. The impetus for Enkidu in Gilgamesh and the garden in Genesis might have been as simple as people fondly recalling a pre-urban life, one of gathering food independently; facing nature on their own; and living free of the burdens, hierarchies, laws, injustices, and complexities of city life. 14

15 Works Cited Chang, Cindy. Cool Tat, Too Bad It s Gibberish. The New York Times. Apr. 2, Web. Aug. 21, Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. "Uruk: The First City". Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct Web. Aug. 21, Geddes, Dan. Genesis is Good Literature Harold Bloom s Book of J. The Satirist. n.p Web. Aug. 22, Genesis. Trans. Robert Alter. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Second Shorter Edition. Volume 1. Ed. Peter Simon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Print Gilgamesh. Trans. Benjamin Foster. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Second Shorter Edition. Volume 1. Ed. Peter Simon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Print Iraq: Cradle of Civilization. Legacy: The Origins of Civilization. Writ. Michael Wood. Dir. Peter Spry Levin. Carlton International, Netflix. Streaming Video. Aug. 19, Knox, Bernard M. W. and Jerome Wright Clinton. Gilgamesh. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Second Shorter Edition. Volume 1. Ed. Peter Simon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Print Lendering, Jonah. The Great Flood: The Epic of Atrahasis. Livius: Articles on Ancient History. n.p. Sept. 7, Web. Aug. 22, Mark, Joshua J. Gilgamesh: Definition. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia Limited. Oct. 13, Web. Aug. 21,

16 Marx, Karl. Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions. Trans. R. Pascal. The Critical Tradition: Classical Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: BedfordBooks, Print United States. Dept. of Commerce. National Climatic Data Center. The Past 10,000 Years: Glacial Retreat, Agriculture and Civilization. NOAA Satellite and Information Service. Aug. 20, Web. Aug. 22,

17 Levan Humanities Review Volume 2, Issue 1