Although Gilgamesh was a Sumerian king, and five known Sumerian stories celebrated events of his career (Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven; the Death of Gilgamesh; Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish; Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living; Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Nether World),6 the Sumerians did not unify the material into a single narrative. Most of the elements in the later epic originated with the Sumerians, but their combination into the unified story necessitated their transformation. Enkidu, for example, was transformed from Gilgamesh’s loyal servant in the Sumerian account to his beloved equal and friend in the Babylonian. On the other hand, some elements in the Sumerian tradition were dropped from the Babylonian. The twelfth tablet found at Nineveh probably did not belong to the Babylonian version but contained the final part of another Sumerian Gilgamesh tale, “Gilgamesh and the uluppu-Tree.” The epic thus appears to have been a Babylonian creation inspired by the search for an answer to questions about the goal of human existence. The story seems to have been revised and augmented from time to time until it probably received its final form toward the end of the second millennium, when the story of the great Flood may have been incorporated (the eleventh tablet from Nineveh). This latest version, containing more than three thousand lines, some of them incompletely preserved, lacks crucial parts of the story that thus far have been unrecovered, but it also provides help in understanding earlier fragments that otherwise would defy interpretation. The strong ties of friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu provide the foundation for the Babylonian epic, upon which the vain quest for the immortality of eternal youth and the troubled questions about life’s goals are raised. This artistic unity and design were imposed on the material in Babylon.
The epic, as we know it from Assurbanipal’s library, concerns the two divine-human heroes and inseparable friends, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and the latter’s death, which is the critical event in the story. Enkidu’s fate is decided when he and Gilgamesh defeat and kill the monster Humbaba, and then kill the miraculous Bull of Heaven, capable of destroying three hundred men with a single snort of his fiery breath, which was afterward sent against them by the goddess, Ishtar. When the goddess, infuriated by the bull’s death, cursed Gilgamesh for this deed, Enkidu hurled the dead bull’s right thigh in her face with the taunt that he would gladly deal with her in the same way if he could. Thereafter the gods in council decree his death for reasons that were not accepted by all of them and remain obscure, and he dies. (The broken seventh tablet must have recorded the fact, since the eighth begins with Gilgamesh’s lament over his friend’s death.) That a demigod could die does not seem to have troubled the poet(s), and the conflict between the gods and their created superhuman beings may contain a clue, the significance of which eludes us, to the meaning of the epic. The biblical story of the Flood is introduced by a similar statement about demigods whose fate was sealed by the LORD. The rest of the epic tells how Gilgamesh searched in vain the world over to find an escape trom death. Each time he was offered an escape he was unable to appropriate it effectively and was finally forced to give up the quest and return to Uruk.
The story has been described as a revolt against death, ending on a “jeering, unhappy, and unsatisfying” note. Defensible as that description certainly is, it scarcely does justice to the broad sweep and dramatic power of the poem and should be abandoned. Other universally appealing images and themes in the story have become common to our literary heritage: love, friendship, and loyalty; the way, the mountain, and the sea; all seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible mystery of human life. Next to them the revolt against death loses some of its force. Beginning and ending with a view of “ramparted Uruk” the story seems to emphasize a man’s work as his glory and only hope for immortality. That hope may not have satisfied Gilgamesh, but with it he is forced to be content. Within that, framework of human achievement the poem contains exquisite observations on human life and conduct that gently mock the heroic quest for escape from death, which is accepted as man’s lot, his inevitable fate which should not be permitted to sour his joy in life. The following stanza is unsurpassed anywhere.
Gilgamesh, whither rovest thou?
The Life thou pursuest thou shalt not find.
When the gods created mankind,
Death for mankind they set aside,
Life in their own hands retaining.
Thou, Gilgamesh, let full be thy belly,
Make thou merry by day and by night.
Of each day make thou a feast of rejoicing,
Day and night dance thou and play!
Let thy garments be sparkling fresh,
Thy head be washed; bathe thou in water.
Pay heed to the little one that holds on to thy hand,
Let thy spouse delight in thy bosom!
For this is the task of mankind!
X, iii Old Babylonian Version,
tr. E. A. Speiser
The legend of Gilgamesh in its seventh-century form was first translated into English hexameters in 1927 by R. Campbell Thompson of Oxford, who did his “utmost to preserve an absolutely literal translation.”7 His critical edition of the text, published two years later, is still a standard work in English. In 1946, Alexander Heidel of Chicago, in an effort to show the relationship between ancient Hebrew and Mesopotamian ideas about death, the afterlife, and the great Flood, published a new translation and discussion of the epic, which remains an essential aid to the study of the material.8 The most recent English translations are the superb renderings of S. N. Kramer, who did the Sumerian texts, and E. A. Speiser, who did the Babylonian.9
Gilgamesh is not and should not be, however, the private preserve of scholars, and there have been laymen, sensitive to the power and charm of the epic, who relying on the work of specialists have introduced the story to a wider circle of readers. These men have sometimes been roundly condemned by the learned guardians of ancient lore, who pronounce their works of popularizing to be “painfully inadequate.” No one will deny that accurate texts and translations must perforce be prepared by experts, nor will anyone minimize the severe problems inherent in any work of translating, where the desired goal is not simply accurate rendering of words but authentic transmission of ideas. The so-called popularizes, at their best, seek to make available, for the world to enjoy, the ideas and artistic creations of the past that specialists have revealed; and who can doubt the worthiness of that purpose? Some of these popularizations are authentic, evocative, and worthy to be called artistic creations in their own right. Surely what a sensitive interpreter can do with an old story will not destroy the story but will give it a luminosity for which many yearn and are grateful. The Epic of Gilgamesh has inspired at least one novel by the same name, written by the young Swiss author Guido Bachmann, who heard in his own experience echoes of the ancient themes.
The first to attempt a free rendition of Gilgamesh in English was the professor of English, William E. Leonard. In collaboration with his friend, the German Egyptologist, Hermann Ranke, he “Englished” Ranke’s German translation of Gilgamesh into what he then called “a rendering in free rhythms.”10 The usefulness and beauty of that work were immediately apparent, and it was widely used by students of literature. The present rendering by Herbert Mason is properly called a verse narrative. It is a sensitive, authentic retelling of the old story, an attempt to convey the profound anguish Gilgamesh suffered after his constant companion and friend, Enkidu, died. The author makes no claim to present an accurate rendering of the cuneiform text. He knows the ancient story well and tells it in the way it has become memorable to him. His narrative has its own spellbinding power, evoking feelings and thoughts familiar to all who suffer the loss of loved companions.
Mason’s remarkable achievement is to offer this interpretation of Gilgamesh in a way that does no violence to the original, but rather concentrates its rays into an intense light on the central question about death. One who knows the ancient story is fascinated and moved by this account, which will also drive the novice to read
the scholarly versions with new understanding. This rendering answers the unasked, personal question, What does Gilgamesh mean to me? with penetrating insight into the riddle of human life; and it leaves one asking of the story the same question for himself. To require of Mason more than that would be ungrateful.
Albert Schott remarked in the preface to his German translation of Gilgamesh that wanting to plumb its meaning is like seeking to understand the world.11 We do not know what ancient tellers of this poignant tale intended. Authors like Herbert Mason help us find out.
Notes to Afterword
1 S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians, Chicago 1964, p. 45, 185.
2 Cf. W. G. Lambert, “The Historicity of Gilgamesh,” in Gilgamesh et sa légende, ed. Paul Garelli, Paris 1960, p. 50.
3 A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, Chicago 1964, p. 256.
4 A. L. Oppenheim, in J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Sear Eastern Texts (ANET) Princeton 1950, 3rd Ed. 1969, p 265 f.; Kramer, Op. cit., appendix E.
5 Cf. Kramer in P. Garelli, Op. cit., pp. 59–68.
6 Cf. Kramer, The Sumerians, pp. 185–205; also in ANET pp. 44–52.
7 The Epic of Gilgamish. A new translation from a collation of the cuneiform tablets in the British Museum rendered literally into English hexameters, London 1928.
8 The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels, Chicago.
9 In J. B. Pntchard, ANET.
10 Gilgamesh Epic of Old Babylonia, New York 1934.
11 A. Schott, Das Gilgamesh-Epos neu übersetzt and mit Anmerkungen versehen, rev. by W. von Soden, Stuttgart 1970 (Reclams Universalbibliothek 7235/35a).
Afterword to the Mariner Edition
My instinctive response to the story of Gilgamesh has always been to two of its principal themes: friendship and loss. For me, everything in the epic leads to and out of these experiences. The connection between them engaged me once to look back at my own life, at history, at reality divested of formal religious revelation, philosophical reflection, and academic knowledge. I was put by its story-power into a kind of pre-conscious, prelearned, pre-judgmental state. Two men, first fighting, then befriending, one facing death, the other the pain of loss, the survivor’s embarking on an impossible journey to find eternal life, only to lose what he was given to a serpent, was a relentlessly poignant, tragic story stripped bare of illusions and spiritual hope, yet in its hero’s defiance of death it revealed a nobility of soul inherent in our human condition.
The depth of loss, the resounding voice of grief, be- came a comfort to me and has remained so: an unexpected ancient companion to my own fragmented story. But this isn’t all that the tale is about. There’s the relationship of gods to humanity, the sacredness of the walled citadel to be maintained by the king, the politics of the elders, the social structuring, the position of women, the kindredness of animal and man and all of nature to humanity, nature’s animateness and plenitude, justice and injustice, the cross-vitalization between city and steppe, the boundaries between the lawful and the forbidden, the effect of all these on the two friends, and of course history.
One can adapt, as several authors have done, certain parts to the exclusion of other parts, emphasizing the grandly heroic as opposed to human vulnerability, for instance. Also, because of the presence of the flood story, so close in detail to the later biblical account but so different in spirit, one might regard this as a religious narrative centered on the quest for eternal life and on the quasi-prophetic figure of Utnapishtim, who was chosen with his wife to build the ark and with the selected animals to survive the divinely ordered devastation. In the ancient Near East I believe such a reading is cautiously justifiable, given that region’s abundant succession of cultures and assimilative power of myths and religious configurations. While I suggested a compassionate One, humanly hoped for beyond all the irresponsible, uncompassionate gods, my retelling was in no way theological in intent or spirit, but emphatically human in its depictions of aspirations and sufferings and in its naked, essential understanding of reality.
For me, friendship and loss formed the delicate yet enduring chain that linked together the various pearls presented episodically throughout the story. Hence my constant echoes of the one and repeated foreshadowings of the other.
As regards the role of personal experience in the retelling of such a story, I believe that Gilgamesh came to me out of a void I perceived early in my life. The power of myth was felt in its unexpected ambush of reality itself as I knew it. Its narrative form called for immediacy of response and simplicity of style. And though the passion to respond became coupled with the need to understand its meaning, the latter remained hidden within the former, the telling of which was paramount.
HERBERT MASON, DECEMBER 2002
About the Author
HERBERT MASON is the William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of History and Religious Thought at Boston University. He is also a directeur d’études and vice president of the Institut des Recherches, Louis Massignon, Paris. A noted poet, novelist, translator, and scholar, he holds a doctorate from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and literatures. He lives in Phillipston, Massachusetts.
Footnotes
* Spiritual father, ancestor in the apotropaic sense.
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* Knobs of bitumen set at the upper end of each punting pole, according to Babylonian custom. Cf. R. C. Thompson, ed.. The Epic of Gilgamesh (New York: Oxford University Press, 1930), p. 85.
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* See Alexander Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1949) and Samuel N. Kramer, Sumerian Mythology (Philadelphia, 1944).
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