Gilgamesh

(West Asian mythology)

Semi-legendary King of Uruk and hero of the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic which was based on myths that had existed for centuries in Sumer. The fullest surviving text is the Assyrian one from the library of King Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, and therefore no older than the seventh century BC, at least a millennium later than composition.

Born of the union of a goddess and a man–possibly the sacral coupling of the ruler and the high priestess during the New Year Festival–Gilgamesh was said to be two-thirds divinity and one-third mortal. In the Sumerian fragment of the myth the haunting fear of death spurs the hero's exploits and one view holds that we have here an account of a funerary ritual connected with the death chamber excavated at Ur. The Akkadian epic portrays Gilgamesh as a tyrant, overbearing and prone to sexual misdemeanours. His people beseeched the gods for help, and on the steppe the mother goddess Aruru fashioned from spittle and clay a hairy, grass-eating, wild man called Enkidu. On hearing the news, Gilgamesh ordered a temple prostitute be sent to ensnare Enkidu who had never known sensual pleasures. She nurtured the wild man in civilized ways, then fired his ambition to topple Gilgamesh. But the fight ended with Enkidu's defeat and the start of a lifelong friendship between the heroes.

Together the friends began a series of adventures. They invaded the cedar forest of the fire-breathing giant Huwawa, or Humbaba, whom they killed with the assistance of fierce winds provided by the sun god Shamash. Next Ishtar offered her love to Gilgamesh, but was rejected with pointed remarks about her fickleness and inconstancy. The goddess, mad with rage, demanded of Anu that a bull of heaven ravage the earth. While great damage occurred, it was slain by the heroes. The wrath of the gods, however, had been excited, and Enlil obtained the death of Enkidu in punishment for their arrogance.

Overwhelmed by grief and stricken to the heart with the realization of mortality, Gilgamesh roamed the steppe. To find a means of personal salvation he finally resolved to consult his ancestor Utanapishtim, who had become immortal. At the edge of the sea that surrounded the world, Gilgamesh was accosted by Siduri, a manifestation of Ishtar. When she urged the mortal joys of the wine jug, he replied that he would not give up Enkidu for burial, but mourned him for seven days and nights till a worm fell from the corpse's nose. ‘The gods appointed death for man’, said Siduri, ‘and kept life for themselves.’ Yet the persistence of the hero forced ‘the celestial barmaid’ to reveal that Utanapishtim dwelt across the waters of death, a voyage he could only undertake with aid from the ferryman Ursanapi.

Gilgamesh found the ferryman, built a special boat, crossed the lethal waters, and came to ‘the mouth of the rivers’, the place which the gods had assigned to Utanapishtim and his wife for their eternal dwelling. Utanapishtim, the survivor of the deluge which had ‘returned all mankind to clay’, reminded Gilgamesh of his mortal third. The quest was hopeless: he could not resist sleep, let alone death. The only chance was a magic plant, ‘Never Grow Old’, which grew at the bottom of the sea. At great risk Gilgamesh fetched it from the deep and happily turned his steps to Uruk, but on his way home, while he slept by a water-hole, a serpent smelled the wonderful perfume of the leaves, stole up, and swallowed the lot. Immediately the snake gained the power to slough its skin. Gilgamesh awoke, saw his own fate as death, and wept in utter grief.

Another text relates how Gilgamesh assisted Inanna in felling a tree, guarded by a snake, a wind, and an eagle. From the sacred timber they made a magic drum and drumstick, which Gilgamesh accidentally let fall into the nether world. When Enkidu tried to recover them, he forgot to observe the special instructions given for his protection, and was trapped forever. Out of a hole, opened in the ground by Ea, the spirit of the dead hero issued ‘like a puff of wind’, and described ‘the house of dust’, where princes were servants and earthly rank offered no protection at all.

• Born: ca. 2700 B.C.
• Birthplace: Uruk, Babylonia (now Iraq)
• Died: ca. 2700 B.C.
• Best Known As: Sumerian king and hero of The Epic of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh is the central figure and hero of the Assyro-Babylonian myth The Epic of Gilgamesh, a story written on clay tablets that is considered to be the earliest known literary work. Gilgamesh was probably a real person who lived between 2,500 and 2,700 B.C., the fifth king in the First Dynasty of Uruk (modern-day Iraq). Fragments of the epic date from the second millennium B.C., and it's assumed the story was passed down orally, beginning a few hundred years after the death of Gilgamesh. The epic was lost until the middle of the 19th century, when tablets were discovered as part of the library of Nineveh's King Assurbanipal, who reigned in the 7th century B.C. The tablets found then are believed to be copies of 11 or 12 tablets recorded by a Babylonian named Sin-leqi-unninni around 1,200 B.C.

In the story, Gilgamesh has a series of adventures with his companion, Enkidu, who then dies, causing Gilgamesh to grieve and reflect on his own mortality. While Enkidu goes to the netherworld, Gilgamesh sets out to find the secret to immortality. After a visit with Utnapishtim, the only human granted immortality by the gods, Gilgamesh learns that he must appreciate life as a mortal and accept that he won't live forever. The tablets are significant as an archeological record, and the story is significant because of parallels found in the Bible (especially the story of the Great Flood) and because it touches on the universal themes of the meaning of life, the dual nature of humanity and the differences between the divine and the human.

n. Mythology.

The semidivine king of Erech, a city of southern Babylonia, and hero of an epic collection of mythic tales, one of which tells of a flood that covered the earth.

• Formed: 1972
• Disbanded: 1978
• Genres: Rock
• Representative Albums: "Arriving Twice," "Gilgamesh," "Another Fine Tune You've Got Me Into"

Biography

A quiet progressive rock outfit with strong jazz fusion leanings, Gilgamesh emerged from the fringes of the fertile and beloved "Canterbury scene" as sort of an astute kid brother to Hatfield and the North. Amanda Parsons also contributed crystalline backing vocals to both groups. With Gilgamesh, keyboardist Alan Gowen attempted to erase the division between composed and improvised music, placing emphasis on texture and mood. The band broke up after one album, after which Gowen jumped between various Canterbury-related projects (Canterburians never stay in any one place too long).

In 1978 Gowen helped found National Health, then re-formed Gilgamesh for a reunion LP, Another Fine Tune You've Got Me Into. This second effort features the talents of legendary Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper. Gowen teamed with Hopper for several more albums, most notably Two Rainbows Daily. In 1982, Gowen succumbed to leukemia. National Health dedicated their third release to his memory. Entitled D.S. al Coda, it includes compositions by Gowen that were written but had not yet appeared on an album -- until the release of the Playtime CD by the Cuneiform label in 2001. ~ Peter Kurtz, All Music Guide

Arriving Twice Buy this CD

Another Fine Tune You've Got Me Into Buy this CD

Gilgamesh Buy this CD

For more information on Gilgamesh, visit Britannica.com.

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Humanity made the transition from tribal lifestyles to the more complex forms of social organization we call civilization along four great river basins-in China, India, Egypt, and the Middle East. The Middle Eastern basin, which runs along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now modern Iraq), hosted a series of sequentially related civilizations that together are referred to as Mesopotamia. It is the oldest of the four early sites of civilization, predating the high culture of Egypt by thousands of years.

The Mesopotamians wrote on clay tablets, many of which have survived to the present. This ancient literature contains, among other compositions, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Humankind's oldest recorded hero tale (dating from at least 2000 b.c.e.), the epic is built around Gilgamesh's quest for immortality and is full of dream accounts. A legendary king who ruled the city-state of Uruk around 2600 b.c.e., Gilgamesh was said to be the son of the goddess Ninsun and the king Lugalbanda. His divine heritage on his mother's side, however, did not exempt him from mortality.

The first part of the epic relates the events leading up to Gilgamesh's meeting with a man named Enkidu, beginning with Gilgamesh's dream predicting that he would find a friend whom he would "embrace as a wife." Because the dream message was expressed in symbols, Gilgamesh sought out his mother, who interpreted the dream for him. Enkidu, who began life as a naked wild man, is eventually tamed and becomes Gilgamesh's best friend. Together they travel off and slay Humbaba, the giant of the pine forest. On the way to the forest, Gilgamesh has what he feels may be an inauspicious dream, but Enkidu interprets it for him so that it indicates a favorable outcome to their quest.

Gilgamesh triumphs over Humbaba and is so attractive that the goddess of love herself, Ishtar, proposes that she and the young king become lovers. Gilgamesh responds by recounting the bad ends her partners have met and rejects her proposal. Ishtar is so upset that she persuades the Bull of Heaven to come down from the sky and punish Uruk. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, however, make short work of the bull.

Unfortunately, slaying the Bull of Heaven evokes the ire of the gods, who decide that one of the two friends must die as punishment. They choose Enkidu for this unpleasant fate, and he sickens and eventually dies. (Before falling ill, Enkidu has an omen dream in which he learns that he has been chosen to die.) Gilgamesh is distraught by the death of his best friend, but he also begins to consider his own mortality. In Mesopotamian thought, the gods constructed humans out of clay to be their servants on earth. Pragmatists, they did not bother to include an immortal soul as part of the package. What afterlife there was a pale shadow of earthly life, much like the Jewish Sheol or the early Greek Hades. Before he dies, Enkidu dreams about the other world, and offers the following description: There is the house whose people sit in darkness: dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns put away forever.…. Like other cultures that buried the dead in the ground, the Mesopotamians conceived of the otherworld as being a dark, dusty, unpleasant underworld.

With this frightful prospect before him, Gilgamesh resolves to set out on a quest for immortality. He has heard that the mortal man Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian equivalent of the Bible's Noah, was granted immortality by the gods. To discover how Utnapishtim obtained such a favor, Gilgamesh undertakes an arduous journey.

When he finally arrives, Utnapishtim relates how the gods, in a fit of anger, destroyed all of humankind in a great flood. Only the wise divinity Ea had the foresight to warn Utnapishtim, who built a great boat in which he and his family survived. The gods quickly realized the error of their ways, but only after the fact: Human beings "feed" the gods, and, without them, celestial beings will starve. Utnapishtim, however, was able to make the appropriate offerings, and the gods were able to eat Out of gratitude, they granted immortality to him and his wife.

As for Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim requires that, as a test to determine his worthiness for immortality, he stay awake for a week. Gilgamesh promptly fails the test and, instead, sleeps for a week. Good host that he is, however, Utnapishtim gives Gilgamesh a "consolation prize," namely, a plant with the powers of rejuvenation (the next best thing to immortality). Unfortunately, on the journey back a snake eats the plant, so Gilgamesh arrives home empty-handed.

As reflected in the Gilgamesh, dreams were highly regarded in ancient Mesopotamia as omens of the future. Dreams were also valued as a means by which the dreamer could penetrate other realities, as when Enkidu gets a glance into the afterlife during a dream. And, finally, dreams were utilized in the Gilgamesh as a literary device, foreshadowing events that had not yet occurred.

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