Gilgamesh and Enuma Elish

Empires, Adaptation and Remaking Creation

The two raised areas indicate temples dedicated to Inana, patron diety of Uruk and the Sumerian goddess of love and war.

Uruk: ancient southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq)

• first city in human history

• first major center of writing

Gilgamesh: King of Uruk, c. 2700 BCE

Cuneiform: Hundreds of wedge-shaped marks organized in clusters.

The 11th tablet of Gilgamesh

Miniature from Hafiz-i Abru’s Majma al-tawarikh. “Noah’s Ark,” Iran (Afghanistan), Herat; c. 1425

“He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood” (Gilgamesh, 61).

Antiquities and Empires: Ancient and Modern

King Ashurbanipal (ca. 668-627 BCE), ruler of the Assyrian Empire

He sent subjects on “library raids” all over the empire.

The vast and varied holdings of his library confirmed Nineveh’s status as an imperial capital.

18th-20th centuries: European powers extend their influence in the near and middle east. Archaeologists claim antiquities for distant collections. Pieces of the Gilgamesh epic wind up in England, Germany and the United States.

Hormuzd Rassam in Mosul, circa 1854 Portrait of Hormuzd Rassam by Arthur Ackland Hunt, 1860

Transport of one of A. H. Layard’s Bulls, from Nineveh and its Remains.

Museum-goers in Victorian England

Assyrian Lamassu in the British Museum.

Berlin Paris New York

Chicago

“Touch the threshold, it is ancient”

(Prologue, Epic of Gilgamesh)

“Look at it still today: the outer wall where the cornice runs, it shines with the brilliance of copper; and the inner wall, it has no equal. Touch the threshold, it is ancient. Approach Eanna the dwelling of Ishtar…Climb up on the wall of Uruk; walk along it, I say; regard the foundation terrace and examine the masonry: is it not burnt brick and good?”

(Prologue, Epic of Gilgamesh)

Gilgamesh and the Flood Story

At stake: Biblical chronology; anthropocentric conceptions of the pastThe age of the EarthBiblical scholars: creation began approx. 4000 BCEGeologists (of the time): Earth is millions of years old

Geological vs. Biblical Time

One True Account vs. Many Versions of a Myth

At stake: The idea of one, authoritative TruthThe Biblical Flood story “demoted” to the status of myth

“Noah,” Chapel of the Exodus, Al-Bagawat, Egypt, 5th–6th century CE

Sumerian cylinder seal, 3rd millennium BCE

What distinguishes the Biblical version (as history) from older versions (understood as myth)?

The Imperial Cuneiform “Scriptworld”

Cuneiform was a crucial element of imperial expansion: it united people across a wide region into a single “scriptworld” (David Damrosch, The Buried Book).

As cuneiform spread, some cultures resisted by continuing to use their local scripts (Hebrew writers preferred paleo-Hebrew to cuneiform).

Some Hebrew writers also mistranslated Babylonian words to obscure overlaps of culture and language between themselves and the Babylonians.

Paleo-Hebrew script Akkadian cuneiform script

Purposeful Misnaming and Mistranslating in Genesis

Example 1

The Hebrew creation story avoids using proper names that would point to Babylonian religious traditions.

Sun: ma’or gadol (big light) NOT shemesh Moon: ma’or katin (little light) yareah

-which resemble the names for Babylonian sun god Shamash and moon god irihu (cognate of the Hebrew

word yareah).

Example 2

Genesis claims that “Babylon” comes from “balal” (Hebrew for “to mix up”) rather than “bab-ili” (Akkadian for “gate of god”), the term for Babylon’s supreme deity Marduk.

Genesis: History as Genealogy (the past linked to the present through a chain of descent)

Adaptation as Historical Revision in Enuma Elish

Etiological: referring to causes or origins

•Enuma Elish talks back to older creation myths

•It uses adaptation as a way to rewrite history

Context: The rise of the Babylonian empire as the dominant power in the region.

(Seri, 2014, 100)

Enuma ElishOlder gods Anu, Enlil and Ea replaced by Marduk

Enuma Elish rewrites history in order to make the Babylonian deity Marduk supreme among the gods.

Saddm Hussein’s Zabibah wal-Malik (Baghdad, 2000)

German translation of Saddam Hussein’s Zabibah wal-Malik

Gilgamesh battling a lion, 2500-2000 BCE

Who or what is the Gilgamesh of the 2nd journey?

“when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion” (96).

Gilgamesh follows Enkidu’s journey backwards, rejecting human culture, becoming part human, part animal.

The epic depends on Gilgamesh’s failure. Everlasting life = no return (no story).

The epic is an answer to death because it makes Gilgamesh’s mortality a precondition of his return.