by Ferry, David
the vermin eat the body of Enkidu.”
Then Gilgamesh cried woe and fell to the ground,
because of the things that Enkidu was telling.
iv
After a time he further questioned him
about the way it is among the dead.
“Have you seen down there the man who has no son?”
“I have seen the sonless man in the Nether World.”
“How is it with the man who has one son?”
“I have seen the man. He sits by the wall and weeps.”
“Have you seen the man down there who has two sons?”
“He sits on two bricks and has some bread to eat.”
“How is it with the man who has three sons?”
“He drinks from the waterskin his sons have brought.”
“Have you seen the man down there who has four sons?”
“His heart rejoices as the heart rejoices
of a farmer with four asses yoked to his cart.”
“How is it with the man who has five sons?”
“They treat him in the Nether World as if
he were a scribe of the court, dispenser of justice.”
“Have you seen down there the man who has six sons?”
“His heart rejoices as the heart rejoices
of one who drives his plow in a rich field.”
“How is it with the man with seven sons?”
“As if he were a companion of the gods
he sits upon a throne and listens to music.”
“Have you seen the man who fell from the mast and drowned?”
“I have seen the drowned man in the Nether World.”
“How is it with the man who suddenly died?”
“They bring pure water to him on his couch.”
“Have you seen in the Nether World the famous warrior,
he who fell on the battlefield in glory?”
“The grieving parents raise up the head of the son;
the mourning wife grieves at the couch of death.”
“And he whose corpse was thrown away unburied?”
“He wanders without rest through the world down there.”
“The one who goes to the Nether World without
leaving behind him any to mourn for him?”
“Garbage is what he eats in the Nether World.
No dog would eat the food he has to eat.”
NOTES
I should explain the constraints within which I have worked. I cannot read cuneiform and do not know the language, or languages, the Gilgamesh epic was written in. As my sources and authorities I have used three literal line-by-line translations, first and foremost “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” by E. A. Speiser, in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton University Press, 1969), and two more recent works, Gilgamesh, by John Gardner and John Maier (Vintage, 1985), and The Epic of Gilgamesh, by Maureen Gallery Kovacs (Stanford University Press, 1989). I have also consulted the excellent prose free version by N. K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin, 1972), based on Sumerian as well as Akkadian originals. I did not see the new translation by Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford World Classics, 1989), in time for my own work to be much affected by it. The new version by Robert Temple, He Who Saw Everything (Rider, 1991), is still more recent. I have consulted Jeffrey H. Tigay’s The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). I have also read the free-verse free version by Herbert Mason, Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative (Mentor, 1970). While I have tried to avoid borrowing the language of the scholarly translations, I have also tried to use as few expressions as possible which have no authority deriving from one or another of them. (I have pointed out in the notes a few places where I have borrowed an irresistibly telling word or phrase. No doubt there are others.)
Speiser remarks of “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World” (Tablet XII) that “contents and circumstantial evidence mark this tablet as an inorganic appendage to the epic proper.” Tablet XII is an Akkadian translation of part of a Sumerian poem and it does seem to me to be different in character from the main poem. To include it as an organic part of the main poem would cause a number of problems, the most obvious of which is that it would spoil the effect of Tablet XI’s conclusion, which returns to the language of the opening passage of the poem. I present it therefore as a separate poem, giving it the title conventionally assigned to the Sumerian poem.
There are many gaps in the tablets and therefore in the literal translations, and these gaps have provided both problems and opportunities for me. Tablet I is pretty full, so there is only one line (“Shadow of Darkness over the enemy field”) without any authority. Tablets VI and XI are also relatively full, so there are relatively few instances of unauthorized invention by me. In the account of the fight against Huwawa, Tablets IV and V, there are more such instances because there are lots of gaps. This is also true of the opening passages of Tablet IX. These are examples.
There are places where I have exploited scholarly disagreements. Some scholars think that Ishtar, in Tablet VI, turned Ishullanu into a mole; others think he was turned into a frog. I like both possibilities, so I turned the scholars into ancient gossips whose stories, as usual with gossips, don’t quite match. Again, this is an example.
There are also places where I have made decisions neither constrained to do so by gaps nor authorized by scholarly disagreements. I have sometimes used expressions in one tablet whose authority can be found only in another. For example, some warrant for my formulation “Two people, companions, they can prevail” can be found in the literal translations of Tablet IV, but I have used it a number of times elsewhere. I have also sometimes condensed somewhat, sometimes expanded a little, sometimes varied the material locally. For example, the literal accounts of Gilgamesh’s journey through the sun’s nighttime tunnel repeat the same lines over and over; I have invented variations of them, for narrative purposes and to avoid monotony.
Every translation or version of a work is an interpretation of it, because every choice of expression, every metrical decision, is an act of interpretation, and the “true original” is always unrecoverable, even for the most faithfully literal translation. This is all the more obviously the case when the “translator” is not working directly with the original language. So I do not want to make exaggerated claims about faithfulness. But my version tries to be as respectful of the professional scholarship as it is feasible to be.
There is one matter which might cause confusion for the reader who consults the Speiser translation while reading my version. The small Roman numerals between passages in Speiser refer to columns of the tablet in question. My small Roman numerals represent decisions by me about how best to dispose the episodes of the narrative.
The other constraint I have been working in terms of is the verse medium, iambic pentameter lines arranged in unrhymed couplets. My intention has been to obey the laws of this meter as strictly as I could. There are a few places where the line is stretched perhaps beyond its limit (“There is no withstanding the aura or power of the desire”); a few instances of lines with the predicted first syllable omitted (“utterly the name of Enkidu”); a few instances where—one sentence (or clause) ending in the middle of a line and a new one beginning—the space between them is counted as an unspoken syllable (“‘why should he die?’ Angry Enlil said”).
TABLET I
i. The ancient city of Uruk was situated on the Euphrates, in what is now southern Iraq. Gilgamesh was not actually its founder, but there was a historical Gilgamesh among its earliest Sumerian kings.
Anu is the god of the heavens; Ishtar is the goddess of love and war.
ii. Aruru is a birth goddess.
In my versification “Enkidu” is stressed most strongly on the first syllable, least strongly on the second.
The goddess of grain is Nisaba.
iii. “His face was as one estranged from what h
e knows.” Speiser has “His face was like that of a wayfarer from afar.” Gardner-Maier, Kovacs, and Sandars have similar expressions.
iv. I have condensed somewhat the harlot’s description here of the city and its pleasures.
Shamash is the sun god. Ea is the god of earth, water, the abyss. Enlil is the god of order, who presides over destinies, comparable perhaps to Zeus.
In Speiser and the other scholarly translations, Gilgamesh has another dream, which I have omitted. It is a dream of an ax but is otherwise similar to the dream of a meteor. Ninsun interprets the two dreams in exactly the same way.
TABLETS II AND III
My rendering here is based mainly on the Speiser translation of Old Babylonian passages. The Assyrian tablets are extremely fragmentary.
i. “She took him by the hand as a goddess might, / leading a worshipper into the temple precinct; / as if he was a child she held his hand.” I have taken advantage of alternative possible literal translations of the simile.
iii. “He turned his chest away.” I owe this phraseology to the Kovacs translation.
iv. The rendering of this passage follows the Kovacs translation more closely than the others.
v. An alternative name for Huwawa is Humbaba.
TABLETS IV AND V
Tablets IV and V are also fragmentary and the narrative sequence must be pieced together. In my rendering, the dreams occur on the journey of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to the Cedar Forest, and before they arrive there. It seems to me a reasonable arrangement of the narrative. I am relieved to find that this is also the sequence as given in Kovacs (though I had made my own decision before I read her translation). In Speiser, Gardner-Maier, and Sandars, the dreams occur after they have entered the Cedar Forest, though of course before they encounter Huwawa.
Because of the fragmentary condition of the tablets, as reflected in the scholarly translations, there is a good deal of room for local invention, omission, and condensation. For example, there were more dreams recounted on the tablets than I have tried to set forth in detail. The account of the fighting is similarly fragmentary, so there is a good deal of local invention in my rendering.
ii. Irnini is a name for Ishtar.
“Then followed confusions…” I have borrowed the useful term “confusions” from Sandars’s account, but have made more, and different, use of it than she does. The term is useful to help characterize the nature of the battle and of the emotions of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Perhaps it also suggests the condition of the original texts.
The wonderful names of the thirteen winds come from the Kovacs translation.
TABLET VI
This tablet, especially in the dialogues between Ishtar and Gilgamesh and between Ishtar and Anu, is less fragmentary than Tablets II–V. But there is necessarily more invention by me toward the end of the tablet, in the account of the battle with the Bull of Heaven and Gilgamesh’s triumphant speech after the battle.
i. “Tammuz the slain” is the Babylonian Adonis.
“Some say the goddess turned him into a frog … / some say into a mole…” I have taken advantage of scholarly disagreements here. Speiser and Sandars say mole; Gardner and Maier say frog, and Kovacs agrees that this may be so.
TABLET VII
The first section and the first five couplets of section ii are based on the literal translations of a Hittite tablet.
iv. Irkalla is a name for the Underworld.
“Etana was there…” Etana was an early king. Kovacs has the following note: “The inclusion of Etana in Enkidu’s premonition of the Netherworld must be because of some particular relevance of Etana’s fate to Enkidu’s situation. The fragments of the ‘Myth of Etana’ tell that Ishtar selected the young Etana to be king, and that he sought the magical ‘plant of birth’ for his barren wife. An eagle helped him by carrying him up to the heavens, but then fell back to earth.”
Relevant to Enkidu’s situation, yes, but once one has read Tablet XI, the relevance to Gilgamesh, failed seeker after renewed life, seems even more powerful.
Sumuqan, as mentioned in Tablet I, is the god of cattle.
TABLET VIII
This tablet is very fragmentary. There is a certain amount of local invention in my version, based on what the scholarly translations have put together.
TABLET IX
ii. This part of the original is very fragmentary.
iii. “Mashu” means “twin.”
“… shimmers across the surface of the mountain.” This phraseology derives from Speiser.
“Gilgamesh went to the entrance into the mountain…” From here to the end of the account of Gilgamesh’s journey through the tunnel there is quite a lot of local invention on my part, in this case not so much because of fragmentation as because in the literal translation the lines are extremely repetitious.
TABLET X
i. “The life of man is short. Only the gods / can live forever. Therefore put on new clothes, / a clean robe … Eat and drink your fill of the food and drink / men eat and drink. Let there be pleasure and dancing.” This passage, which is found only in an Old Babylonian tablet, means roughly what these lines say. But in dealing with it I have appropriated phrases from elsewhere in my own version of the poem. Such transactions between tablets occur also at other places in my treatment.
ii. “Gilgamesh raised his ax and drew out his dagger / and entered the island forest…” This episode is extremely fragmentary.
It is not clear exactly what the Stone Things and the Urnu-Snakes are.
v. “How long does a building stand before it falls?…” In this passage, Utnapishtim is speaking to Gilgamesh in proverbial language.
The Annunaki are the sons of Anu, gods who preside over one’s destiny. Mammetum is another name for Aruru, the birth goddess.
TABLET XI
i. Ninurta is the god of war, as noted in Tablet I.
Ea is god of the abyss, the underground sea, the Hermes or Mercury of these gods.
“… abundance will then rain down: / there will be plenty, a flood of bounty … tumbling loaves of fresh-baked morning bread; / grain will come showering in…” I have tried to compensate somewhat for the effect of certain untranslatable puns in the original. As the scholarly translators point out, the word for “bread,” for instance, puns on the word for “darkness,” the word for “wheat” on the word for “misfortune.” I have instead made wordplay with rain and flood words.
ii. Some scholars argue that Puzuramurri was the pilot of the boat and was not left behind. I have taken advantage of scholarly disagreement in order to read the passage with a meaner notion of the character of Utnapishtim.
iii. Adad is the storm god, the thunder-and-lightning god.
Gardner-Maier has the phrase “Brother could not see brother.”
Mount Nisir: the Mount Ararat of the biblical account of the Flood.
GILGAMESH, ENKIDU, AND THE NETHER WORLD
(TABLET XII)
My version of this poem is based on Speiser’s translation in Ancient Near Eastern Texts and on the translation by John Gardner and John Maier in their Gilgamesh; my version of the questions and answers in section iv is based on Samuel Noah Kramer’s translation of the corresponding lines in the Sumerian poem, in “Death and Nether World According to the Sumerian Literary Texts,” Iraq XX, 67, n. 16.
i. The Akkadian poem begins in the middle of the Sumerian poem of which it is a translation. The meaning of the reference to the Carpenter and his wife and daughter is not clear.
“Carry no staff or bow along with you, / or, startled up, the spirits will flutter around you.” I take “flutter” from Kramer’s translation of the Sumerian poem.
Ninazu is one of the gods of the Nether World. Ereshkigal is the Queen of the Nether World. Namtar and Ashak are her agents. Nergal is the King of the Nether World.
iv. “After a time he further questioned him, / about the way it is among the dead.” There is no authority for this couplet in the scholarly texts. The Akkadian poem is f
ragmentary at this point.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 1992 by David Ferry
Introduction copyright © 1991 by William L. Moran
All rights reserved
Published in 1992 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First paperback edition, 1993
Tablets I–V first appeared in TriQuarterly, a publication of Northwestern University, No. 83 (February 1992). Part of Tablet VI first appeared in Partisan Review, LIX, No. 2 (Spring 1992). Tablets VII–IX first appeared in Raritan: A Quarterly Review, XI, No. 4 (Spring 1992). Tablets X–XI first appeared in Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, at Boston University, Third Series, I, No. 3 (Fall 1991).
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