How to Read “Gilgamesh”
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Since most people don't have sufficient time on their hands to do that, I think the epic would greatly benefit from a rewrite into modern prose, not unlike the fantastic work that Neil Gaiman did not too long ago with his excellent Norse Mythology novel.[0]
SPOILERS FOR THE OLDEST EXISTING LITERATURE: It's a story about a man trying to conquer monsters for the sake of timeless fame and glory, witnessing the death of his friend as a result of this quest, reflecting in his own mortality, trying to overcome death... and failing. There are other things going on with the story, the humor is repetitious and hard to embrace, and there are plenty of passages everyone is unsure about the meaning of, but this man-trying-to-overcome-mortality-and-failing theme is such a obviously human trope and it's clearly present in Gilgamesh. Compare and contrast to Ridley Scott's Prometheus.
Is there a more detailed breakdown of what's wrong with it? I seem to only find generalities.
There’s even a theory that this mode of extemporaneous oral composition actually requires that the poet be illiterate. The thinking is that it’s a completely different, sound-first approach to language that literacy totally breaks. In order to compose fluently (not recite, the way we understand today), the poet has to understand a phrase like “darkness covered his eyes” as a discrete unit of meaning made up of syllables, not a composition of independent words.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/11/20/homer-in-india
https://www.amazon.com/Lao-Tzu-Ching-About-Power/dp/15706239...
the world's oldest joke - a Sumerian rib-tickler dating back to 1,900 BC which goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/01/oldest_joke/
Explain ancient humor to me. I am all for embracing it.
Personally, I enjoyed Gilgamesh' epic a lot through its analysis in a mythology class[1]. It is a fantastic story anyway.
[0] The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum, 1920 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24737
[1] Myth in Human History by Grant L. Voth https://www.audible.com/pd/Myth-in-Human-History-Audiobook/B...
He's a professional Old Norse scholar teaching at the university level. Well worth a watch.
I think this basic point is true of all literature. Here's an example of some quite effective non-wooden prose from a nineteenth-century translation of the Iliad:
> the seer spoke boldly. "The god," he said, "is angry neither about vow nor hecatomb [a sacrifice], but for his priest's sake, whom Agamemnon has dishonoured, in that he would not free his daughter nor take a ransom for her; therefore has he sent these evils upon us, and will yet send others. He will not deliver the Danaans from this pestilence till Agamemnon has restored the girl without fee or ransom to her father, and has sent a holy hecatomb to Chryse. Thus we may perhaps appease him."
> With these words he sat down, and Agamemnon rose in anger. His heart was black with rage, and his eyes flashed fire as he scowled on Calchas and said, "Seer of evil, you never yet prophesied smooth things concerning me, but have ever loved to foretell that which was evil. You have brought me neither comfort nor performance; and now you come seeing among Danaans, and saying that Apollo has plagued us because I would not take a ransom for this girl, the daughter of Chryses. I have set my heart on keeping her in my own house, for I love her better even than my own wife Clytemnestra, whose peer she is alike in form and feature, in understanding and accomplishments. Still I will give her up if I must, for I would have the people live, not die; but you must find me a prize instead, or I alone among the Argives shall be without one. This is not well; for you behold, all of you, that my prize is to go elsewhere."
The context within the Iliad itself is basically just this. Calchas divines that the Greeks are faring poorly in battle because Agamemnon has offended the gods by refusing to ransom the daughter of a priest. To make up for this error, Apollo requires Agamemnon to return the girl to her father without asking for a ransom at all.
The text also mentions that Calchas fears for his life when he delivers this message, and he makes Achilles swear to protect him before he's willing to interpret the will of the gods. As we see here, Agamemnon does indeed go wild with rage when he hears what Calchas says. Because of Achilles' oath to protect Calchas, he settles on picking a non-physical fight with Achilles instead, which is what leads Achilles to storm off in a huff and precipitates the rest of the events in the story.
From the text, this is a pretty staggering overreaction on Agamemnon's part. He was wrong, everyone knows it, and he's not losing all that much. But there's more context present in the mythological background that everyone in the intended audience would have been familiar with.
The army of the Greeks didn't have many seers. Calchas was responsible for divining the will of the gods across the entire expedition. And in particular, there had been a difficulty right at the outset, when unfavorable winds prevented the Greek ships from setting out to sea. This obviously divine phenomenon had to be dealt with, Calchas was called upon, and he provided the answer: the winds were sent by Artemis because Agamemnon had once offended her. Until he appeases Artemis, the army cannot set sail, and Artemis demands the sacrifice of the most valuable thing Agamemnon received in the year he committed the offense. Since Agamemnon is suffering under a curse, this turns out to be his now-adult daughter, Iphigenia.
That context makes it crystal clear why Agamemnon might be expected to simply jump up and murder Calchas after he produces a second prophecy saying that Agamemnon needs to make up for offending the gods. He's still sore over... being forced to sacrifice his own daughter! How could he not be?
And I think that background adds quite a bit to the scene. But we can't expect every text to include all the relevant cultural background. There's too much.
That passage rendered there looks like (roughly):
> Kalkys, reassured, takes a nervous gulp and blurts: “The real reason that Apollo’s shooting us down is that Agamemnon insulted his priest! The old man came to ask for his daughter Chryseis back. He asked nice and politely, in the name of the god, which he’s entitled to do as a priest! Brought the proper ransom, and a wreath!”
> All the men grunt and nod. They knew it!
> Kalkys feels their approval and goes on, more loudly and accusingly: “But Agamemnon purposely insulted him! Threatened him! Laughed at the poor old man! Wouldn’t give his daughter back even though he asked politely!”
> Everyone nods and tells each other, “I told you that was it! That damn Agamemnon! Gonna get us all killed!”
> Kalkys concludes, “So we have to give her back! To her father, the priest! Or Apollo will kill all of us! And not ask any ransom for her or anything!” More nodding and grunting from the crowd. They knew it’d come to this.
> Kalkys pushes his luck now, brave like nerds are when the crowd’s egging them on: “And we have to send a sacrifice with her! Treasure, and gold, and calves and sheep, ones with no spots or scars! Perfect specimens, the kind Apollo likes!”
> More grunts and nods. Kalkys is drunk on public approval now, delighted with his own courage—and then he turns and sees Agamemnon and sits down very suddenly.
> Agamemnon stands up, with the hate pouring from him like heat from a rock on a hearth. The crowd goes quiet. It’s odd, how they fear Agamemnon. He isn’t all that tough in battle. And he’s nowhere near as big as Akilles, or as strong as Ajax, or clever like Odysseus. Doesn’t even fight in the front rank most of the time. But he is hands down the meanest man in the army, maybe the world. He never forgives, never forgets the tiniest slight to himself or his precious relatives.
> Him and his relatives! That’s what this whole army is doing here, avenging Agamemnon’s useless brother Menelaos, who married a woman way too beautiful for him—half goddess, in fact—and got dumped for a younger, hotter man. Who happened to be a Trojan prince.
> That’s why they’ve all been camping out here for nine slow, deadly years: Defending the nonexistent honor of Agamemnon’s blank of a brother, the fool Menelaos, Menelaos the cuckold.
> And now Kalkys has blurted out the one thing they’re all thinking: It’s Agamemnon’s fault we’re here! It’s his fault we’re dying under the magic virus arrows! And we didn’t even get any booty out of it!
> Agamemnon stands, sneering, letting the crowd vent a while, then drags out the silence so they can feel his hate. That’s where Agamemnon really shines—the best hater in a world where hate is much respected.
> When he’s made them all flinch away from his stare, he turns to poor old Kalkys: “You, Mister Science! You just love giving bad news, don’t you? You little coward, egghead. Did those entrails you claim to interpret ever once, even once, tell you anything good about me? Did those dead goat guts of yours ever tell, even one time, that I, your king, had made a good decision? No! No, because you only want to tell me what I’ve done wrong! Because you’re a cowardly little whiner!!”
But, if you're interested:
> The rest now took their seats and kept to their own several places, but Thersites still went on wagging his unbridled tongue—a man of many words, and those unseemly; a monger of sedition, a railer against all who were in authority, who cared not what he said, so that he might set the Achaeans in a laugh. He was the ugliest man of all those that came before Troy—bandy-legged, lame of one foot, with his two shoulders rounded and hunched over his chest. His head ran up to a point, but there was little hair on the top of it. Achilles and Odysseus hated him worst of all, for it was with them that he was most wont to wrangle; now, however, with a shrill squeaky voice he began heaping his abuse on Agamemnon. The Achaeans were angry and disgusted, yet none the less he kept on bawling at the son of Atreus.
I kind of like seeing the morality of the day shine right through the text. No shades of grey here.
https://www.amazon.com/Gilgamesh-King-Robert-Silverberg/dp/1...
Here’s a random excerpt, for anybody interested in seeing what its like to read:
The Scorpion-man made his voice heard and spoke,
‘It is impossible, Gilgamesh, [ ]
Nobody has passed through the mountain’s inaccessible tract.
For even after twelve leagues [ ]
The darkness is too dense, there is no [light.]
To the dawn [ ]
To the dusk [ ]
To the dusk [ ]
The sent out [ ]
(5 lines fragmentary, then 16 lines missing)
(gap of about 18 lines)
In grief [ ]
But, Daniel Quinn’s reading of the Fall of Man in Genesis[1] is an antithetical account of the same story. Man did not seek to overcome nature, rather Man was banished from the garden (nature) by his own temptation to seek the knowledge to take care of himself—thus becoming captured and tortured by this original sin, accumulating into agrarian-fueled violence and expansion. All now rationalized[2] by our proclaimed knowledge of Good and Evil.
My favorite part of this interpretation is that this story was not told by our ancestors, because if it was, they would’ve sanctified this knowledge-seeking as the Ascent of Man, not the Fall. So it’s hypothesized that the story was told by the herders and hunter-gatherers trying to formulate a story to explain the violent and toilsome lifestyle of the agrarians.
Neat that there is also a mythic tree that Gilgamesh finds in the cave after hours of darkness. That he had returned to the garden somehow, and that he either wanted nothing to do with it or could find no answers there for him anymore.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)#Reinterpretati...
[2] “The Creator? My mines run dry, my city withers, it must be fed. And what has he done? He cursed us to struggle by the sweat of our brow to survive. Damned if I don’t do everything it takes to do just that. Damned if I don’t take what I want.” —Tubal-Cain in Aronofsky’s Noah (2014)
With Shakespeare's works, they are plays. They are meant to be experienced in a playhouse, not read by high school students stumbling over the language. The beauty is in witnessing the interactions of the characters on stage, the patterns of their speech, the tone of the jokes, etc. that just don't really come across when you read the words on a page. Reading Shakespeare is kind of a disservice to the material.
Similarly, Gilgamesh is part of an ancient oral tradition of storytelling and was meant to be told by actual storytellers, in language that would resonate with the listeners. Trying to read it today is kind of a perversion of the original intent. I'd love to listen to a modern translation actually told by a good storyteller - basically the way it was meant to be experienced.
It begins and ends (while Gilgamesh is talking to the boatman) extolling the and power and seeming eternal of both Uruk and Gilgamesh,
"Climb Uruk's wall and walk back and forth! Survey its foundations, examine the brickwork!...
"Who is there can rival his kingly standing, and say like Gilgamesh, 'It is I am the king'?"
But despite his and the city's stature death eventually comes to both.
"The darkest day of mortal man has caught up with you, the solitary place of mortal man has caught up with you, the flood-wave that cannot be breasted has caught up with you, the battle that cannot be fled has caught up with you, the combat that cannot be matched has caught up with you, the fight that shows no pity has caught up with you!"
To me it reads like trivializing the power and majesty of both Gilgamesh and Uruk and all mankind's achievements in the face of death.
What's Gilgamesh's grandstanding attitude worth in the face of the inevitability of death?
Not at all. At least not how I perceive it. I'd characterise it as existentialist rather than nihilistic thinking.
Knowing that death is inevitable for everyone, even god kings such as Gilgamesh, can serve is a constant reminder to try and create a legacy that transcends yourself.
(I recommend this series, In Our Time, whenever I can. Many jewels in the back catalogue.)
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080wbrq — but also on iTunes, etc.
> In 1859, Charles Darwin, in his “Origin of Species,” put forth a theory suggesting that human beings might be descended not from Adam and Eve but from lower animals, things with fur. Not surprisingly, such ideas encountered vigorous opposition. Many scientists and scholars redoubled their efforts to find evidence of the truth of the Bible.
Fundamentalists opposed Darwin but there was no position from the Church (officially) until 1950 or so. On top of that other scientists largely supported Darwin's central theme but debated the mechanisms of his theory. Yeah, not really what the author describes at all.
I particularly suggest a very recent one from Jens Harder[1]. The aesthetic he uses is that of bas-reliefs of the Mesopotamian area at the time when the original epos was created.
It's unfortunately only available in German (original) and French for the time being.
Then there's the whole thing about Gilgamesh sending Enkidu into the afterworld after his lost toy or game.
For my part I recommend to answer the title of the article with "while listening to "Nindinugga Nimshimshargal Enlillara" by Equimanthorn: