Gilgamesh: Prologue and Part 1

Your first reading for our online class is to read from the ancient epic story of Gilgamesh. The story centers on the adventures of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and a man created to be his companion, Enkidu. (Pronounce "Gilgamesh" as GIL ga mesh. Pronounce "Enkidu" as IN ka doo.) You will be reading the "Prologue," "Part 1," "Part 2," and "Part 3" from the textbook. The "Prologue" begins on page 12 of your textbook.

Before you do the reading, take a look at the introduction to the story and its background on the following pages.

From about 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians ruled a part of Mesopotamia and built villages and cities around the two rivers. Most historians see the possibility that the main character of the story, Gilgamesh, was a flesh-and-blood king from about 2,700 BCE.

The story of Gilgamesh was originally a story handed down by word of mouth for over a hundred centuries. (Contrast that with the United States of America; the USA has been a country for only about two centuries). Later, the story was written down, first by the Sumerians, and later by other peoples in Mesopotamia (the Babylonian, Assyrians, and Akkadians).

it was in the region of the Tigris and Eurphrates rivers [that is, in Mesopotamia] that writing was first developed; the earliest texts date from around 3300 BCE to 2900 BCE. The characters were inscribed on tablets of wet clay with a pointed stick; the tablets were then left in the sun to bake to hardness. The characters are pictographic: the sign for ox looks like an ox head and so on. The bulk of the texts [which archeologists have unearthed in Mesopotamia] are economic--lists of foodstuffs, textiles, and cattle. But the script is too primitive to handle anything much more complicated than lists, and by 2800 BCE scribes began to use the wedge-shaped end of the stick to make marks rather than the pointed end to draw pictures. The resulting script is known as cuneiform, form the Latin word cuneus, "a wedge." By 2500 BCE the texts were no longer confined to lists; they recorded historical events and even material that could be regarded as literature. This writing system was not, however, designed for a large reading public. The wedge-shaped signs, grouped in various patterns, denote not letters of an alphabet but syllables--consonants plus a vowel--and this meant that the reader had to be familiar with a very large number of signs. Furthermore, the same sign often represented two or more different sounds, and the same sound can be represented by several different signs. It is a script that could be written and read only by experts, the scribes, who often proudly record their own names on the tablets. (3-4)

The oral stories and the written texts of Gilgamesh circulated throughout the Near East for thousands of years. Then, for about 2,000 years, the story was neither circulated orally nor written down again, nor handed around in written texts.

In 1853, the library of King Assurbanipal was unearthed in modern-day Iraq. Assurbanipal (pronounce his name ass oor BAN a pall). Among the ruins of buildings, temples, courts, markets, homes, streets, and bazaars were found the ruins of a huge library he sponsored. The library contained clay tablets on which was written in cuneiform characters the text of Gilgamesh. This text of Gilgamesh, in the Akkadian language, is the text that is translated and appears in your textbook.

The setting of Gilgamesh begins in the ancient city of Uruk, called Erech in the Hebrew Bible and Warka on some modern maps. (You can locate Gilgamesh's ancient city of Uruk on the map of the ancient Middle East on page 2 of your textbook.) Here, in Uruk, says the narrator of the story, Gilgamesh came to the city as a mighty leader and built the walls and the foundations.

The "Prologue" of Gilgamesh begins by emphasizing the wisdom Gilgamesh acquires and the monuments he constructs. It also states that Gilgamesh was endowed by his creator with "a perfect body" (Gilgamesh 13) while "Adad the god of the storm endowed him with courage, the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others, terrifying like a great bull" (13). The "Prologue" concludes with the narrator of the story asking his readers to look around them at Uruk and see all the great buildings of their city, which Gilgamesh helped to establish. Note, too, that the narrator's "pride in the splendor and extent of [Uruk] is unmistakable" (Cahill 21).

(Let's wait until a few pages into this sequence of the course before you begin your actual reading of Gilgamesh.)

Let's take a moment to think about reading literature before we actually begin reading the literature in your textbook.

You will want to read a story or poem in literature class differently from the way you read your other college textbooks. You may be accustomed to reading in the sciences and social sciences, but reading literature for college may be a little unfamiliar to you. Some students tell me it has been a while since they have read literature; other students tell me they have read literature, but have not written about literature. You will want to think about HOW it is that you go about reading the pieces of literature assigned in our online literature class.

Experienced readers read a piece of literature in ways that are very different from the ways they read a history textbook, very different from the ways they read a newspaper, and very different, too, from the ways they read other works of nonfiction.

Reading a Work of Literature

1. Do not read from the first word to the last word. Experienced readers read, stop, go back, re-read parts and stop to write, then they begin reading again.

2. Read the beginning of the piece several times. The beginning of the piece sets the stage and gets you accustomed to the particular style and language of the piece.

3. Read the ending of the piece several times. In most pieces of literature, you will find, beginnings and endings are very important parts of the text.

4. Mark your text. Write in your textbook. (Some students feel that they should not mark their textbook since, in high school, students are often told not to mark in the book. However, you have purchased your textbook and it is now yours. Mark in it.)

5. If you simply can't bring yourself to write in your textbook, photocopy the assigned pages for reading and mark the photocopy instead.

6. Underline important parts, things you think are vital to the meaning of the piece and which will make a difference in how you understand and interpret what you are reading. For example, underline clues to character motivation, symbols, shifts in tone or point of view, important dialogues.

7. Circle odd, seldom-used, repeated or difficult-to-understand words.

8. Put stars beside passages that are central to the theme, meaning, or point of the piece.

9. Make marginal notes. In the margin of the text, bracket important parts of the piece. Write a note or a question to yourself about parts you do not quite fully grasp.

10. Read to comprehend the small bits and pieces (paragraphs, usually) and at the same time read to comprehend the total piece. Remember that, for a piece of literature, the meaning of the whole is not just the meaning of the smaller parts added up. The meaning of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

11. Read with a sheet of paper nearby to take notes, jots, questions, statements, outlines of the piece, character names, plot twists and turns, difficult words and so forth.

12. Write a free-write from time to time. As you read, stop after a section (perhaps a half page or page or other stopping point). Write down your reactions, interpretations, impressions, summary of plot, explanation of theme, and so on. Don't worry about grammar and punctuation. This free-write is your explanation to yourself of how the piece is developing--it is yours for later use. (We all know how we sometimes have a fleeting thought that is important but we later forget. Capture these thoughts on paper before you lose them.)

13. Think about these ideas as you read

Who tells the story? Is there an "I" or "me" in the story? Whose point of view is the predominant point of view of the story?
Who does the author seem to portray as admirable. (Hint: the main character is not always the most admirable person in a piece of literature. Often, the main character has at least some flaw, even if he is portrayed as basically decent.)
What is the theme or point or message of the story? Is there an underlying meaning to the story? What comment on the human condition and the human experience does the story make?
Are there ambiguities? That is, does the author purposefully seem to suggest but leave you hanging about the meaning of some things in the story? Can events, characters, author's statements be interpreted in more than one way?
Are there metaphors (comparisons between objects) in the story that lead to some suggested meaning? For example, is a character compared to an eagle, a wolf, a snake in one passage? If so, the author may be making a point about the character or the story as a whole.
Are there ideas in the story that are at odds with your values, your beliefs, your morality, your code of ethics, your way of seeing the world and the people in it?

14. NEVER, EVER, EVER read without a pencil in hand.

15. NEVER, EVER, EVER read when you are tired or can't give your full and undivided attention to the text. (Arrange your schedule as much as possible to read at those times you are most alert, most rested, and freshest.

16. Think about reading the piece of literature out loud to yourself or to someone else. Often, this sort of activity seems unnatural, but it helps in your understanding.

17. See if you can find someone to read the piece aloud to you AFTER you have read it yourself.

18. Avoid highlighting your text. The pages of your textbook are thin; most highlighters will "bleed" through the page.

"Part 1" gives us our first glimpse of Gilgamesh as the king of Uruk. He is the "epitome of a bad ruler" (Mack 11). As the people of Uruk complain against him, the gods decide to create "his equal . . . his own reflection, his second self" (Gilgamesh 14).

This second self, this alter ego, is Enkidu. While Gilgamesh is a mixture of human and divine natures, Enkidu is "a blend of human and wild animal, with the wild animal predominating at first" (Mack 11). Enkidu is created when the goddess "pinched off clay" (Gilgamesh 14) to form his body. We see him described as if he were a wild animal--untamed, drinking from the mud hole, consorting with wild animals.

Gardner and Muir call this part of Gilgamesh "the story of the double. If Gilgamesh is two-thirds god and only one-third human, his double, Enkidu, seems to reverse the ratios. At the beginning of "Part 1," Gilgamesh is described as two-thirds god and one third man. Enkidu is described as an animal. However, as the story progresses, Gilgamesh seems to become less god-like and more human; Enkidu seems to become less animal-like and more human. The changes in Enkidu in "Part 1" show a "step-by-step initiation into the life of a civilized man . . . . It is the story of an Everyman. It is also the story of the emergence of mankind from the wild, a parable of culture, the best worked-out Mesopotamian speculation about the lullu-amelu, the First Man" (Gardner and Muir 15). When the harlot first sees Enkidu in the wild, she calls him lullu-amelu, Adam, the first, man-as-he-was-in-the beginning.

The harlots of Mesopotamia were sacred priestesses who were attached to the temples of the female goddesses such as the goddess Ishtar and Ninsun. They served the goddesses in many ways, including being prostitutes who contributed the fees for their services as tithes to the temple. In the original language, the harlot is called samhatu and harmitu--both words meaning something like "sacred harlot" or "woman consecrated to the goddess." This harlot is "the instrument of bring Enkidu from the wild to the civilized state. Through her he gains consciousness, language, identity. Through her he learns what it is to be human" (Gardner and Muir 25).

Meanwhile, in Uruk, Gilgamesh dreams two dreams, which his mother Ninsun interprets for him.

After engaging in sexual intercourse with the harlot, Enkidu is civilized, travels to shepherds who further civilize him, and then travels on to the city of Uruk where Enkidu and Gilgamesh confront one another in battle. After their battle, each recognizes in the other the counterpoint, the foil, the opposite to balance out himself. The love that springs up between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is like that of husband and wife. In addition, the story says that the love that springs up between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is like the bond between brothers.

In the "Prologue" and "Part 1" of Gilgamesh you will meet these main characters:

1. Gilgamesh (GIL ga mesh)--the king of Uruk, "two-thirds they made him god, and one-third man" (Gilgamesh 14). He is the one who has made the walls of Uruk and the one who is made king there. His mother is the goddess Ninsun. To balance him out, the gods create Enkidu

2. Enkidu (IN ka doo)--the wild man who runs with the gazelles, who releases animals from the traps of mankind, and whose long hair "waves like the hair of Nisaba, the goddess of [grain]" (Gilgamesh 15). He is created from dust after the inhabitants complain to the gods about how Gilgamesh acts. In the wild he drinks from the water hole. Because he fouls the traps of the trapper, the trapper arranges for the harlot to tame him.

3. Ninsun (NEEN' soon)--the mother of Gilgamesh. She is the wise mother of Gilgamesh, a goddess. Her name means something like "Lady Wild Cow."

5. the harlot (in Mesopotamia at this time, each woman of the city spent at least a few days each year attached to the temples of the city as a prostitute. Each woman "worked" as a temple prostitute and contributed her earnings as an offering to God. The role of harlot was a respected, sacred, sacrificial, honored position in Mesopotamian society.)

Read the "Prologue" and "Part 1" of Gilgamesh beginning on page 13 of your textbook.

(Additional background material is provided in your textbook. I have not required that you read the additional background material because it is dense, difficult-to-read, and extremely detailed. However, you might want to read what the editor of your textbook has to say about Gilgamesh. You can find those background remarks by your editor on pages 10-12.)

(In the remainder of the course, you may want to read your editor's background remarks about the stories and poems we read. You may do that by reading his remarks which come immediately before each reading assignment in the textbook.)

Gardner, John, and John Muir. Preface. Gilgamesh. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.

Gilgamesh. Trans. N. K. Sandars. Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Maynard Mack et al. 2 vols. Exp. ed. New York: Norton, 1995. Vol. 1.10-12.

Mack, Maynard. "Gilgamesh." Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Maynard Mack et al. 2 vols. Exp. ed. New York: Norton, 1995. Vol. 1. 13-42.

Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. "Gilgamesh." Literature of the Western World. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. 2 vols. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001. Vol. 1. 16-18.