Gilgamesh and Enuma Elish
Empires, Adaptation and Remaking Creation
Uruk: ancient
southern
Mesopotamia
(modern-day Iraq)
• first city in human
history
• first major center
of writing
Gilgamesh: King of
Uruk, c. 2700 BCE
The two raised areas indicate temples dedicated to Inana, patron diety of
Uruk and the Sumerian goddess of love and war.
Cuneiform: Hundreds of wedge-shaped marks organized in clusters.
The 11th tablet of Gilgamesh
“He was wise, he saw
mysteries and knew
secret things, he brought
us a tale of the days
before the flood”
(Gilgamesh, 61).
Miniature from Hafiz-i Abru’s Majma al-tawarikh.
“Noah’s Ark,” Iran (Afghanistan), Herat; c. 1425
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
Geological vs. Biblical Time
At stake: Biblical chronology; anthropocentric conceptions of the past
The age of the Earth
Biblical scholars: creation began approx. 4000 BCE
Geologists (of the time): Earth is millions of years old
One True Account vs. Many Versions of a Myth
At stake: The idea of one, authoritative Truth
The Biblical Flood story “demoted” to the status of myth
Sumerian
cylinder
seal, 3rd
millennium
BCE
What distinguishes the
Biblical version (as history)
from older versions
(understood as myth)?
“Noah,” Chapel of the Exodus, AlBagawat, Egypt, 5th–6th century CE
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
Moon: ma’or katin (little light)
shemesh
yareah
-which resemble the names for Babylonian sun
god Shamash and moon god irihu (cognate of the
word yareah).
Hebrew
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.
Enuma Elish
Older gods Anu, Enlil and Ea replaced by Marduk
(Seri, 2014, 100)
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
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 battling a lion, 2500-2000 BCE
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.