Gilgamesh - of him who knew the most of all men know

This blog documents my reading of what appear to me to be the classics of literature, both of my own (Western) culture and of other cultures with which I would like to become more familiar. I’m not a specialist, a critic, or a literary theorist. I am interested in this project from a purely personal point of view. I expect it to take a long time. I want to write about what I am reading to focus my mind and force me to take stock of what has been written. You, my dear reader, are currently a figment of my imagination, and in that imagination I invite you to partake of the same literature and to share with me your interpretations.

To shape my reading, I have reviewed various lists of “classics” and they are, of course, chock full of amazing works. I’ve adopted the relatively simple approach of trying to read in chronological order, which has the advantage of each work building on the previous work. The disadvantage – major, at times, I can’t help feeling – is that the distant past is extremely foreign and you start off quite at sea, reading about things in very unfamiliar idioms in equally unfamiliar locales.

Take Gilgamesh. By all accounts this is the first piece of literature that we possess, written in ancient Sumeria and then adapted by a Babylonian scribe. But it doesn’t read like the first work of literature. It reminds you forcibly of coming in on a conversation halfway through – or listening to a conversation in a foreign language about some object, the name of which you are unable to translate.

For example, one part of the story reads as follows (all quotes from the rendition by David Ferry):

“There was an ancient city, Shuruppak –
You know of it – most fortunate of cities,
God-favoured, on the banks of the Euphrates
The gods in heaven decided in their council
To bring the flood down on the fortunate city.
…
Anu was there, the councillor Enlil,
Nunurta of the Silence, and there also
Was the god Ennugi, monitor of canals
And there was Ea, cleverest of the gods.” (Tablet XI:i)

At which point I am thinking – Shuruppak? Anu? Enlil? Ninurta of the Silence? Ennugi? Ea? And also – there’s a god of canals? O Wikipedia, come to my rescue! And then - wait, do I have to become a Sumerian expert to read this?

So the first thing to get over is the feeling that there’s just no way you can understand what’s happening in this story. That’s probably true to a certain extent, but in order to progress, one must take it on faith that appreciating the ancient classics is possible.

And actually having taken that first doozy of a step, Gilgamesh seems to me to be a wonderful introduction.

Gilgamesh is the story:

“of him who knew the most of all men know;
who made the journey; heartbroken; reconciled;

who knew the way things were before the Flood,
the secret things, the mystery; who went

to the end of the earth, and over; who returned,
and wrote the story on a tablet of stone.” (Tablet I:i)

In other words, it is the story of life and death. The basic plot is that for sorrow of the death of his friend Enkidu, and for fear of his own death Gilgamesh – “two-thirds a God, but one third mortal and grieving in his heart” (Tablet X:i) – seeks immortality. He braves many dangers to come at last to the only survivors of the Great Flood, Utnapishtim, a man who was warned by the god Ea and built an ark, and his wife. They know the secret of immortality. They give it to him but, while asleep, he loses it to a snake. He laments:

“I descended into the waters to find the plant [which gives immortal life]

and what I found was a sign to
abandon the journey and what it was I sought for.” (Tablet XI:viii)

He returns – mortal like us all – to his kingdom Uruk, and demands that his ferryman study it, its walls and brickwork:

“Three leagues and the temple precinct of Ishtar
Measure Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh” (Tablet XI:ix)

Uruk then is his immortality.

So the first piece of literature we have is the story of a man becoming a man: at first wonderful, strong, magical but very wild, he is tamed and civilised by making a friend. Ironically this friend is the wild man Enkidu, who in his turn is civilised by the temple prostitute Shamhat. Together Gilgamesh and Enkidu achieve many things and their exploits are the stuff of legend. But Enkidu sickens and dies, and Gilgamesh grieves, and is fearful, and strikes out, and even achieves more great things, and eventually emerges as man – one who knows his own place and who sees clearly how the world will judge him.

What an amazing little volume this is. It is both touching and lovely – and after 4,000 years we can still recognise our own longings in the story of Gilgamesh.

You may wish to look at another review of this book from Ploughshares magazine.
I also note that there is a new book - The Buried Book, by David Damrosch - reviewing how the Gilgamesh epic was preserved. It was reviewed in the Washington Post and also in the New York Times.