Gilgamesh (8 page)

We are not told how he learned “the ancient, forgotten rites” from Utnapishtim. But we know that for the first time he is acting as a responsible, compassionate king, a benefactor to his people and their descendents. Out of the depths, somehow, Gilgamesh has managed to “close the gate of sorrow”; he has learned how to rule himself and his city without violence, selfishness, or the compulsions of a restless heart.

Gilgamesh's quest is not an allegory. It is too subtle and rich in minute particulars to fit any abstract scheme. But issuing as it does from a deep level of human experience, it has a certain allegorical resonance. We don't need to be aware of this resonance in order to enjoy the story. Yet it is there.

When Gilgamesh leaves his city and goes into uncharted territory in search of a way beyond death, he is looking for something that is impossible to find. His quest is like the mind's search for control, order, and meaning in a world where everything is constantly disintegrating. The quest proves the futility of the quest. There is no way to overcome death; there is no way to control reality. “When I argue with reality, I lose,” Byron Katie writes, “-but only 100 percent of the time.”

Not until Gilgamesh gives up on transcendence can he realize how beautiful his city is; only then, freed from his restless heart, can he fully return to the place he started out from. Suppose that the city is this moment: things as they are, without any meaning added. When the mind gives up on its quest for control, order, and meaning, it finds that it has come home, to reality, where it has always been. What it has—what it is—in this very moment is everything it ever wanted.

Somehow, in the interval between story and return, Gilgamesh has become wise. He has absorbed not the conventional wisdom of a Shiduri or an Utnapishtim, but the deeper wisdom of the poem's narrative voice, a wisdom that is impartial, humorous, civilized, sexual, irreverent, skeptical of moral absolutes, delighted with the things of this world, and supremely confident in the power of its own language.

See “About This Version,” p. 65.

Enlil, along with Anu and Ea, is one of the triumvirate of great gods who govern the universe.

This is not counting the separable Bull of Heaven episode of Book VI, which contains two monsters, Ishtar and the Bull, or the story-within-a-story of Book XI, in which the great gods send the Flood in a fit of genocidal monstrosity.

I
have called this a “version” of
Gilgamesh
rather than a translation. I don't read cuneiform and have no knowledge of Akkadian; for the meaning of the text, I have depended on literal translations by seven scholars. I am particularly indebted to A. R. George's superb, meticulous, monumental two-volume edition of the original texts, which far excels all previous scholarship. I have also read and profited from the translations of Jean Bottéro, Benjamin R. Foster, Maureen Gallery Kovacs, Albert Schott, and Raymond Jacques Tournay and Aaron Shaffer, as well as from the literary, nonscholarly versions of David Ferry and Raoul Schrott. Jean Bottéro's notes helped me in the interpretation of many passages.

My method was this: I first read and compared all the translations listed in the bibliography, understood the difficult passages to the best of my inexpert ability, and cobbled together a rough prose version. (Like many other translators, I have omitted Tablet XII, which most scholars consider as not belonging to the epic.) At this stage, I felt rather like a bat, feeling out the contours of the original text by flinging sound waves into the dark. Once my prose version was completed, I began the real work, of raising the language to the level of English verse. The line that I use, a loose, noniambic, nonal-literative tetrameter,
^*
is rare in English; the two examples I know well are sections of Eliot's
Four Quartets
and Elizabeth Bishop's wonderful “Sestina.” I worked hard to keep my rhythms from sounding too regular, and I varied them so that no two consecutive lines have the identical rhythm.

When possible, I kept fairly close to the literal meaning; when necessary, I was much freer and did not so much translate as adapt. I chose not to reproduce some of the quirks of Akkadian style, which for ancient readers may have been embellishments but are tedious for us: for example, the word-for-word repetitions of entire passages and the enumerations from one to seven or twelve. I filled in the many gaps in the text; I changed images that were unclear; I added lines when the drama of the situation called for elaboration or when passages ended abruptly and needed transitions; I cut out a number of fragmentary passages; and when the text was garbled, I occasionally changed the order of passages. (All these changes are documented in the notes.) While I have tried to be faithful to the spirit of the Akkadian text, I have often been as free with the letter of it as Sîn-le-qi-unninni and his Old Babylonian predecessors were with their material. I like to think that they would have approved.

Except for the Prologue and the end of Book XI, which have five beats to the line.

H
e had seen everything, had experienced all emotions, from exaltation to despair, had been granted a vision into the great mystery, the secret places, the primeval days before the Flood. He had journeyed to the edge of the world and made his way back, exhausted but whole. He had carved his trials on stone tablets, had restored the holy Eanna Temple and the massive wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal. See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun. Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can imagine, approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar, a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty, walk on the wall of Uruk, follow its course around the city, inspect its mighty foundations, examine its brickwork, how masterfully it is built,
observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens, the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares. Find the cornerstone and under it the copper box that is marked with his name. Unlock it. Open the lid. Take out the tablet of lapis lazuli. Read how Gilgamesh suffered all and accomplished all.

S
urpassing all kings, powerful and tall beyond all others, violent, splendid, a wild bull of a man, unvanquished leader, hero in the front lines, beloved by his soldiers—
fortress
they called him,
protector of the people, raging flood that destroys all defenses—
two-thirds divine and one-third human, son of King Lugalbanda, who became a god, and of the goddess Ninsun, he opened the mountain passes, dug wells on the slopes, crossed the vast ocean, sailed to the rising sun, journeyed to the edge of the world, in search of eternal life, and once he found Utnapishtim—the man who survived the Great Flood and was made immortal—he brought back the ancient, forgotten rites, restoring the temples that the Flood had destroyed, renewing the statutes and sacraments for the welfare of the people and the sacred land. Who is like Gilgamesh? What other king has inspired such awe? Who else can say, “I alone rule, supreme among mankind”? The goddess Aruru, mother of creation, had designed his body, had made him the strongest of men—huge, handsome, radiant, perfect.

The city is his possession, he struts through it, arrogant, his head raised high, trampling its citizens like a wild bull. He is king, he does whatever he wants, takes the son from his father and crushes him, takes the girl from her mother and uses her, the warrior's daughter, the young man's bride, he uses her, no one dares to oppose him.
But the people of Uruk cried out to heaven, and their lamentation was heard, the gods are not unfeeling, their hearts were touched, they went to Anu, father of them all, protector of the realm of sacred Uruk, and spoke to him on the people's behalf: “Heavenly Father, Gilgamesh—noble as he is, splendid as he is—has exceeded all bounds. The people suffer from his tyranny, the people cry out that he takes the son from his father and crushes him, takes the girl from her mother and uses her, the warrior's daughter, the young man's bride, he uses her, no one dares to oppose him. Is this how you want your king to rule? Should a shepherd savage his own flock? Father,
do
something, quickly, before the people overwhelm heaven with their heartrending cries.”

Anu heard them, he nodded his head, then to the goddess, mother of creation, he called out: “Aruru, you are the one who created humans. Now go and create a double for Gilgamesh, his second self, a man who equals his strength and courage, a man who equals his stormy heart. Create a new hero, let them balance each other perfectly, so that Uruk has peace.”

When Aruru heard this, she closed her eyes, and what Anu had commanded she formed in her mind. She moistened her hands, she pinched off some clay, she threw it into the wilderness, kneaded it, shaped it to her idea, and fashioned a man, a warrior, a hero: Enkidu the brave, as powerful and fierce as the war god Ninurta. Hair covered his body, hair grew thick on his head and hung
down to his waist, like a woman's hair. He roamed all over the wilderness, naked, far from the cities of men, ate grass with gazelles, and when he was thirsty he drank clear water from the waterholes, kneeling beside the antelope and deer.