Exploring the Epics II - The Epic of Gilgamesh: new and ancient forms

An illustration of the epic - Hassan Nozadian

Bridging the gap between modernity and antiquity, folk epics provide us with origin stories for the world as we know it, vividly giving life to the histories of people long dead. In Exploring the Epics, Hanna Simojoki examines the notions of belonging, collectivity, and storytelling, as well as the forms and means by which these are expressed.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, known by the ancient Babylonians as He Who Saw the Deep, is thought to be the world’s oldest literary masterpiece. It was considered by Austrian poet Rilke to be ‘the epic of the fear of death’, treating with great compassion man’s longing for eternal life, and his fear of passing into nothingness. Yet it also provides the reassurance that contribution to the human community is its own kind of immortality, even more valuable than eternal life itself. It presents what is possibly the earliest version of the Deluge, or Great Flood myth, which questions whether the world can ever be restored to a state of perfection, and explores the relationship between human and divine. 

Gilgamesh himself was likely to have been a real king of the city of Uruk, in modern day Iran, who was only later mythologised: the Babylonian King List places his reign somewhere around 2750BC. The first composition of oral poems about his life began around 2300-200BC, a few centuries after his reign, allowing his life to pass into legend. The oldest written Gilgamesh poem is in Sumerian, dated at around 2150BC, but the old Babylonion version of the epic, written in Akaddian with the title Surpassing All Other Kings, was not written until c.1700BC. Finally, the standard version most commonly read today, known as He Who Saw the Deep, emerged sometime between 1300-1100BC. 

Although like most epics, Gilgamesh started life as an oral tale, the standard version was likely composed by a single author, a scholar and exorcist named Sîn-leqi-unninni (‘The Moon God Accepts my Prayer!’). The history of and relationship between the Sumerian and Akkadian languages is long and complex, but a simplified explanation goes as follows: Akkadian was the lingua franca in Babylonia and the Near East in the 2nd millennium BC, whereas Sumerian was primarily a literary language, used in the scribal schools and tablet houses. Around the time Surpassing All Other Kings was written, Akkadian as a literary language was looked down on by scholars and scribes who worked almost exclusively in Sumerian, but by the time He Who Saw the Deep was composed, its use for both common and higher cultural purposes was widely accepted.  

The story itself follows the life of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, as he grows from a corrupt and cruel young king into a wise and well-loved ruler. The gods see how he mistreats his people, and give him a companion named Enkidu, a wild man brought up by animals. Together, they go on multiple, often ill-advised quests, until Enkidu is killed by the gods to punish Gilgamesh for romantically rejecting the goddess Ishtar, who had fallen in love with him. In despair, he decides to journey to the end of the world to find the only survivor of the great Deluge, Uta-napishti (‘He Who Saw Life’), hoping to learn the secret to eternal life. Despite his inevitable discovery that eternal life is unattainable, Gilgamesh learns from Uta-napishti how to be wise, and returns a better king, restoring Uruk to an antediluvian (pre-flood) state, reinstating the proper worship of the gods, and finally learning to be content with his contribution to the immortal human community.  

As a tale, Gilgamesh deals with the ancient past – ancient to us, certainly, but also to the contemporary readers and listeners, for whom the idea of an antediluvian world would have been as shadowy and distant as it is today. One of the markers of this is the active involvement of the gods in the lives of humans, an almost ubiquitous indicator that a tale is set in a mythical pre-history. However, it is also simply true that the text was written a long time ago. The standard epic was written around 1500 years after the possible reign of Gilgamesh, and the modern reader is separated from the time of composition by a further three millennia. The world it portrays is unrecognisable by modern standards (although the complex and thorny geopolitics of the region it portrays are perhaps less unfamiliar). Despite the fact that the process of oral development followed by the evolution and codification of a standard written text is similar to that of the Kalevala, which we explored in the previous article, its much greater age means that unlike the Kalevala, it is a text which requires reconstructing in order to be read.  

The modern rediscovery of Gilgamesh began in the 1800s, when English archaeologists first discovered fragments of cuneiform tablets in Nineveh. Since then, archaeologists and scholars of Assyriology have worked to discover more fragments, piece them together, translate them, and create as full a reconstruction of the ancient epic as possible. Over the last 20 years, enough fragments have been discovered to merit an entirely new version. However, the text remains far from finished: in the most recent English translation, many lines remain only partially reconstructed, or even missing completely. Although translators are often able to predict with high accuracy the content of a missing line or line fragment, it is as yet impossible to know in its entirety the epic as it was first read 3000 years ago.  

The ancient Assyrian King Shulgi (2094-2047BC), on the opening of a new tablet house, declared: ‘For all eternity the Tablet House is never to change, for all eternity the House of Learning is never to cease functioning.’ Although that particular tablet house has been in ruins for millennia, the spirit of his decree has endured. As Gilgamesh and many other ancient texts rise from the obscurity of the distant past, growing steadily before our collective eyes, so too is the ideal of the Tablet House resurrected and given new life. Though the world into which it has reappeared has changed beyond recognition, humanity itself has not, and the worries and fears, strengths and weaknesses of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, are as potent and familiar today as they were 3000 years ago.

An example of the Epic of Gilgamesh being sung: https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F1-ex09YaTOQ&data=05%7C01%7Chs795%40cam.ac.uk%7Cc11116dcae5a47d4e14508db1cbc02a4%7C49a50445bdfa4b79ade3547b4f3986e9%7C1%7C0%7C638135366037111080%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=TnoXSAtTa1I8PViM5NvWJKQz2frJkOhtyZ8sFAHK7lw%3D&reserved=0