Once in Babylon

Around 2700 bc, there may have existed in Sumerian Uruk a ruler named Gilgamesh, who built a great wall around the city. But he could have been a myth, which may have helped him become a judge in the underworld. Whether lays about him were part of an oral tradition has been disputed; certain it is that some were written down in the late third millennium bc in cuneiform on clay tablets.

The history of how these and later tablets were excavated is long and fascinating, and can be readily gotten from The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated and edited by Benjamin R. Foster, (W.W. Norton, $10.95) and highly recommended. Here you will find the principal versions of the epic in sound, scholarly translations, duly introduced and annotated. Fascinating, too, as you’ll gather from the book, is the history of the poem itself, which exists, after the early Sumerian fragments, in the Babylonian-language “old version” of 1700 bc. From this derives the standard version, prepared in the seventh century bc for the marvelous library of the great king Ashurbanipal. There are later versions in Hittite and Hurrian; indeed, parts have been dug up in Mesopotamia, Syria, the Levant, and Anatolia. There is a reference to Gilgamesh even in the Dead Sea scrolls.

Remember, though, that sections of the story are not available in any version so far excavated, and that the languages in question are imperfectly known, so that even available words and phrases have been variously interpreted. There have been translations into many modern languages, often by established poets, and the epic has elicited much literary criticism. What, then, is this widespread and long-lived poem about?

Gilgamesh, strong and valiant, rules in Uruk, which he has fortified with a giant wall. He is, however, a tyrant, exhausting the young men in ceaseless sports, and deflowering brides on their wedding night. People’s complaints reach the gods, one of whom creates out of clay a companion to occupy Gilgamesh more constructively. This is the primitive giant Enkidu, naked and hairy, living on the steppes with fellow animals, and destroying the traps men set for them.

One day he scares the daylights out of a trapper, who then consults with Gilgamesh, himself a giant, one-third human and two-thirds divine, his mother being the wild cow-goddess Ninsun. She counsels him and interprets his dreams about Enkidu. Gilgamesh instructs the trapper to conduct Shamhat–a priestess-prostitute in the temple of Ishtar, goddess of love and war–to the drinking place of the animals, there to seduce and thus humanize Enkidu.

This happens, and after seven days of nonstop sex, Enkidu is shunned by the animals as no longer one of them. Shamhat now combs and clothes him, and induces him to come meet Gilgamesh. The two mighty ones fight. It is unclear who wins–perhaps it is a draw–but the pair become boon companions. It is an Achilles/Patroclus or Jonathan/David kind of relationship, and may well be homosexual.

One of their exploits is a trip to a distant cedar forest guarded by the god-appointed monster Humbaba, to bring back cedar wood for a great door. They fight and overcome the dread guardian, and though Gilgamesh would spare his life, Enkidu angrily kills him. Back in Uruk there are celebrations, and the goddess Ishtar, seeing Gilgamesh in his finery, becomes enamored and asks him to marry her. He is indignant and insults her, reproaching her with the sticky ends to which her six previous husbands have come. Furious, she prevails upon the chief god Anu to send down the Bull of Heaven to avenge her. The warrior friends kill the bull, and Enkidu even tosses the beast’s haunch at the goddess.

After the victory banquet, Enkidu learns in a dream that the gods will spare Gilgamesh, but punish him. He curses Shamhat, who lured him there; but Shamash, god of justice, invoking the wonderful friendship with Gilgamesh, gets him to bless her instead. In another dream, he sees the terrors of the underworld: the dead squatting in utter darkness. A god-decreed illness overtakes him; he dies, leaving the disconsolate Gilgamesh to bury and grieve for him.

Gilgamesh now finally understands and fears death; he dons lowly animal skins, and sets out in search of Utnapishtim, to whom the gods granted immortality, to learn his secret. The long, hard journey leads to the scorpion monsters, guardians of the tunnel to the underworld, the very passage the sun traverses as it journeys from sunset to sunrise. The scorpion monster would deny Gilgamesh passage, but his wife changes his mind. Still, the hero must negotiate the tunnel before the sun, which would burn him to a crisp.

In a heroic race, Gilgamesh beats the sun to it, and emerges in a magic garden whose fruits and vegetables are made of jewels. He arrives at a tavern at the end of the earth, kept by the (possibly) divine Siduri–although it is hard to know for what possible travelers. At first mistrustful, then trying to persuade Gilgamesh that immortality is for the gods alone, and he should desist and stick to eating, drinking, and merrymaking, she finally relents and directs him to Urshanabi, Utnapishtim’s boatman. (What need has that immortal of a boatman? Oh, well.) The boatman, after Gilgamesh smashes some mysterious stone charms of his, consents to ferry him across the dread Waters of Death. (Think Charon.) It is a difficult trip, necessitating even Gilgamesh’s clothing being converted into sails. Finally, they make it to the wharf where Utnapishtim lives. After not unjustifiably chiding him, the immortal tells Gilgamesh the story of the flood and his survival.

The details of the story largely coincide with those of the biblical flood. (The great British archaeologist Leonard Woolley demonstrated not only that these were two versions of the identical tale, but also that some such flood actually occurred.) Not having to use violence on Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh discovers that knowledge is of greater use than force. He learns how, after seven days of rain, Utnapishtim’s boat had landed on a mountain. Birds released confirmed the existence of terra firma. The man and his wife were granted eternal life, but far away from the rest of humanity.

To test Gilgamesh’s qualifications for immortality, Utnapishtim asks him to stay awake for seven days. Our hero fails the test and would be sent back empty-handed, but the sage’s wife pleads with her husband to grant the intrepid seeker a gift, and he directs Gilgamesh to the plant of rejuvenation growing on the sea bottom. Gilgamesh ties stones to his feet, dives and plucks the plant, but wants to take it home and first try it out on some old man. Urshanabi and he travel back, but at one camp, Gilgamesh takes a swim, leaving the plant on shore. A snake eats it, and slithers away rejuvenated, shedding its old skin. In one of the epic’s not-infrequent comic moments, Gilgamesh reflects on having done no good to himself, but a great deal to a reptile. Finally, he and the boatman reach Uruk, the beautifully laid out and grandly walled city, held up for the boatman’s admiration. So the story ends where it began.

What I have given here is its bare bones, minus much savory meat. The epic has become world famous; no less an artist than Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in a letter that he found it “tremendous . . . the greatest thing one can experience. Es geht mich an. [It concerns me.]” And it does concern all of us, as can be best ascertained from reading the two English versions by genuine poets.

Here is the trapper’s speech to Shamhat in David Ferry’s 1992 version (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $11):

And here is Stephen Mitchell’s 2004 version (Free Press, $24):

The topos of woman as seductress, sometimes as sacred prostitute and savior of society, has made history. She appears in the Bible as Judith of Bethulia, and eventually as the heroine of two great plays about Judith by Friedrich Hebbel and Jean Giraudoux. She is also depicted in many famous Renaissance and later paintings. A similar figure is the heroine of a once popular play by Maurice Maeterlinck, set to music (though unfinished) by Serge Rachmaninov.

John Simon writes about theater for Bloomberg News.