The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a story which was written down long before Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey, thereby making it arguably the oldest extant piece of literature in the world. If you want to know more of its composition, found as fragments on clay tablets lying buried for thousands of years around the Near-East, fragments that were gradually reassembled by Victorian nutters [read: Assyriologists] into something vaguely resembling a complete, continuous narrative, then I fully advise you to delve into the subject to learn more. I myself have sufficed with not one, but two different ‘Penguin Classics’ editions. The first, an older and shorter prose version, has more than half the length of the book taken up with a gentle ‘idiot’s guide’ to Gilgamesh [Bilgames] and his ancient world, and as an idiot myself I found it a generally quite helpful introduction. The second version is a tad more involved at introducing its subject, and is recommended for the slightly more hardcore fans of this – the world’s very first – written story.

                The tale is essentially one of bromance. Gilgamesh is king of Uruk, two-thirds god, a third mortal, and one complete randy bastard. Then enter the wild-man Enkidu who, after squaring off against Gilgamesh, quickly becomes his side-kick – before the two of them head off to cause havoc elsewhere in the world.  After killing Humbaba, a general horrifying thing in the forest, and a great magical bull thing too (sent by the pissed-off sex goddess Ishtar), the gods begin to get a bit fed up with Gilgamesh. As punishment they kill Enkidu, which really upsets our dashing protagonist. It’s like Top Gun all over again.* With such a tragedy deeply affecting him, Gilgamesh sets off to find immortality, at which point he meets Utnapishtim [Uta-napishti] the Faraway, a curious fellow who tells him a tale all about the great mythical flood (one which has a very similar plot to the Biblical tale of Noah and his Ark, including the animals and everything).  Having failed to achieve eternal life, Gilgamesh returns home to Uruk and inscribes the tale of his adventures on stone, before dying at last.

                For this review I had a look at two different Penguin editions; one slim and lean, the other a tad more thick and informative. As is generally the case with Penguin editions, the first version I sampled has any accuracy or scholarly pretences sacrificed in the name of readability, in my view a sacrifice worth making as far as a gentle introduction is concerned. Here we get one story roughly outlined, the characters and settings presented, and a speedy though firm introduction to the history of this remarkable text, all in a good and consistent English prose format. The epic, as presented here, is enjoyable to read and remarkably quick to assimilate, so I would heartily recommend it. A much easier-to-appreciate thing than its next oldest literary rival, the Iliad, at any rate. The second version, a much more modern edition, is laid out less like a prose story and more like an epic poem, with verses and line-numbers and everything. The sexy thing about this one, prepared by Andrew George, is that unlike most other epics which are divided into ‘books’, this one is divided according to tablets. A nice little constant reminder that this is a story set in stone. Also it makes no illusion about having a full, accurate translation of the original text, if such a thing exists; gaps (lacunae) appear in the text, with words and partial sentences added in square brackets to give a better sense of how the poem is supposed to operate.  

                One of my initial difficulties with this story was the unfamiliarity of the characters, landscape and themes that it deals with, but this leads onto one of the most interesting things I encountered in this book – the Story of the Flood. The first part of tablet eleven contains a story that may be rather familiar to anyone who has ever heard the myth of Noah’s Ark, and I know I’m not alone in seeing the parallels between it and this section of Gilgamesh, as it was one of the things that attracted Western scholarship to the Epic of Gilgamesh in the first place. After all, in our culture we are raised in this peculiar Judeo-Christian culture whether we like it or not, and even if one hadn’t read the Bible all the way from start to finish (as I would boast) then we at least know the rough story off by heart. Certain angry deities try to wipe out humanity with a world-encompassing flood, only for somebody to construct a giant boat and fill it with all the animal and human resources necessary to rebuild the world after the flood-waters have subsided. Even the sending out of birds, to check if it was safe to disembark, is here in this ancient Near-Eastern text. Utnapishtim is essentially a Mesopotamian Noah, and as a consequence is more interesting. The flood-narrative contained within Judeo-Christian mythology holds similarities with many other flood stories throughout the ancient world, so it is interesting to see it reflected so strikingly here. I’m sure much sweat, blood and ink has been expended on this subject since the 19^th Century, and I can almost say I’m curious to see some of what has been written about it. At the moment it seems clear that the flood-myth managed to spread far and wide in the ancient world, impregnating Mesopotamian and Judaic cultures as well as others.

                All in all though, the story of Gilgamash as a whole is rather an interesting thing.  We begin with this king of Uruk who’s a bit an arsehole, who develops as a character through his friendship with Enkidu and has a bit of a crisis after this same friend ends up dying. Seeking immortality, Gilgamesh is frustrated and goes back home, writing an account of his adventures which ultimately provide him with the only realistic way of achieving a semblance of immortality; through being remembered. That the words of this tale have survived to the Modern Era is a fitting testimony to the character and to the myth, neatly cyclical in its own little way. The strangely hotchpotch nature of the epic – more adequately reflected in the George edition – is just as interesting as the story, and the inclusion of other ancient Gilgamesh-related texts gives a more rounded impression of the history of these characters and their tale (much in the same way as the Song of my Cid, reviewed last month). However you end up experiencing this text, this thing, this phenomenon, make sure you do. It’s certainly one of the most interesting things I’ve been exposed to this year.

* Foot-gnote: The editor would like to apologise for the appearance of a pop-culture reference in this review. In all the years of ‘Artichoke Readings’, never has this mad old reader made such a statement, likening a concept to something that people may have actually heard of. We will endeavour to make sure this sort of thing never happens again.

Bibliomesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Version with an Introduction. N. K. Sandars (ed). Penguin: Reading. (1960).

The Epic of Gilgamesh:  The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. Translated by Andrew George. Penguin: St. Ives. (2000).