The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh: a Review Essay

THE BABYLONIAN EPIC OF GILGAMESH: A REVIEWANES ESSAY 41 (2004) 223–239223 The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh: A Review Essay M. WORTHINGTON St John's College Cambridge CB2 1TP UNITED KINGDOM E-mail: [email protected] A recent book by a scholar with a background in Classics described the state of Mesopotamian literature in bleak terms indeed: ‘All-round com- mentaries on literary texts, such as we are used to for classical authors, scarcely exist. Nor do word indexes and concordances. In many cases there are no proper critical editions’.1 On the 10th July 2003 this regrettable state of affairs experienced an epochal uplift, wrought by the publication of Pro- fessor Andrew George’s new, and much-awaited, edition of the Epic of Gilgames. The reward of a massive endeavour of sixteen years, this edition is a model of all that an edition of a Mesopotamian literary work should be. Built on a foundation of painstaking and substantial textual reconstruction, it offers detailed philological annotation, extensive introduction, and nuanced and erudite exegesis. It is already establishing itself as one of the classic works in the history of Akkadian philology, and will be consulted, enjoyed, learned from, and appreciated for decades to come. It emblazons and enhances the author’s reputation as a leader in his field, and reflects spendidly on Oxford University Press. The work is divided into two volumes. The first of these opens with an introduction of over 150 pages, with sections discussing the epic’s literary history, the history of the name ‘Gilgames’, traditions about the figure of Gilgames, and traditions about other characters, including: Enkidu (Gilga- mes’s friend and comrade); Humbaba (foe, and guardian of the Cedar For- est); Ninsun (Gilgames’s divine mother); Samhat (the prostitute who hu- manises Enkidu); Siduri (the divine ale wife who tells Gilgames how to get 1 West 1997, p. xi. 224 M. WORTHINGTON to Uta-napisti); Ur-sanabi (the boatman); Uta-napisti (the Flood hero). Af- ter the introduction there follow a second part, taken up with edition and discussion of older versions of the epic (200+ pages), and a third, devoted to the Standard Babylonian version (c. 360 pages). The Standard Babylonian version of Gilgames, in twelve tablets, is the best-attested version, and that with which readers are likely to be most fa- miliar. George gives it its own detailed introduction, which discusses the manuscripts available for each tablet, scribal habits, textual transmission, language and orthography. He then devotes a further eighty pages to detailed exegesis. After this, there ensues the edition of the text, with translit- erations and translations on facing pages, Loeb-style, and an apparatus criticus in the footnotes. The second volume opens with an edition (including Partitur transliteration and translation) of the Sumerian text2 which, after being translated into Akkadian, became the XII tablet of Standard Babylonian Gilgames. Next appear 128 pages of critical and philological notes, tablet by tablet and line by line, to the edition of the Standard Babylonian version. The bibliog- raphy and indices follow. The volume concludes with hand copies of all the manuscripts of Akkadian Gilgames of all periods available to the scholarly community at the time of going to press. The division into volumes was clearly made with the reader’s needs in mind. It enables one to view the transliteration, translation, and cuneiform copy or philological commentary simultaneously, without having to flick back and forth. Readers need not be daunted by the sheer size of the work. Throughout, George’s prose style is lucid and muscular, and often dryly humorous in an enjoyable sort of way. One can plough through pages of minutiae and mar- vels, and hardly notice the effort. The same pleasant readability also, of course, characterises the translation of the epic itself. * * * The first volume’s opening words are ‘this book is fundamentally a work of textual reconstruction’. This is because, before they can be understood, translated, and discussed, the works of Mesopotamian literature have to be pieced together from fragments of clay tablets. This involves long hours of concentrated toil in museums, both identifying fragments as belonging to a 2 I.e. lines 172-end of Gilgames and the Netherworld. THE BABYLONIAN EPIC OF GILGAMESH: A REVIEW ESSAY 225 particular work, and then deciphering them. The text of Gilgames is still not complete, but George’s edition has truly made strides in reconstructing it. The last major edition was that of Reginald Campbell Thompson, published in 1930. Subsequent decades witnessed the accumulation of many more fragments (specifically, the number rose from 112 to 218), either brought to light in new excavations or discovered in museums. Sometimes the new finds contained lines of text otherwise lost, sometimes they ex- plained obscurities in the tablets available to Campbell Thompson; all of them contributed to rendering his composite cuneiform text outdated.3 For the Standard Babylonian version of the epic, the increase in the number of fragments between 1930 and 2003 was from 108 to 184. Much more text has, then, become available, including, famously, the first line.4 Older versions have benefited too. For example, the Old Babylonian epic has gained two exciting new manuscripts currently in Norway, one of which mentions Ebla (see pp. 225-6). Apart from the matter of quantity, there is the issue of presentation. George has not only studied and utilised all the available fragments, but also published them in cuneiform copies, mostly in his own hand, all but one made from the original tablets. In their totality they occupy 147 pages. Publication of all the known manuscripts of Gilgames within the same two covers has not been attempted for well over a century, and George’s copies, based on careful examination and collation of tablets and old photographs, represent a massive contribution of undiminishing worth. In keeping with his foundational interest in textual reconstruction, George has also set new standards for textual commentary in Assyriology, devoting almost forty pages to a detailed description and discussion of the manuscripts available for reconstructing each tablet of the Standard Babylo- nian version of the epic. A compact edition (without commentary, with glossary) of the Standard Babylonian epic was published seven years ago by Simo Parpola.5 This was an important achievement, a very useful teaching tool, and a credit to the Helsinki project. Readers who have used it will want to know how exten- sively the text in George’s edition differs from it. The answer is that the dif- ferences are significant. As Parpola himself saw,6 with George’s work at an 3 The transliteration and translation became obsolete more quickly, owing to advances in Akkadian philology. 4 The tablet which has least benefited from new finds is IX. 5 Parpola 1997. 6 Parpola 1997, p. ix. 226 M. WORTHINGTON advanced stage of preparation there would have been little sense in making a massive investment in comprehensiveness. In consequence, Parpola’s text is weak on unpublished material and collations, and George not infre- quently offers improved readings, resulting from new manuscripts or collations. Sometimes, it emerges that Parpola’s edition has conflated variant lines on different manuscripts. Parpola’s edition now needs to be used cau- tiously. However, since George’s edition does not include a connected cuneiform text such as Campbell Thompson and Parpola offered (and students thrive on), it would be highly desirable, if copyright-related issues can be worked out, for Parpola to issue a second, corrected, printing of his compact edition, incorporating George’s readings. Another consideration in favour of this is the high cost of George’s edition, which puts it beyond the reach of students. If the work of textual reconstruction has been massive and foundational, it should not be permitted to overshadow the introduction to the first volume and to the Standard Babylonian epic. These are works of profound scholarship and great power of synthesis, in which the discussion is always inlaid with learning, ideas, and linguistic insights of all types and sizes. The exegesis, which is very strong intertextually, highlights Gilgames’s thought- fulness, density and humanity. One often hears that Gilgames is a great work of world literature, but it is good that somebody should give a detailed illustration of why. We do not propose here to list the introductions’ achievements, or to give a detailed assessment of their importance. Citations in scholarly works for decades to come will see to that. Rather, we shall limit ourselves to whetting the reader’s appetite, by giving a small, illustrative sample of the riches which the text boasts on every page: a suggestion as to why tablet XII was added to the epic (pp. 52 ff.); a discussion of the (non-)survival of Mesopotamian culture after the extinction of cuneiform (pp. 57 ff.); a sec- tion on ‘Gilgames in exorcistic rituals’ (pp. 132 ff.); evidence for Humbaba in Qumran Aramaic texts (p. 147); a list of variants between manuscripts (pp. 423 ff.); the observation of a similarity between the actions of Gilgames’s mother and the ritual series bit rimki ‘House of Ablution’ (p. 459); thought- provoking remarks such as ‘the importance of Gilgames’s [oppressiveness] to the poem’s narrative is that it acts as a mechanism for the creation of Enkidu’ (p. 449); a detailed enquiry into the nature of the ‘Path of the Sun’ (pp. 494 ff). No higher compliment can be paid to the introductions than to say that, though disagreements are bound to arise, every reader will be bound to learn a lot from them. THE BABYLONIAN EPIC OF GILGAMESH: A REVIEW ESSAY 227 Many of the philological notes will also be cited as scholarly achievements in their own right.

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