Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (22 page)

The city of Uruk and Inanna play central roles in the most enduring work of Mesopotamian literature, an epic poem called
Gilgamesh
.

Who was mythology’s first superhero?

Kids today, as always, grow up in a world saturated with superheroes. Comic books, movies, cartoons, and video games all provide a steady diet of Superman, Spider-Man, Hulk, and a host of heroes—some old, some new. With supernatural powers that allow them to defeat evil and danger, these superheroes are also almost always tempered by some flaw, some bit of humanity that hints at the weakness and faults that lie within every mortal.

The first such character in literary history is probably the hero—or antihero—of
Gilgamesh
, which is widely considered the oldest epic poem in world literature. Its central character, a semidivine king named Gilgamesh, who possesses unusual powers and an oversized ego to go with them, is arguably the world’s first superhero. Model for many successive flawed heroes, Gilgamesh is the man who seemingly has it all, but sets off on a series of quests, seeking to become more noble, or enlightened—or immortal—in the process.

A powerful king of Uruk, Gilgamesh claims that he is two-thirds god and one-third man. A perfect physical specimen, a skilled athlete and sex machine, Gilgamesh forces the young men of his city to work building the walls of the city and routinely rapes all the young maidens in Uruk, a tradition that continued into European feudal history as the
droit du seigneur
(“the right of the lord”). Worn out by his demands, the people of Uruk pray for help, and the gods fashion a creature named Enkidu—a mythical prototype for Frankenstein, the Golem, and other mythical monsters—to challenge Gilgamesh. Covered in shaggy hair, Enkidu is more beast than man, eating and drinking with the gazelles and cattle.

A young hunter sees Enkidu in the woods and tells his father about this wild man. His father says they must tell King Gilgamesh about him. Instead of going to fight the man-beast, Gilgamesh enlists the aid of Shamhat, a prostitute from the temple of Ishtar, to do the work of taming Enkidu.

Shamhat is no ordinary “streetwalker.” In Stephen Mitchell’s description in his modern-English translation of
Gilgamesh
, “She is a priestess of Ishtar, the goddess of love, and as a kind of reverse nun, had dedicated her life to what the Babylonians considered the sacred mystery of sexual union…. She has become an incarnation of the goddess, and with her own body reenacts the cosmic marriage…. She is a vessel for the force that moves the stars.”

Shamhat eagerly and provocatively introduces this savage man to the arts of lovemaking. After seven days (!) of fairly nonstop and wild sex, Enkidu is tamed—all that sex has civilized him. As Stephen Mitchell translates the poem, “He knew things now that an animal can’t know.”

Told that Gilgamesh is sleeping with all the young maidens before they are married, Enkidu is outraged and sets off to challenge the much-reviled king. The two wrestle, but then realize that they are meant to be friends—some authorities suggest that their friendship, like that of Achilles and Patroclus of the
Iliad
and of the biblical David and Jonathan, may be homosexual. They join forces to fight the giant of the pine forest, a fearful creature named Humbaba. With the help of the gods, Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the forest monster, decapitate him, and put his head on a raft that floats back to the city.

Back home, the freshly bathed and robed Gilgamesh catches the eye of the love goddess Ishtar (Inanna), who wants this hunky hero for a lover. But Gilgamesh is all too aware of the unfortunate fates that have befallen most of Ishtar’s other lovers. He turns her down, politely at first, but later calling her an “old fat whore.”

It’s not nice to call the love goddess names like that. In a “woman scorned” rage, Ishtar demands that her father, Anu, destroy Gilgamesh. So Anu sends Inanna back down to Uruk with the Bull of Heaven. The bull roars, and the earth opens, swallowing hundreds of Uruk’s young men. When the divine bull roars a second time, hundreds more fall into the chasm, including Enkidu. But Enkidu grabs the bull by the horns—literally—and tells Gilgamesh to kill it with his sword. Gilgamesh kills the divine Bull of Heaven, and the two friends ride in triumph through the streets of Uruk.

In a series of dream visions, Enkidu foresees his own death, which comes after he falls ill and suffers for twelve days. Distraught over the loss of his friend, and obsessed by his own fear of death, Gilgamesh sets off in search of the secret of immortality. After more adventures, he meets his distant ancestor, Utnapishtim, who, with his wife, had been the only survivor of a great flood, and is now immortal. He reveals to Gilgamesh the secret of a plant that grows underwater and gives eternal life. Gilgamesh finds the magical plant and retrieves it, but sets it down while he bathes. Drawn by its scent, a serpent devours it and is rejuvenated—a mythic explanation for why the serpent sheds its skin.

Gilgamesh realizes that immortality is not to be his, except in posterity through the achievement of the great city walls he has built.

The poem
Gilgamesh
was unknown until it was discovered in the mid-nineteenth century. It was unearthed in the temple library and palace ruins in Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire, which had taken control of most of Mesopotamia. Based in the northern valley of the Tigris River, the Assyrians were powerful warriors who came to dominate the Mesopotamian area in the ninth century BCE. Their military innovations included mail armor, armored charioteers, and the earliest use of siege warfare. They soon conquered most of the modern Middle East, dominated Babylon, and even subdued Egypt (in 669 BCE). This was the temple of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE), last great king of the Assyrians, who were ultimately defeated by an alliance of their enemies. Nineveh and another great Assyrian city, Nimrud, were destroyed in 612 BCE.

Approximately three thousand lines long, written on twelve tablets—some of them only found as fragments—the poem may have been composed in southern Mesopotamia before 2000 BCE. Fragments of copies found elsewhere in Syria and Turkey seem to show that this text was popular throughout the ancient Middle East, and was probably used by student scribes who were learning to write, just as typing out the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog” was once used to test typewriters and teach keyboard technique to typists. (Why? The sentence contains every letter in the alphabet!)

Following the discovery of the tablets, in 1872, George Smith delivered a paper before the London Society of Biblical Archaeology which included a partial translation of the cuneiform texts, along with an analysis of several episodes in the
Gilgamesh
epic, especially its flood narrative. The material rocked the world of biblical scholarship, suggesting that the story of Noah and the flood, as recorded in Genesis, might have been “borrowed” from this earlier—and worse, “pagan”—source.

Was the
Gilgamesha work of “faction”?

The Gilgamesh story has it all. Sex, love, monsters, whores, friendship, battles, more sex, more battles, the search for immortality—and, finally, disillusioning truth. Although it is filled with Mesopotamian mythology, the Gilgamesh epic may also be based on some misty history.

The notion that myths are based in real events (“euhemerism”) is an old idea. But the story of Gilgamesh may be one of the earliest examples of that possibility. Here are a few reasons why:

The character of Gilgamesh was apparently based on a real king who ruled the city-state of Uruk around 2600 BCE.


 


The Sumerian King Lists, discovered among the tablets in Nineveh, record him as the fifth ruler in Uruk’s First Dynasty.


 


He was known as the builder of the wall of Uruk; his mother was said to be the goddess Ninsun, and his real father was, according to the King Lists, a high priest.


 

Then again, harsh facts do intrude on the legend. Although the poem credits Gilgamesh with building Uruk’s walls, these walls actually predate his lifetime by at least one thousand years, according to archaeological evidence. That means Gilgamesh may have also been the first politician given credit for something he hadn’t actually done. Isn’t that novel!

Who came first, Gilgamesh or Noah?

Apart from the significance of
Gilgamesh
as one of humanity’s first works of literature, one aspect of this epic has caused great controversy since its translation into English: its inclusion of a flood story that is remarkably similar to the biblical story of Noah.

During his adventures, Gilgamesh goes to visit his ancestor Utnapishtim, who possesses the secret of immortality, given to him by the gods. In
Gilgamesh
, the gods are annoyed by the humans and their growing numbers and all the noise they make, so they decide to send a flood to destroy humanity. The water god Enki is forbidden to reveal this plan to humans, but he realizes that if there are no humans, there will be no sacrifices to the gods and no people to do all the work. Enki cleverly reveals the plan of the coming flood to Utnapishtim, and instructs him to build a boat and fill it with the seeds of all living things. After a storm that lasts six days and seven nights, the boat comes to rest on a mountaintop and, like the biblical Noah, Utnapishtim releases birds to see if there is any dry land. When the birds do not return, Utnapishtim knows the floodwaters have receded. While many points between the Sumerian legend and Hebrew Bible diverge, the close parallels in details seem more than coincidental. The description of the boat and the storm, the coming to rest on the mountains, and the release of birds are all highly similar narrative features.

Complicating matters is the fact that the flood story of Utnapishtim is not the only deluge account in Mesopotamian myth. There are actually two other stories of a great destructive flood. One is an old Sumerian tale about Ziusudra, who is told that the gods plan to destroy all mankind. The details of this old story are unclear, as a complete version has never been found. But it is very similar in feeling to both
Gilgamesh
and another flood tale, about a man called Atrahasis, which is found in the Babylonian Creation myth
Enuma Elish
.

In this story, Enlil was in charge of the minor gods who were digging the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. When they complained about the work and revolted, the gods decided to create mankind to do the work instead, and Nintur, the goddess of birth, mixed some clay with blood and created man. But when the population of men grew too large, the noise they made kept Enlil awake at night, and he asked the gods to send a plague to thin out mankind. A wise man, Atrahasis—whose name literally means “exceedingly wise”—got wind of this divine plan and consulted Enki, the Sumerian water god, who was a bit of a trickster and a friend of mankind.

Enki told the people to keep quiet and make offerings to the plague god to avert the disaster. But as time went by, Enlil again wanted to destroy noisy mankind, this time with a drought. Again, disaster was averted by Enki’s intervention. When the people’s noise disturbed him a third time, Enlil ordered an embargo on land bounty, but Enki saved mankind from starvation by filling the canals and rivers he controlled with fish.

Finally Enlil decided to send a great flood, and this time Enki advised Atrahasis to build a boat and take his family and animals on board. All mankind was destroyed, except Atrahasis and his family, who survived and repopulated the earth.

So, did the biblical authors “sample” these ancient Mesopotamian stories, conveniently borrowing them, perhaps while they were in captivity in Babylon? Or were these just common stories that were “floating around” the ancient Near East? This question has troubled scholars and archaeologists since it was first raised in 1872. Of course, biblical purists completely reject that notion, holding that Noah’s story, like the rest of the Bible, is the divinely inspired word of God. But the many parallels are too striking to ignore.

Whether the Hebrew story is borrowed or original, the existence of so many flood stories around the world raises a larger question: was there ever one cataclysmic flood in earth’s history that would explain these many myths?

Among the most intriguing new insights into the old flood question have come from the research done by Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter C. Pitman 3d, authors of
Noah’s Flood: the New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History
(1998), and the man who discovered the
Titanic
, deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard. The two scientists theorized that sometime around 5600 BCE, there was a major inundation of the Black Sea—then a freshwater lake—by water rushing in from the Mediterranean through the present Bosporus Straits. In 2000, Ballard, using his famous underwater equipment, bolstered their argument with the discovery of remains of wooden houses beneath the Black Sea near the Turkish shore. Their theory, simply stated, is that this cataclysmic event destroyed everything for some sixty thousand square miles, killing tens of thousands of people. This ancient deluge then provided the historical memory for all of the flood narratives that later emerged, including those of Mesopotamia, ancient Israel, and Greece.