The Babylonian Saga of Gilgamesh
The Babylonian Saga of GilgameshIntroductionPennsylvania Tablet. Transliteration.Translation.Commentary on the Pennsylvania Tablet.Yale Tablet. Transliteration. Translation.Corrections to the Text of Langdon’s Edition of the Pennsylvania Tablet.1Copyright
The Babylonian Saga of Gilgamesh
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Introduction
The Gilgamesh Epic is the most notable literary product of
Babylonia as yet discovered in the mounds of Mesopotamia. It
recounts the exploits and adventures of a favorite hero, and in its
final form covers twelve tablets, each tablet consisting of six
columns (three on the obverse and three on the reverse) of about 50
lines for each column, or a total of about 3600 lines. Of this
total, however, barely more than one-half has been found among the
remains of the great collection of cuneiform tablets gathered by
King Ashurbanapal (668–626 B.C.) in his palace at Nineveh, and
discovered by Layard in 18541 in the course of his excavations of
the mound Kouyunjik (opposite Mosul). The fragments of the epic
painfully gathered—chiefly by George Smith—from the circa 30,000
tablets and bits of tablets brought to the British Museum were
published in model form by Professor Paul Haupt;2 and that edition
still remains the primary source for our study of the Epic.
For the sake of convenience we may call the form of the Epic in the
fragments from the library of Ashurbanapal the Assyrian version,
though like most of the literary productions in the library it not
only reverts to a Babylonian original, but represents a late copy
of a much older original. The absence of any reference to Assyria
in the fragments recovered justifies us in assuming that the
Assyrian version received its present form in Babylonia, perhaps in
Erech; though it is of course possible that some of the late
features, particularly the elaboration of the teachings of the
theologians or schoolmen in the eleventh and twelfth tablets, may
have been produced at least in part under Assyrian influence. A
definite indication that the Gilgamesh Epic reverts to a period
earlier than Hammurabi (or Hammurawi)3 i.e., beyond 2000 B. C., was
furnished by the publication of a text clearly belonging to the
first Babylonian dynasty (of which Hammurabi was the sixth member)
in CT. VI, 5; which text Zimmern4 recognized as a part of the tale
of Atra-ḫasis, one of the names given to the survivor of the
deluge, recounted on the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic.5
This was confirmed by the discovery6 of a [11]fragment of the
deluge story dated in the eleventh year of Ammisaduka, i.e., c.
1967 B.C. In this text, likewise, the name of the deluge hero
appears as Atra-ḫasis (col. VIII, 4).7 But while these two tablets
do not belong to the Gilgamesh Epic and merely introduce an episode
which has also been incorporated into the Epic, Dr. Bruno Meissner
in 1902 published a tablet, dating, as the writing and the internal
evidence showed, from the Hammurabi period, which undoubtedly is a
portion of what by way of distinction we may call an old Babylonian
version.8 It was picked up by Dr. Meissner at a dealer’s shop in
Bagdad and acquired for the Berlin Museum. The tablet consists of
four columns (two on the obverse and two on the reverse) and deals
with the hero’s wanderings in search of a cure from disease with
which he has been smitten after the death of his companion Enkidu.
The hero fears that the disease will be fatal and longs to escape
death. It corresponds to a portion of Tablet X of the Assyrian
version. Unfortunately, only the lower portion of the obverse and
the upper of the reverse have been preserved (57 lines in all); and
in default of a colophon we do not know the numeration of the
tablet in this old Babylonian edition. Its chief value, apart from
its furnishing a proof for the existence of the Epic as early as
2000 B. C., lies (a) in the writing Gish instead of Gish-gi(n)-mash
in the Assyrian version, for the name of the hero, (b) in the
writing En-ki-dũ—abbreviated from dũg—() “Enki is good” for
En-ki-dú () in the Assyrian version,9 and (c) in the remarkable
address of the maiden Sabitum, dwelling at the seaside, to whom
Gilgamesh comes in the course of his wanderings. From the Assyrian
version we know that the hero tells the maiden of his grief for his
lost companion, and of his longing to escape the dire fate of
Enkidu. In the old Babylonian fragment the answer of Sabitum is
given in full, and the sad note that it strikes, showing how
hopeless it is for man to try to escape death which is in store for
all mankind, is as remarkable as is the philosophy of “eat, drink
and be merry” which Sabitum imparts. The address indicates how
early the tendency arose to attach to ancient tales the current
religious teachings. [12]
“Why, O Gish, does thou run about?
The life that thou seekest, thou wilt not find.
When the gods created mankind,
Death they imposed on mankind;
Life they kept in their power.
Thou, O Gish, fill thy belly,
Day and night do thou rejoice,
Daily make a rejoicing!
Day and night a renewal of jollification!
Let thy clothes be clean,
Wash thy head and pour water over thee!
Care for the little one who takes hold of thy hand!
Let the wife rejoice in thy bosom!”
Such teachings, reminding us of the leading thought in the Biblical
Book of Ecclesiastes,10 indicate the didactic character given to
ancient tales that were of popular origin, but which were modified
and elaborated under the influence of the schools which arose in
connection with the Babylonian temples. The story itself belongs,
therefore, to a still earlier period than the form it received in
this old Babylonian version. The existence of this tendency at so
early a date comes to us as a genuine surprise, and justifies the
assumption that the attachment of a lesson to the deluge story in
the Assyrian version, to wit, the limitation in attainment of
immortality to those singled out by the gods as exceptions, dates
likewise from the old Babylonian period. The same would apply to
the twelfth tablet, which is almost entirely didactic, intended to
illustrate the impossibility of learning anything of the fate of
those who have passed out of this world. It also emphasizes the
necessity of contenting oneself with the comfort that the care of
the dead, by providing burial and food and drink offerings for them
affords, as the only means of ensuring for them rest and freedom
from the pangs of hunger and distress. However, it is of course
possible that the twelfth tablet, which impresses one as a
supplement to the adventures of Gilgamesh, ending with his return
to Uruk (i.e., Erech) at the close of the eleventh tablet, may
represent a later elaboration of the tendency to connect religious
teachings with the exploits of a favorite hero. [13]
We now have further evidence both of the extreme antiquity of the
literary form of the Gilgamesh Epic and also of the disposition to
make the Epic the medium of illustrating aspects of life and the
destiny of mankind. The discovery by Dr. Arno Poebel of a Sumerian
form of the tale of the descent of Ishtar to the lower world and
her release11—apparently a nature myth to illustrate the change of
season from summer to winter and back again to spring—enables us to
pass beyond the Akkadian (or Semitic) form of tales current in the
Euphrates Valley to the Sumerian form. Furthermore, we are indebted
to Dr. Langdon for the identification of two Sumerian fragments in
the Nippur Collection which deal with the adventures of Gilgamesh,
one in Constantinople,12 the other in the collection of the
University of Pennsylvania Museum.13 The former, of which only 25
lines are preserved (19 on the obverse and 6 on the reverse),
appears to be a description of the weapons of Gilgamesh with which
he arms himself for an encounter—presumably the encounter with
Ḫumbaba or Ḫuwawa, the ruler of the cedar forest in the
mountain.14 The latter deals with the building operations of
Gilgamesh in the city of Erech. A text in Zimmern’s Sumerische
Kultlieder aus altbabylonischer Zeit (Leipzig, 1913), No. 196,
appears likewise to be a fragment of the Sumerian version of the
Gilgamesh Epic, bearing on the episode of Gilgamesh’s and Enkidu’s
relations to the goddess Ishtar, covered in the sixth and seventh
tablets of the Assyrian version.15
Until, however, further fragments shall have turned up, it would be
hazardous to institute a comparison between the Sumerian and the
Akkadian versions. All that can be said for the present is that
there is every reason to believe in the existence of a literary
form of the Epic in Sumerian which presumably antedated the
Akkadian recension, [14]just as we have a Sumerian form of Ishtar’s
descent into the nether world, and Sumerian versions of creation
myths, as also of the Deluge tale.16 It does not follow, however,
that the Akkadian versions of the Gilgamesh Epic are translations
of the Sumerian, any more than that the Akkadian creation myths are
translations of a Sumerian original. Indeed, in the case of the
creation myths, the striking difference between the Sumerian and
Akkadian views of creation17 points to the independent production
of creation stories on the part of the Semitic settlers of the
Euphrates Valley, though no doubt these were worked out in part
under Sumerian literary influences. The same is probably true of
Deluge tales, which would be given a distinctly Akkadian coloring
in being reproduced and steadily elaborated by the Babylonian
literati attached to the temples. The presumption is, therefore, in
favor of an independent literary origin for the Semitic versions of
the Gilgamesh Epic, though naturally with a duplication of the
episodes, or at least of some of them, in the Sumerian narrative.
Nor does the existence of a Sumerian form of the Epic necessarily
prove that it originated with the Sumerians in their earliest home
before they came to the Euphrates Valley. They may have adopted it
after their conquest of southern Babylonia from the Semites who,
there are now substantial grounds for believing, were the earlier
settlers in the Euphrates Valley.18 We must distinguish, therefore,
between the earliest literary form, which was undoubtedly Sumerian,
and the origin of the episodes embodied in the Epic, including the
chief actors, Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu. It will be shown
that one of the chief episodes, the encounter of the two heroes
with a powerful guardian or ruler of a cedar forest, points to a
western region, more specifically to Amurru, as the scene. The
names of the two chief actors, moreover, appear to have been
“Sumerianized” by an artificial process,19 and if this view turns
out to be [15]correct, we would have a further ground for assuming
the tale to have originated among the Akkadian settlers and to have
been taken over from them by the Sumerians.
New light on the earliest Babylonian version of the Epic, as well
as on the Assyrian version, has been shed by the recovery of two
substantial fragments of the form which the Epic had assumed in
Babylonia in the Hammurabi period. The study of this important new
material also enables us to advance the interpretation of the Epic
and to perfect the analysis into its component parts. In the spring
of 1914, the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania acquired by
purchase a large tablet, the writing of which as well as the style
and the manner of spelling verbal forms and substantives pointed
distinctly to the time of the first Babylonian dynasty. The tablet
was identified by Dr. Arno Poebel as part of the Gilgamesh Epic;
and, as the colophon showed, it formed the second tablet of the
series. He copied it with a view to publication, but the outbreak
of the war which found him in Germany—his native country—prevented
him from carrying out this intention.20 He, however, utilized some
of its contents in his discussion of the historical or
semi-historical traditions about Gilgamesh, as revealed by the
important list of partly mythical and partly historical dynasties,
found among the tablets of the Nippur collection, in which
Gilgamesh occurs21 as a King of an Erech dynasty, whose father was
Â, a priest of Kulab.22
The publication of the tablet was then undertaken by Dr. Stephen
Langdon in monograph form under the title, “The Epic of
Gilgamish.”23 In a preliminary article on the tablet in the Museum
Journal, Vol. VIII, pages 29–38, Dr. Langdon took the tablet to be
of the late [16]Persian period (i.e., between the sixth and third
century B. C.), but his attention having been called to this error
of some 1500 years, he corrected it in his introduction to his
edition of the text, though he neglected to change some of his
notes in which he still refers to the text as “late.”24 In addition
to a copy of the text, accompanied by a good photograph, Dr.
Langdon furnished a transliteration and translation with some notes
and a brief introduction. The text is unfortunately badly copied,
being full of errors; and the translation is likewise very
defective. A careful collation with the original tablet was made
with the assistance of Dr. Edward Chiera, and as a consequence we
are in a position to offer to scholars a correct text. We beg to
acknowledge our obligations to Dr. Gordon, the Director of the
Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, for kindly placing the
tablet at our disposal. Instead of republishing the text, I content
myself with giving a full list of corrections in the appendix to
this volume which will enable scholars to control our readings, and
which will, I believe, justify the translation in the numerous
passages in which it deviates from Dr. Langdon’s rendering. While
credit should be given to Dr. Langdon for having made this
important tablet accessible, the interests of science demand that
attention be called to his failure to grasp the many important data
furnished by the tablet, which escaped him because of his erroneous
readings and faulty translations.
The tablet, consisting of six columns (three on the obverse and
three on the reverse), comprised, according to the colophon, 240
lines25 and formed the second tablet of the series. Of the total,
204 lines are preserved in full or in part, and of the missing
thirty-six quite a number can be restored, so that we have a fairly
complete tablet. The most serious break occurs at the top of the
reverse, where about eight lines are missing. In consequence of
this the connection between the end of the obverse (where about
five lines are missing) and the beginning of the reverse is
obscured, though not to the extent of our entirely losing the
thread of the narrative. [17]
About the same time that the University of Pennsylvania Museum
purchased this second tablet of the Gilgamesh Series, Yale
University obtained a tablet from the same dealer, which turned out
to be a continuation of the University of Pennsylvania tablet. That
the two belong to the same edition of the Epic is shown by their
agreement in the dark brown color of the clay, in the writing as
well as in the size of the tablet, though the characters on the
Yale tablet are somewhat cramped and in consequence more difficult
to read. Both tablets consist of six columns, three on the obverse
and three on the reverse. The measurements of both are about the
same, the Pennsylvania tablet being estimated at about 7 inches
high, as against 72/16 inches for the Yale tablet, while the width
of both is 6½ inches. The Yale tablet is, however, more closely
written and therefore has a larger number of lines than the
Pennsylvania tablet. The colophon to the Yale tablet is
unfortunately missing, but from internal evidence it is quite
certain that the Yale tablet follows immediately upon the
Pennsylvania tablet and, therefore, may be set down as the third of
the series. The obverse is very badly preserved, so that only a
general view of its contents can be secured. The reverse contains
serious gaps in the first and second columns. The scribe evidently
had a copy before him which he tried to follow exactly, but finding
that he could not get all of the copy before him in the six
columns, he continued the last column on the edge. In this way we
obtain for the sixth column 64 lines as against 45 for column IV,
and 47 for column V, and a total of 292 lines for the six columns.
Subtracting the 16 lines written on the edge leaves us 276 lines
for our tablet as against 240 for its companion. The width of each
column being the same on both tablets, the difference of 36 lines
is made up by the closer writing.
Both tablets have peculiar knobs at the sides, the purpose of which
is evidently not to facilitate holding the tablet in one’s hand
while writing or reading it, as Langdon assumed26 (it would be
quite impracticable for this purpose), but simply to protect the
tablet in its position on a shelf, where it would naturally be
placed on the edge, just as we arrange books on a shelf. Finally be
it noted that these two tablets of the old Babylonian version do
not belong to the same edition as the Meissner tablet above
described, for the latter consists of two columns each on
obverse and reverse, as against three columns each in the case of
our two tablets. We thus have the interesting proof that as early
as 2000 B.C. there were already several editions of the Epic. As to
the provenance of our two tablets, there are no definite data, but
it is likely that they were found by natives in the mounds at
Warka, from which about the year 1913, many tablets came into the
hands of dealers. It is likely that where two tablets of a series
were found, others of the series were also dug up, and we may
expect to find some further portions of this old Babylonian version
turning up in the hands of other dealers or in museums.
Coming to the contents of the two tablets, the Pennsylvania tablet
deals with the meeting of the two heroes, Gilgamesh and Enkidu,
their conflict, followed by their reconciliation, while the Yale
tablet in continuation takes up the preparations for the encounter
of the two heroes with the guardian of the cedar forest,
Ḫumbaba—but probably pronounced Ḫubaba27—or, as the name appears
in the old Babylonian version, Ḫuwawa. The two tablets correspond,
therefore, to portions of Tablets I to V of the Assyrian version;28
but, as will be shown in detail further on, the number of
completely parallel passages is not large, and the Assyrian version
shows an independence of the old Babylonian version that is larger
than we had reason to expect. In general, it may be said that the
Assyrian version is more elaborate, which points to its having
received its present form at a considerably later period than the
old Babylonian version.29 On the other hand, we already find in the
Babylonian version the tendency towards repetition, which is
characteristic of Babylonian-Assyrian tales in general. Through the
two Babylonian tablets we are enabled to fill out certain details
[19]of the two episodes with which they deal: (1) the meeting of
Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and (2) the encounter with Ḫuwawa; while
their greatest value consists in the light that they throw on the
gradual growth of the Epic until it reached its definite form in
the text represented by the fragments in Ashurbanapal’s Library.
Let us now take up the detailed analysis, first of the Pennsylvania
tablet and then of the Yale tablet. The Pennsylvania tablet begins
with two dreams recounted by Gilgamesh to his mother, which the
latter interprets as presaging the coming of Enkidu to Erech. In
the one, something like a heavy meteor falls from heaven upon
Gilgamesh and almost crushes him. With the help of the heroes of
Erech, Gilgamesh carries the heavy burden to his mother Ninsun. The
burden, his mother explains, symbolizes some one who, like
Gilgamesh, is born in the mountains, to whom all will pay homage
and of whom Gilgamesh will become enamoured with a love as strong
as that for a woman. In a second dream, Gilgamesh sees some one who
is like him, who brandishes an axe, and with whom he falls in love.
This personage, the mother explains, is again Enkidu.