The Epic of Gilgamesh Read Online Free Page A

aware of an over-riding preoccupation with fame, reputation, and the revolt of mortal man against the laws of separation and death. The conflict between savage or ‘natural’ man in the character of Enkidu, and civilized man represented by Gilgamesh, seems less fundamental, though it has been re-emphasized by at least one recent writer.
    The story is divided into episodes: a meeting of friends, a forest journey, the flouting of a fickle goddess, the death of the companion, and the search for ancestral wisdom and immortality: and through them all runs a single idea, like the refrain of the medieval poet, ‘Timor mortis conturbat me’. In the episode of the Cedar Forest it is only a spur on the hero’s ambition to leave an enduring name; but after the loss of the faithful companion it is more urgent, ‘How can I rest when Enkidu whom I love is dust and I too shall die and be laid in the earth for ever?’ At the end it turns to mockery with lost opportunity and wasted hopes; till the final scene of the hero’s own death where human ambition is swallowed up and finds its fulfilment in ancient ritual.
    The cause of the pervasive pessimism of Mesopotamian thought lay partly in the precariousness of life in the city-states, dependent on vagaries of flood and drought and turbulent neighbours; dependent also on the character of the gods, who were the powers held responsible for such conditions. Since the gods play a considerable part in the Epic it may be well to give some account of these frightening and unpredictable beings. Their names and chief attributes are listed in the Glossary (p. 120), but the few who play a decisive part in the action require rather more detailed description. Their names will seem bizarre and unfamiliar to Western ears, and the topography of their world is superficially so odd that a rather fuller explanation seems necessary. The reader may, however, if he pleases, leave aside the following section until he wishes to know more about the chief gods and their habitations in the heavens or in the underworld.

6. The Principal Gods of the Epic
    The cities of Mesopotamia shared a common pantheon, but the gods were not worshipped everywhere under the same names. The Semites when they invaded Mesopotamia inherited most of the Sumerian gods, but they altered their names, their mutual relations, and many of their attributes. It is not possible to say today if any were native to Mesopotamia, and belonged to the still older stratum of the population which may have been in occupation of the land before the arrival of the Sumerians, but throughout it is the known Sumerian gods who play the chief role in the Epic; and this is an additional argument, if any were needed, in favour of the great antiquity of all the episodes. Later gods such as Marduk of Babylon are never mentioned.
    Each city had its own particular protector who looked after its fortunes and had his house within its walls. Anu (Sumerian An) was a father of gods, not so much Zeus as Uranus, the sky-god who to the Greeks was little more than an ancestral link in the chain of creation; from whose union with Earth, according to some of the genealogies, came Ocean, the rivers, the seas, the Titans and last of all, Cronos the father of Zeus. A reconstruction of the Sumerian theogony has been made by Professor Kramer, according to which An was the first-born of the primeval sea. He was the upper heavens, the firmament, not the air that blows over the earth. Like Uranus he was united to earth (Sumerian Ki) and begot Enlil, the god of the air. At this time the world was still in darkness and Enlil, the air, was imprisoned between the dark ceiling of heaven, a night sky without stars, and the earth’s surface. So Enlil begot the moon Nanna (Semitic Sin), who travelled in a boat bringing light to the lapis lazuli heavens; and Nanna in turn begot the sun Utu (Semitic Shamash), and Inanna (Semitic Ishtar) goddess of love and war. The