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Thorkild THE GILGAMESH EPIC Jacobsen ROMANTIC AND TRAGIC VISION THE GILGAMESH EPIC, it can truthfully be said, ranks with the greatest of the many remarkable works that have come down to us from Ancient Mesopotamia. It still, across millennia, powerfully moves one, and once one has been caught by its special magic it continues to occupy one's thoughts and will not let go-which may serve as my excuse for returning to it here even though I have dealt with it many times before. The first thing that should be said is probably that the tale is a very ancient one indeed. As its first germ we may reasonably posit Gilgamesh himself, for he seems to be an historical figure, a ruler of the city of Uruk at some time around 2600 BC, more than four thousand years ago. He must have been a remarkably arresting figure, one of those who stir people's imagination, for tales about him apparently went from mouth to mouth for nearly five hundred years after his death. Then, around 2100 BC, these tales took on special importance, for the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur, who then reigned, claimed Gilgamesh as their ancestor and so the court poets assiduously put what they knew about him in form for recital at the royal banquets. From there, as model compositions, their works entered the standard curriculum of the schools, and it is from copies made by later generations of school­ children, mostly from around 1700 BC, that we know them. They fall into two distinct groups. In one Gilgamesh is the bold death-defying hero bent on achieving lasting fame. In the other Death is a grim reality, confronted in fear and with no pre­ tence to heroics. To the first of these groups belongs a tale in which Gilgamesh seeks fame through an expedition to the cedar mountains in Armenia to cut cedars. He is sur­ prised by the terrifying guardian of the forest, Huwawa, but saves himself by trick­ ery, pretending that he has come to offer Huwawa his sisters in marriage. Huwawa thus is persuaded to put away the terrors in which he is clothed, at which Gilgamesh attacks him and subdues him; and eventually Gilgamesh's slave Enkidu kills him in a fit of rage.1 Another tale in this group tells of the Bull of Heaven, a monster which 1See S. N. Kramer, "Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living," JCS 1 (1947) 3-46; J. van Dijk, "Le denouement de 'Gilgame~ au bois de cedres' selon LB 2116," in Gilgamd et sa legende, ed. Paul Garelli (Paris, 1960) 69-80; A. Shaffer, "Gilgamesh, the Cedar Forest and Mesopotamian History," JAOS 64 (1984) 307-13; Neil Forsyth, "Huwawa and his Trees: A Narrative and Cultural Analysis," 232 llIORKILD JACOBSEN the goddess Inanna brought down to kill Gilgamesh because he aspired to jurisdiction over her temple Eanna in Uruk. However, Gilgamesh and Enkidu prevailed against the bull and killed it.2 To the second group belong tales like "The Death of Gilgamesh," in which the great god Enlil urges Gilgamesh to accept the inevitable with composure,3 and also a tale which has been called "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World," in which Enkidu's ghost comes up from the Nether World to tell Gilgamesh in detail about the bleak existence down there.4 So far-that is, down to around 1700 BC-we have evidence only of separate, short, epic tales; not of an actual epic. An actual epic appears, however, around this time, 1700 BC, when a great poet created what is known as the "Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic." Whereas all the earlier materials were in Sumerian, he wrote in Akkadian. We have the better part of his work in contemporary copies, though there are still gaps which one must hope future finds will fill in. Then again, some 700 years later-roughly around 1000 BC-a learned Babylo­ nian priest called Sin-liqi-unnini took it upon himself to rework and enlarge what had come down to him, and finally, at some time before 600 BC, the last half of an Akka­ dian translation of the Sumerian tale "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World" was very clumsily tacked on to Sin-liqi-unnini's version, producing a twelve-tablet edition. This was the form in which the Epic entered the famous Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, and it is probably the one in which it is now best known.5 Acta Sumerologica 3 (1981) 13-29; and Maria de Jong Ellis, "Gilgamesh' Approach to Huwawa: A New Text," AfO 28 (1981-82) 123-31. The beginning line of the story, which served also as its title, reads en-e kur-lu-ti-la-!e gdtu­ ga-ni na-an-gub, which we would render 'The lord felt urged to turn his attention to the mountains of the Urarteans." Cf. Ea 11.70-72, MSL xiv p. 250 u-ri =URI= ... = ak-ka-du-u "Akkadian," a-ri = URI =a-mur-ru-u "Amorite," and ti-la: URI : ur-tu-u "Urartean"; and for the combination lu-ti-la cf. lu-su-a. See also SL.359.11. For the use of the gentilicium urfil for a plant and a color, see AHw. p. 1434. 2See SK 196, PBS V.27, SEM 26, /SET I pl. 86, Ni 4307, pl. 141, Ni 9843, /SET II pl. 55, Ni 4513. Unpublished fragments are 3N-T.750, 3N-T.152, 3N-T.902.94, 3N-T.916,750,902.71, 3N­ T.917.387, 3N-T.906.227. Cf. J. W. Heimerdinger, Sumerian Literary Fragments from Nippur (Philadelphia, 1979) p. 26. 3see S. N. Kramer, "The Death of Gilgamesh," BASOR 94 (1944). In my translation of lines 33-46 (op. cit p. 7) in Death in Mesopotamia, ed. B. Alster (Copenhagen, 1980) p. 20, line 39 was acci­ dentally omitted. It reads nig-gig-gi-dur-ku5-da-ta ne-e gen-a si-ra-dug4 "The misery (fated since) your having the umbilical cord cut thus come, has but silence for you (as answer)." Cf. si-duu-ga : fa-bar-ru-ru SL 112-75b. 4See A. Shaffer, The Sumerian Sources of Tablet xii of the Epic of Gilgamesh (Ph.D. diss. Univ. of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, 1963). 5For literature, see J. H. Tigay's valuable study The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadelphia, 1982) esp. pp. 305-7. .
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