THE HUMAN CONDITION, FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE: THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH AND MEDIEVAL ARTHURIAN ROMANCE

BART BESAMUSCA

Introduction More than two millennia separate the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Arthurian romances from “He who saw the Deep”, the Standard Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, supposedly edited by a certain Sîn- liqe-unninni – which means “O Moon God, Accept my Prayer”– around 1100 BC. It will not come as a surprise, therefore, that an Arthurian scholar who reads the Babylonian verse text, albeit in modern translations, is struck by its strangeness. However, I do not consider the epic just strange. In a number of ways “He who saw the Deep” – a title taken from the text’s first line – is also curiously familiar to a reader of medieval stories. For me the epic displays, in fact, an intriguing mixture of unknown and well-known literary characteristics. Consequently, what I intend to present in this essay is a reflection on “He who saw the Deep”, henceforth referred to as Gilgamesh, from the perspective of my own field: medieval (in particular: Middle Dutch) Arthurian literature.1 Gilgamesh has come down to us in more than seventy cuneiform tablets, copied by (apprentice) scribes in the service of Babylonian rulers.2 Whereas the oldest date from the seventh century BC, the last

1 This essay is the revised version of a paper presented at the workshop “A Confrontation with Gilgamesh”, Groningen, November 5-7, 2003. I would like to thank Frank Brandsma for his comments on an earlier draft of this article. 2 Translations used are The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian, trans. and introd. Andrew George, London, 1999 and Het epos van Gilgameš, zoals het rond 2000 v.C. ontstond als cyclus van afzonderlijke verhalen in het Sumerisch, vanaf 1800 v.C. samengevoegd werd tot een eenheidswerk in het Akkadisch, vanaf 1500 v.C. tot ver buiten Mesopotamië bekend werd, en ten slotte rond 1100 v.C. zijn laatste vorm vond als het eerste grote meesterwerk uit de wereldliteratuur, trans. Herman Vanstiphout, 2nd ed., Nijmegen, 2002. All quotations in this article are taken from George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and 2 Bart Besamusca tablet discovered to date was written around 130 BC. The surviving tablets make it possible to reconstruct the epic to a large extent; however, about 575 lines of the total of c. 3000 lines are still completely missing. In accordance with Babylonian tradition the text is divided into sections, called tablets, since each section contains the lines which were written down on a single clay tablet. Gilgamesh consists of eleven sections. In Tablet I, the gods create the wild man Enkidu, in order to challenge King Gilgamesh, who is tyrannizing the people of Uruk. The prostitute Shamhat uses her skills to lure Enkidu away from his animal companions and proposes to take him to Uruk. In Tablet II, Enkidu enters the city and fights with Gilgamesh. They become friends after Enkidu’s recognition of Gilgamesh’s superiority. Then, searching for fame, Gilgamesh expresses the wish to travel to the Forest of Cedar, in spite of Enkidu’s warnings. In Tablet III, the heroes prepare for their great journey, which takes place in Tablet IV. Along the way, Gilgamesh is haunted by nightmares, which are explained favourably by Enkidu. In Tablet V, the heroes, assisted by the Sun God Shamash, kill the ogre Humbaba, the guardian of the Forest of Cedar, and cut down cedar in the sacred groves. In Tablet VI, the pair have returned to Uruk, where Gilgamesh’s beauty arouses the desire of the goddess Ishtar. When the king scornfully rejects her, the enraged goddess tries to kill him by sending the terrifying Bull of Heaven to Uruk. However, Gilgamesh and Enkidu discover the beast’s weak spot and slay it. In Tablet VII, Enkidu has a dream in which the gods decide he has to die because he and Gilgamesh killed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. Enkidu laments his fate, describes his dream to Gilgamesh, falls ill and dies. In Tablet VIII, Gilgamesh arranges Enkidu’s splendid funeral. In Tablet IX, Gilgamesh, mourning for Enkidu, refuses to accept his own mortality. He leaves his town in search of the immortal Uta-napishti and reaches the mountains at the end of the world, where he finds the Path of the Sun. Racing against time, the hero takes the path under the mountains. In Tablet X, Gilgamesh meets Uti-napishti’s ferryman, Ur-shanabi. With his aid the hero crosses the Waters of Death and makes himself known to Uti-napishti, were checked against Vanstiphout, Het epos van Gilgameš. Words in square brackets have been restored in passages where a tablet is broken. Italics indicate restorations that are uncertain. References are by tablet and line-number.