by Harvey Kraft
The relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu started with the king attempting to lure the primitive man out of Paradise:
The tale opened with citizens of Uruk accusing the uncivilized Enkidu of interfering with their hunting activities, prompting their clever king Gilgamesh to send a prostitute to seduce him. After their sexual encounter she was able to lure Enkidu out of his paradise. Exposed to civilized Sumerian society, Enkidu gained knowledge that awakened an awareness of his own nakedness.
Through this character the writers of the myth made a historical observation regarding the changing landscape of human cultures evolving from hunter-gatherer tribes to urban-centric farming civilizations, therein prophesying an end for humanity’s primitive past.
Gilgamesh required excellent lumber for a tower he was building in his city. Needing the assistance of a strong man, he struck up a friendship with Enkidu and together they embarked for the Cedar Forest (in Lebanon). But to acquire the lumber they would have to defeat the protector of the forest, a ferocious dinosaur-like guardian (Akk. Huwawa or Humbaba). With the help of the Sun God (Sum. Utu) Gilgamesh unleashed eight powerful winds30 that subdued the Forest Monster. Although he begged for his life, Gilgamesh and Enkidu showed no mercy and killed the beast. Next they cut down the cedar trees and sent them back to Uruk.
But certain gods were upset with the murder. They blamed Enkidu for an unjustified killing, and as a result he fell gravely ill. On the verge of death, he told Gilgamesh of a dream he had about a terrible fate that awaited all deceased humans. In his haunting vision he had descended into a barren netherworld located below the underground waters. There he was able to look into the “House of Dust,” literally a dead-end where all mortals ended up in the afterlife. Even past kings and priests were there, as they were doomed along with ordinary people and criminals alike to live out the afterlife as ghosts with their appetites still in tact, but with nothing to eat but dust and clay. Enkidu died haunted by the fear of this place in his eyes.
Deeply shaken by his friend’s desperate death, Gilgamesh suddenly became fully aware of his own mortality, and for the first time he experienced his own vulnerability. Feelings of anxiety, grief, and fear of impending death gnawed at him. Determined to avoid Enkidu’s fate he embarked on a perilous odyssey in search of everlasting life.
Distraught by Enkidu’s afterlife scenario, Gilgamesh decided to use his demigod powers to obtain immortality. He determined to climb to the summit of the Cosmic Mountain, and ask the gods for entry into Heaven.
In the Sumerian/Akkadian cosmogony, the Cosmic Mountain, Mashu (“twin-mountain”), featured a pair of peaks representing eastern and western horizons. Like its Egyptian counterparts, Manu and Bakhu, the two peaks represented the gates between Earth and the unseen worlds. In the evening the sun existed through the western gate and descended through the underworld tunnel until it reached the eastern gate at sunrise. Although these two horizon gates were bolted shut, at dawn and dusk they opened to allow the celestial body to pass. To insure that they worked properly, Sumerian temple centers conducted rituals focused on opening the gates when the sun needed to complete its intended journey. Above these gates, at the celestial summit of Mashu was Heaven’s Gate, believed to be the portal for the immortal gods.
At the highest level of the Cosmic Mountain (Akk. Mashu), Gilgamesh would seek there the wise counsel of Utnapishtim, priest of the Sun God. After he had saved his family and a variety of animals from a great deluge that covered the world, the Gods had led Utnapishtim and his wife (priestess of the Stars), the only survivors of the Great Flood, to dock their vessel at the top of the Cosmic Mountain.31 For their heroism the Sumerian gods had granted the couple the gift of immortality, an exclusive one-time honor they had not bestowed on any other mortal, but not entry into Heaven.
Gilgamesh, determined to find Utnapishtim, had embarked on a perilous journey no one else had ever attempted. He would face a host of dangers on his quest. Coming to the mouth of a long tunnel that was the night path of the sun under the world mountain, he encountered scorpion-men, guards of the Sun gate. They finally relented to let him go through tunnel. After twelve hours in total darkness and bitter cold he emerged from it into the Garden of Celestial Lights, an orchard of jewel-bearing trees brightened with the fruit of lapis lazuli, carnelians, and odier precious gems.
Believing at first that he had reached Heaven, he soon discovered that there was still further to go. Coming to the bank of the River of Fatal Waters he met there a priest with a ferryboat. The priest warned him that the waters of this river would turn flesh to stone. Undeterred, he engaged the priest to bring him across. On the other side Gilgamesh arrived at the abode of the immortal one he so keenly sought.
Upon meeting with Utnapishtim he implored him for liberation from the ghostly destiny that awaited everyone in the world below. Reluctantly, Utnapishtim gave Gilgamesh a chance to achieve his goal. He would have to avoid sleep for seven nights, and if he did so he would be awarded immortality. But in spite of a valiant effort to stay awake, haggard as he was from his arduous journey, Gilgamesh fell asleep.
Feeling sorry for him, Utnapishtim decided to give Gilgamesh a second chance to regain his youth. Unfortunately, outwitted by a snake, Gilgamesh fell short in this task as well. After diving to retrieve the Plant of Regeneration (Cosmic Lotus) rooted in the deep lakebed floor, and bringing it to the surface, Gilgamesh took his eyes off the plant. As he washed off the mud stuck to his body, a serpent (i.e., a cloud) stole the plant. Consequently, a humbler Gilgamesh returned to Uruk empty-handed, resigned to live out his life with compassion for all mortals.
Through this myth the Sumer/Akkad clergy declared that rulers, no matter how powerful—even those recognized as demigods—were not immune from aging or death. All mortal beings must accept that only the gods possessed the elusive prize of eternal life. Humans made of clay would return to the dusty, gloomy, and barren Sumerian netherworld. They would live as ghosts (Sum. Gidim; Akk. Ettemu) with their lifetime memories, personalities, and desires kept intact. The ghosts, although they had departed the physical domain, would still be able to peer into the living world. But watching the living eat and drink, they would again crave real food. Therefore, family and friends, in consideration for their deceased loved ones, would make nutritional offerings at funerary services and memorial ceremonies. Otherwise, they feared, the forgotten and neglected hungry ghosts may haunt the living, and enraged ghosts, those who met with violent ends, might cause infections or foster mayhem.
Through the specter of the afterlife underworld the clergy sought to communicate a fear of death and a greater appreciation for life. Death had no redeeming value, and, as such, one should try to live as long as possible. On the other hand, the gods had placed mortals in a colorful living paradise bestowed with the extraordinary gifts of nature. Even though people struggled with hardships, the greatest gift was the divine prize of life.
In Mesopotamia the clergy managed to deny immortality to their kings, but they did so at their peril as the issue would arise and again. When the Akkadians descended like locusts into the Fertile Crescent (2334 BCE) their king, Sargon of Akkad (aka Sargon the Great of Agade), demanded to be recognized as a god. The Sumerian clergy explained that they only had the power to honor him as a demigod. Referring to the Epic of Gilgamesh they showed that even the greatest king the world had ever known could not achieve immortality.
Accepting the sober advice, Sargon anointed himself High Priest of Heaven and Sky, making him the first king to head the clergy. His daughter, Enheduanna (2285–2250 BCE), became high priestess of the Heaven and Moon at the Temple Ziggurat of Ur. She composed a suite of incantations and hymns32 to honor the host of gods and their various Temple Ziggurats. In her poetry she claimed for herself the role of spiritual consort of the Moon God whose generative power inspired creativity and the destructive power to smite one’s enemies.
Sargon’s autocratic reign lasted for sixty years. After his passing, the te
rritorial scope of the Akkadian Dynasty was reduced and its grip on Sumer slowly weakened. While in decline Sargon’s royal bloodline held on until its collapse when the centuries-long Epic Drought caused a mass exodus from the cities.
The economic and religious collapse of the Sumer/Akkad city-states left them vulnerable to the ensuing invasion by the Guti tribe. They came from the east descending like a tidal wave from the northern region of the Zagros Mountains (Iran). They destroyed the defenseless cities, trampled farms, raided temples and looted precious objects of worship.
BABYLON’S GOD
The three-hundred-year Epic Drought that began in the 22nd century BCE had collapsed the food production system and brought down the deities of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and with them the kings, pharaohs and the clerical establishments. The contract between the divine and humanity had been broken. Who would be held accountable?
Eventually, slowly, as the seasonal cycle of rains returned, the restoration of political and economic stability required religious reformation. A new social contract would have to be drawn, one that would rebuild confidence in the ability of the religious class to get the cooperation needed from the divine. To prove that they had the skills, the reformers placed more emphasis on the use of “magic.” They conjured items from thin air, claimed to have achieved miraculous cures, and took credit for returning the rains to their normal state.
Back in the time before the Epic Drought, from among the “thousand gods” suddenly the God of Farming and Fertility, Telepinu,33 went missing. As a result, all of fertility failed. Plants and animals died, while humans and gods both appeared helpless. Without the seasonal rains, chaos and devastation spread and people abandoned their lands.
The gods searching everywhere could not locate Telepinu, until one goddess sent a bee to look for him. The bee found him sound asleep. To wake him the bee stung Telepinu. Aroused in pain, he became furious. Enraged he unleashed windstorms and sandstorms that destroyed setdements, dried or diverted rivers. The climate went from bad to worse.
Eventually, a sage-healer stepped in and used magic. He extracted the raging spirit from Telepinu and cast the god’s anger into metal containers located in the underworld where they would remain sealed forever. Finding calmness again, Telepinu came to his senses and restored the rains. Thus the rivers began to flow, vegetation returned, and the world was blessed again with natural fertility.
Change was in the air. Reform was needed, but rebuilding and restoration would require stability. The Fertile Crescent had been run over by marauders, the result of migrations caused by the Epic Drought. But among the new cultures coming into the region one nation had the leadership needed at that time.
The Amorites, a sheep-herding nomadic collective, probably of southeastern Central Asian origin, had migrated west along the southern coast from the Indian Ocean through to the deserts of southwest Asia (Saudi Arabian peninsula). Next they turned north and entered the Levant where they subsumed the local Afro-Asian tribes and established a new homeland, Amurru. They settled on a stretch from the Canaanite low lands to the Syrian mountains, bordering on the northwest corner of Sumer/Akkad. Following the Epic Drought, they expanded their territory by circling back into the Tigris-Euphrates region. They took what had been Sumer/Akkad and founded there a new capital city they named Babylon (1894 BCE), the Gate of God, and thus established the first Babylonian Empire.
Under the rule of Emperor Hammurabi (aka Hammurepi), a shrewd king who admired administration and a well-functioning bureaucracy, the Amorites restored order and built a stable and dynamic new society. Amorite Babylonia adopted the oral language of Akkad for civil uses, but it kept the written Sumerian language (Cuneiform) for the articulation of sacred myths, ritual ceremonies, astronomical recordings, and social laws. As the climate finally returned to normal, Hammurabi was able to address economic, social, familial and criminal matters. The king established a secular Law Code absent religious dictums. It was primarily designed to restore economic stability addressing the rules for contracts, appropriate wages and inheritances, and the processing of justice.
Although the clergy regarded his Laws to have been received from the Sun God (Shamash), they depicted him as its divine administrator. But Hammurabi was uncomfortable with a reliance on the Sumer/Akkad Gods. He was suspicious of the power their clergy had exerted over past kings, and the control they had imposed on the economic management of the city-states prior to the Epic Drought.
Particularly aggravating to him was the pivotal Gilgamesh myth, which appeared to be insulting to his Amorite ancestors. He may have viewed the primitive and wild characterization of Enkidu as elitist because of its depiction of “eastern people” as uncivilized. The old clergy seeking to reassure him that they had reformed, and could be trusted, submitted a sequel to the original epic to offer a clarification about immortality. Again they turned to a demigod character, but this time their hero was a wise seer, not a king like Gilgamesh. Adapa, the likeable mortal son of the compassionate Water God Enki, they proposed, had brought the creative arts to Sumer from the “eastern paradise” (Dilmun). The tale credited the cultures to the east as the source of beauty and talent received from the gods.
This analogy, showing that the priests acknowledged the “eastern people” as an advanced culture, may have been intended as an apology to the Amorites. However, by the time of this writing the Epic Drought had dried the Saraswati River forcing the glorious Harappan culture to abandon its home. Nevertheless, the myth showed respect for the superior legacy of the original Indus civilization.
At the same time, to the north of Amorite Babylonia, seers of Arya tribes were proposing that they could attain immortality. Concerned about this trend, the former clergy of Sumer/Akkad, having banned the old kings from achieving immortality, had to assure the new authorities that they were not eyeing that lofty goal for themselves. Through the story of Adapa, the once mighty priests of Mesopotamia now attempted to assuage the suspicions of the Amorite Babylonian King.
Once when Adapa took out his fishing boat, the South Wind tried to overturn it. In defending himself he broke the wing of the Wind Goddess, Ninlil, the consort of Enlil. For this crime he was called to account before the God of Heaven, Anum. Preparing him for his hearing his father, the God of Water, Enki, advised him to be truly sincere in his apology and also warned him that if he was served any food, not to eat it, for it might be the Food of Death. After speaking with Adapa in person and being truly impressed by his humility, the God of Heaven instead offered him the Meal of Immortality. However, following his father’s advice, Adapa declined to eat and humbly passed on his chance for everlasting life, for it could have been poison.34
The myth was a warning. Be careful what you ask for. Immortality could be a poison. Chasing it was an illusion that could make a person lose their mind. This point of view was meant to assure the Babylonians that the seers were aware of this trap. But the myth could not dissuade the new government from holding the old gods and their clergy responsible for their epic failure to protect the world from cataclysmic drought. Hammurabi wanted fundamental religious reform and a new contract between religion and his imperial rule. He wanted a new Babylonian clergy and called upon it to clean house.
The Babylonian religion would retire the aloof God of Heaven (Anum) and have him pass the torch to a successor: the new chief God of the Gods, Marduk, the patron God of Babylon City. With this move the Amorite Babylonians asserted their religious dominance over other city-states represented by the Annunaki, including the gods of the past. With Marduk raised to Supreme God status they designed a new divine infrastructure that mirrored the dominance of Babylonian rule from the Mediterranean to the Zagros.
The new Babylonian religion issued a revised Creation Story recorded in the Seven Tablets of Creation, the Enuma Elis:
In it the Babylonians declared the Lord God (Akk. Bel) of Babylon to be Marduk and ordered him to defeat the primordial Sumerian deities who were responsible for withholding water
from the world. The Sumerian account featured two kinds of giant water dragon-snakes (Nagas), the male Fresh Waters (Abzu) and the female Salt Waters (Tiamat). These "Titan Beasts” had produced many of the immortal gods. But, according to the tablets, Abzu complained that their offspring made too much noise, and became agitated. After obsessing about it, he finally decided to kill the children. The gods, learning of his intention, plotted to rid themselves of their titanic parents.35 The God of Sweet Waters (Sum. Enki; Akk. Ea) captured the wild Abzu and put him to sleep in an underworld lair. Thus he created still waters that forever more would be accessible through wells and lakes allowing living things to quench their thirst.
In this edition, the victorious God of Sweet Waters was also the father of Marduk, the god of Babylon. Thereafter the Assembly of Gods (Annunaki) called upon Marduk to slay the wild dragon Goddess of the Salt Waters (Tiamat). She was responsible for sinking boats by causing deadly destructive storms and high ocean waves. She symbolized the unbridled, wild state of Nature.
Her monstrous visage scared off even the God of Heaven (Anum) when he sought to retrieve from her the stolen Tablet of Destiny (Sum. Dup Shimati)—upon which the destiny of the world was inscribed. Whoever held the tablet controlled the fate of existence. The Sky God Enlil would consult it before dispensing the predetermined destinies. But it had fallen into the hands of Tiamat who had sent a giant bird, Imdugud, to steal it.
Marduk armed himself with twelve weapons he would use to repel her army led by twelve ominous creatures, symbolizing the twelve months of the year. Riding his sun-chariot, he brought the light of wisdom to battle against her and her demons. Although the gods were immortal, they feared one unspeakable caveat—the power of one god to harm or kill another. The Enuma Elis now invoked this power by declaring that Marduk killed Tiamat and retrieved the Tablet of Destiny. He also captured and disarmed the twelve creatures at her beck and call, thus making the world safe year-round.