Man has searched for that God-withheld immortality ever since. But throughout the millennia, it has gone unnoticed that while in respect to the Tree of Knowing Yahweh Elohim stated that having eaten of it "The Adam has become as one of us"—no such "as one of us" is asserted in respect to "living forever" from the fruit of the Tree of Life.
Was it because "Immortality," dangled before Mankind as a distinctive attribute of the gods, was no more than a Grand Illusion?
If ever did someone try to find out, it was Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, son of Ninsun and Lugalbanda.
As enchanting and revealing the tales of Enmerkar and Lugalbanda are, without doubt the post-Diluvial Lugal and demigod of whom we have the longest and most detailed records is Gilgamesh, who reigned in Uruk from circa 2750 to circa 2600 B.C. The long Epic of Gilgamesh relates his search for immortality—because "two-thirds of him is god, one-third of him is human," and he believed that therefore he should not "peer over the wall" as a mortal.
The genealogical lineage that made him more than a demigod, more than a fifty-fifty god, was impressive. His father, Lugalbanda, both king and high priest in Uruk, was a son of Inanna and was endowed with the "divine" determinative. His mother, Nin.sun (= 'Lady Who Irrigates') was a daughter of the great deities Ninurta and his spouse Ba'u, which explains why Gilgamesh was described as being of the "essence of Ninurta" (Enid's foremost son). Bau herself was of no mean lineage: She was the youngest daughter of Anu.
That was not the whole pedigree of Gilgamesh. He was born in the presence and under the aegis of the god Utu (twin brother of Inanna and a grandson of Enlil)—an aspect that leads scholars to call Utu/Shamash the 'godfather' of Gilgamesh. And he was also "looked upon with favor" on the Enki'ite side, for his full theophoric name, Gish.bil.ga.mesh, linked him to dGibil, a son of Enki and the god of metal foundries.
According to a Hittite version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, he was "lofty, endowed with a super-human size"—attributes undoubtedly inherited not from the father ('King Shorty') but from the mother's side, for the mother of Ninsun, the goddess Bau, was true to her nickname Gula—plain and simple, 'The Big One'.
Bestowed with talents and prowess by several gods, tall, muscular, and shapely (Fig. 87), Gilgamesh was likened to a wild bull; bold and untamed in spirit, he constantly challenged the city's youths to wrestling matches (which he always won). "Unbridled in arrogance," he "left not a maiden alone." Finally the city's elders appealed to the gods to stop Gilgamesh when he started to demand 'first rights' with brides on their wedding night.
Responding, the gods fashioned in the steppe a wild man as a double of Gilgamesh—"Like Gilgamesh in build, though shorter in stature." Called Enki.du (= 'By Enki created'), his task was to shadow Gilgamesh and force him to change his ways. Discovering that they have on their hands an uncouth Primitive who knows not cooked food and befriends animals, the city's elders put him up outside of town with a harlot, to learn "the ways of Man." She also cleaned and clothed him, and made his hair in curls; when he finally entered town, he was a Gilgamesh duplicate!
Challenged to a wrestling match by an incredulous Gilgamesh, Enkidu wrestled him down and instilled humility in him; and the two became inseparable comrades.
Deprived of his haughtiness and losing his prowess, Gilgamesh began to ponder matters of aging, of life and death. "In my city man dies, oppressed is my heart; man perishes, heavy is my heart," Gilgamesh told his 'godfather' Utu; "Will I also peer over the wall, will I be fated thus?" he asked. The response he got from his mentor was not encouraging:
Why, Gilgamesh, do you rove about?
The Life that you seek, you shall not find!
When the gods created Mankind,
Death for Mankind they allotted;
Enduring Life they retained in their own keeping.
Figure 87
Live and enjoy life day by day, Utu/Shamash advised Gilgamesh; but a series of dreams and omens, including a crashed celestial object, convinced Gilgamesh that he could avoid a mortal's end were he to join the gods in their heavenly abode. Enkidu, he learnt, knew the way to the "Landing Place of the Anunnaki" in the Cedar Forest—a great platform with a launch tower, all built of colossal stone blocks, that served as the Earth-terminal for the Igigi and their shuttlecraft (see Fig. 60). It was a place from which he could be taken aloft by the Igigi; and Gilgamesh asked his mother for her advice and help. Told that "only the gods can scale heaven, only the gods live forever under the sun," and warned by Enkidu of the monster Huwawa who guards the place, Gilgamesh answered with words that resonate to this day:
As for Mankind, numbered are their days;
Whatever they achieve, is but the wind ...
Let me go there before you,
Let your mouth call out, "Advance! Fear not!"
And should I fall,
I shall have made me a name:
"Gilgamesh," they will say,
"against fierce Huwawa has fallen."
Realizing that Gilgamesh would not be deterred, Ninsun, his mother, appealed to Utu/Shamash to grant Gilgamesh extra protection. "Wise and ..versed in all knowledge," Ninsun was also practical. Taking Enkidu aside, she made him swear that he would bodily protect Gilgamesh. To assure his fidelity, she offered him a reward beyond anyone's dreams: A young goddess as wife. (The partly damaged lines, at the end of Tablet IV of the Epic, suggest that Ninsun had discussed with Aya, spouse of Utu/ Shamash, which one of their daughters the bride should be.)
Then Utu/Shamash himself gave Gilgamesh and Enkidu divine sandals that enabled them to reach the Cedar Mountain in a fraction of time, and off were the comrades on their Cedar Forest adventure.
Though no map has been found alongside the ancient text, there is no uncertainty regarding the comrades' destination: In the all of the
Near East—in the whole of Asia—there is only one Cedar Forest: In the mountains of what is now Lebanon; and it was there that the gods' "Landing Place" was located.
Reaching the mountain range, the comrades were awed by the sight of the majestic cedar trees and stopped for the night at the foot of the forest. But during the night Gilgamesh was awakened from his sleep by the shaking of the ground; he managed to glimpse a "sky chamber" lifting off. "The vision that Gilgamesh saw was wholly awesome":
The heavens shrieked, the earth boomed;
Though daylight was dawning, darkness came.
Lightning flashed, a flame shot up.
The clouds swelled, it rained death!
Then the glow vanished; the fire went out;
And all that had fallen was turned to ashes.
The sight and sounds of a rocketship launched was truly awesome; but as far as Gilgamesh was concerned, the night's events confirmed that they had reached the 'Landing Place' of the gods. (A Phoenician coin from a much later time still depicted the site with a rocket poised on its platform, Fig. 88.) At daybreak the comrades began to seek the entrance, careful to avoid "weapon-trees that kill." Enkidu found the
Figure 88
gate; but when he tried to open it, he was thrown back by an unseen force. For twelve days he lay paralyzed.
When he was able to move and speak again, he pleaded with Gilgamesh to give up the attempt to open the gate. But Gilgamesh had good news: While Enkidu was immobilized, he (Gilgamesh) had found a tunnel; it might lead them directly to the command center of the Anunnaki! He persuaded Enkidu that the tunnel was the best way in.
The entrance to the tunnel was blocked by overgrown trees and bushes, soil and rocks. As the comrades began to clear it all, "Huwawa heard the noise and became angry." The guardian of the place, Huwawa was as monstrous as Enkidu had described him: "Mighty, his teeth as the teeth of a dragon, his face the face of a lion, his coming like the onrush- ing of floodwaters." Most fearsome was his "radiant beam": Emanating from his forehead, "it devoured trees and bushes; none could escape its killing force ... As a terror to mortals has Enlil appointed him."
With no way to escape, the comrades suddenly
heard Utu/Shamash speak to them. Do not run to escape, he told them; instead, let Huwawa come near you, then throw dust in his face! Doing as advised, the comrades managed to immobilize Huwawa. Enkidu struck him, and the monster fell to the ground. Enkidu then "the monster put to death."
With "the way to the secret abode of the Anunnaki opened up," the comrades took time to relax and savor their victory. They stopped to rest by a stream; and Gilgamesh took off his clothes to bathe and refresh himself. Unbeknown to them, the goddess Inanna had been watching it all from her skychamber. Attracted by the king's outstanding physique, the ever-young Inanna made her desire clear as she addressed him:
Come, Gilgamesh, be thou my lover!
Grant me the fruit of thy love,
You be my man,
I shall be your woman!
Promising him a golden chariot, a magnificent palace, lordship over other kings and princes—Inanna was sure that she enticed Gilgamesh; but answering her, he pointed out that he had nothing to offer her, a goddess, in return; and as to the 'love' she promised—how long did her former lovers last? Listing five of them, Gilgamesh described how Inanna "as a shoe which pinches the foot of its owner" cast them off, one after the other, uncaring once their vigor ran out.
The rebuff enraged Inanna. Complaining to Anu, "Gilgamesh has insulted me!" she said, and asked him to let loose against Gilgamesh Gud.anna—the 'Bull of Anu' or the 'Bull of Heaven'—who roamed in the Cedar Mountain. And though warned by Anu that the beast's release will bring about seven years of famine, Inanna insisted that Anu let it loose.
Forgetting the tunnel and the Landing Place, Gilgamesh and Enkidu ran for their lives.
The magical sandals that Utu gave them enabled them "a distance of one month and fifteen days in three days to traverse." Gilgamesh rushed into the city to mobilize its fighters; Enkidu faced off the monster outside Uruk's walls. Each snort of the Bull of Heaven created a pit into which a hundred fighters fell. But as the Bull of Heaven turned around, Enkidu struck it from behind, and killed it.
Speechless at first, "Inanna to Anu raised a cry," demanding that the slayers of Huwawa and the Bull of Heaven be put on trial. An ancient artist depicted on a cylinder seal (Fig. 89) a gloating Enkidu with the
Figure 89
slain Bull of Heaven, and Inanna addressing Gilgamesh under the sign of the Winged Disc.
Deliberating, the gods' views differed. Having slain both Huwawa and the Bull of Heaven, let Enkidu and Gilgamesh both die, Anu said. Gilgamesh did no slaying, let only Enkidu die, Enlil said. The comrades were attacked by the monsters, so no one should die, Utu said. In the end, Gilgamesh was spared; Enkidu to toil in the Land of Mines was sentenced.
* * *
Still seething from the failed attempt at the Cedar Forest, Gilgamesh did not give up his quest to join the gods in their Celestial Abode. Apart from the Landing Place in the north there was the Spaceport, "where the gods ascend and descend." Focal point of new landing and takeoff facilities built by the Anunnaki to replace the earlier ones destroyed by the Deluge, the Spaceport was located in the sacred Fourth Region of Tilmun (= 'Place/Land of the Missiles') in the Sinai peninsula. The grand pattern incorporated the pre-Diluvial landing platform in the Lebanon mountains (A' on map, Fig. 90), required the building of the two great pyramids as guidance beacons in Egypt ('B' on map, Fig. 90), and established a new Mission Control Center ('C' on map, Fig. 90) at the place we call Jerusalem.
Tilmun was a zone forbidden to mortals; but Gilgamesh—"two- thirds of him divine"—figured he might be exempt from the prohibition;" after all, it was there that Utnapishtim/Ziusudra, he of Deluge fame, was taken to live! And so was a plan conceived by Gilgamesh for the second attempt to find Immortality. Loathe to see Enkidu gone, Gilgamesh had an idea: The Land of Mines was on the sailing way to Tilmun; let the gods allow him to go there by ship—and he will drop off Enkidu on the way. Once more Ninsun had to make appeals; once again, Utu gave grudging help.
And so it was that the comrades were still alive and together as their ship was passing through the narrow strait leading out of the Persian Gulf (as it is now called). At the narrows, on the shore, they noticed
a watchtower. A watchman, armed with a beam like Huwawa's, questioned them. Ill at ease, "Let us turn back!" Enkidu said. "On we go!" Gilgamesh said. A sudden wind, as though driven by the watchman's beam, tore the ship's sail and overturned the boat. In the still darkness of the depths, Gilgamesh saw Enkidu's floating body and dragged it ashore, hoping for a miracle. He sat by his comrade and mourned him day and night, until a worm came out of Enkidu's nostrils.
Alone, lost, and despondent, Gilgamesh at first roamed the wilderness aimlessly; "When I die, shall I not as Enkidu be?" he wondered. Then his self-confidence returned, and "to Utnapishtim, son of Ubar- Tutu, he took the road." Guided by the Sun—he kept going west. At night he prayed to Nannar/Sin, the Moon god, for guidance. One night he reaching a mountain pass; it was the habitat of desert lions, and Gilgamesh wrestled two of them down with his bare hands. He ate their flesh as raw meat, with their skins he clothed himself.
It was an omen that he will overcome all obstacles, Gilgamesh believed; it was also an episode of the epic that artists throughout the ancient world, the Americas included, liked to illustrate as they told the tale (Fig. 91).
Figure 91
* * *
Crossing that mountain range, Gilgamesh could see in the distance below a shimmering body of water. In the adjoining plain he could see a city "closed up about"—surrounded by a wall. It was a city "whose temple to Nannar/Sin was dedicated"—the city known from the Bible as Yeriho (= 'Moon city'), Jericho in English. He had reached, the text explains later, the Salt Sea (the 'Dead Sea' in current English, Yam Hamelah, 'The Sea of Salt', in the Bible).
Outside the city, "close by the low-lying sea," there was an inn, and Gilgamesh set his steps toward it. The Ale-Woman, Siduri, saw him coming and prepared a bowl of porridge; but as he came closer she was frightened, for he wore skins and his belly was shrunk. It took some time for her to believe his story that he was a famed king, looking for his long-living ancestor. "Now, ale-woman," Gilgamesh said, "which is the way to Utnapishtim?" It is a place beyond the Salt Sea, Siduri said, adding that
Never, O Gilgamesh, has there been a crossing!
From the Beginning of Days
none who came could cross the sea—
Only valiant Shamash crosses the sea!
Toilsome is the crossing,
desolate is the way thereto,
Barren are the Waters of Death
which it encloses.
How then, Gilgamesh, will you cross the sea?
With no answer, Gilgamesh remained silent. Then Siduri spoke up again. There is, after all, a way to cross the Sea of the Waters of Death: Utnapishtim has a boatman who comes across from time to time for supplies; Urshanabi is his name; go, let him see your face—he might take you across on a raft made of logs.
When the boatman, Urshanabi, arrived, he too (like the ale-woman earlier) found it difficult to believe Gilgamesh that he was once king of Uruk, and Gilgamesh had to tell him the whole tale of his search for immortality, the adventures at the Landing Place, the death of Enkidu, and his wanderings in the wilderness, ending with his encounter with the ale-woman, omitting nothing. "I ranged and wandered over all the lands, I traversed difficult mountains, I crossed all the seas," he said, so that "now I might come and behold Utnapishtim, whom they call The Faraway."
Finally persuaded, the boatman took him across and advised him to proceed in the direction of "the Great Sea, which is in the Faraway." But he had to make a turn when he reached two stone markers, go to a town (called Ulluyah in a Hittite rendering), and obtain there permission to continue to Mount Mashu.
Following the directions, but cutting short a stay in Ulluyah, Gilgamesh proceeded to Mount Mashu, only to discover that it was more than a mere mountain:
Rocket-men guard its gateway;
their terr
or is awesome, their glance is death.
Their glaring beam sweeps the mountains;
They watch over Shamash
as he ascends and descends.
"When Gilgamesh beheld them, with fear and terror was darkened his face"—and no wonder, judging by the way ancient illustrators depicted them (Fig. 92). The guards were just as surprised; as a Rocket- man^ beam swept its glare over Gilgamesh, with no apparent effect, he called to his fellow guard: 'He who approaches us, his body is the flesh of the gods! Two-thirds of him is god, one-third is human!'
"Why have you come here?" they challenged Gilgamesh, "the purpose of thy coming we need to learn." Regaining his composure, he approached them. "On account of Utnapishtim, my forefather, who joined the Assembly of the gods have I come, about Death and Life I wish to ask him," Gilgamesh answered.
"Never was there a mortal who could achieve that!" the Rocket-man said, telling him of Mount Mashu and the underground passageway to it. "The mountain's trail no one has traveled; for twelve leagues extends
its interior; dense is the darkness, light there is none!" But Gilgamesh was not dissuaded, and the Rocket-man "the gate of the mountain opened for him."
There Were Giants Upon the Earth Page 20