The Epic of Gilgamesh
TWO-thirds god, one-third man — Gilgamesh, King of the Sumerian city of Uruk, with an enviable physical structure, transcendent valor, and unparalleled wisdom holds the prelude of the most ancient epic written; built stupendous ziggurats, temple towers; surrounded his city with high walls, and laid out its orchards and fields.
But this godly King was a malicious tyrant and womanizer whose Kingdom always whimpered under his despotism. The gods, as planned to unwind him, sent a feral being — Enkidu, as bravura as Gilgamesh. They turned out to be bosom chums.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Together they thieved trees from cedar forest prohibited for mortals slaying the guard, devotee of god Enlil, the petrifying demon Humbaba.
The goddess of love, Ishtar sent the rampaging Bull of Heaven with seven years of starvation down to earth as vengeance for Gilgamesh's scorn to her spilling lust.
They slaughtered it. But Enkidu was sentenced for their contravention incurring Ishtar's ire. Gilgamesh's world smashed into smithereens.
Forlorn and tormented about own demise, he trekked to the periphery of the earth. He found immortal Utnapishtim (the Mesopotamian Noah) beyond Mashu, the two-peaked mountain braving scorpion-monsters; and implored his pursuit. Utnapishtim induced and sent him back.
But eavesdropping on Utnapishtim and his wife's chat, he found the astounding plant of youth that was stolen by a snake one night while camping.
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Unlike the heroes of Greek or Celtic mythology, the hero of The Epic of Gilgamesh was an actual historical figure, a king who reigned over the Sumerian city-state of Uruk around 2700 B.C. Long after his death, people worshipped Gilgamesh, renowned as a warrior and builder and widely celebrated for his wisdom and judiciousness. One prayer invokes him as "Gilgamesh, supreme king, judge of the Anunnaki" (the gods of the underworld). Called Erech in the Bible, Uruk was one of the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia. The historical King Gilgamesh probably raised its walls, which archaeologists have determined had a perimeter of six miles. Today its ruins rest near the town of Warka, in southern Iraq, about a third of the way from Basra to Baghdad. Dozens of stories about Gilgamesh circulated throughout the ancient Middle East. Archaeologists have discovered the earliest ones, inscribed on clay tablets in the Sumerian language before 2000 B.C. Other tablets tell stories about him in the Elamite, Hurrian, and Hittite tongues. Over time, many of those stories were consolidated into a large, epic work. The most complete known version of this long poem was found in Nineveh, in the ruins of the library of Assurbanipal, the last great king of the Assyrian empire. Assurbanipal was undoubtedly a despot and a warmonger, but he was also a tireless archivist and collector—we owe much of our knowledge about ancient Mesopotamia to his efforts. |
The serpent had slinked away; it molted and received adolescence. Empty, Gilgamesh returned to Uruk but at last merged to mortality. The city his own, drowned in terror, came to his sight as an enduring triumph as desirable as immortality. This perilous yet cathartic journey of learning: "Life, which you look for, you will never find.
For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands." granted Gilgamesh intransience by sealing his name in humans' hearts for his numerous building works, his preaching of story about the time before inundation and all the godly clandestine undisclosed.
This is the inner of The Epic of Gilgamesh discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in 1853 in 'cuneiform' on twelve plates as an emblem of time 3200 BC predating even Homer's Iliad by roughly 1500 years. Its influence was later found in biblical and classical literature. Many of the Epic's characters also have myths allied indirectly with close biblical resemblance.
The intimacy between Enkidu-Shamhat could be recognized as Adam-Eve in the Garden of Eden; the snake stealing the plant of youth came up with another parallel. Conspicuous is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale. Even its influence on Homer and in popular culture, literature, art and music was marked.
But the image of the hereafter was austere, according to Enkidu, souls (represented as humans covered in scruffy bird feathers) cringe in a bleak city of dust, eating clay to survive; this contrasts with the views of other ancient religions such as the Egyptians and the Greeks which assured their adherents 'paradise' though it is vague from the Epic what role the gods themselves serve in the Sumerian afterlife.
To sum up, The Epic of Gilgamesh is both a spiritual treatise and a decisive effort of ancient literature.
Rash-ha Muntaqaa is schooling with University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, Department of English.
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