The Epic of Gilgamesh Read Online Free Page B

texts are still very obscure; one of them forms the introduction to the Sumerian poem of the descent of Enkidu to the underworld. Anu is not yet so detached as the Greek Uranus, but neither is he any more the active creator of gods. This supreme position was gradually usurped by Enlil, and in our poem it is Enlil who pronounces destinies in sign of authority. But he in turn was to fall before the newcomer, Babylonian Marduk.
    Enlil, whose city was Nippur, was the storm and wind, breath and ‘the word’ of Anu; for according to the hymns in his praise, ‘The spirit of the word is Enlil, the spirit of the heart of Anu.’ This Enlil is power in action, where Anu is power in being. He is ‘the word which stilleth the heaven above’, but he is also ‘a rushing deluge that troubles the faces of men, a torrent which destroys the bulwarks’. In the Gilgamesh Epic he appears oftenest in his destructive aspect; and beside him Anu is a remote being who lives far away in the firmament, beyond the gate of heaven. In one text he seems to encourage the journey to the Cedar Mountain, but it is also he who rebukes Gilgamesh and Enkidu for killing its guardian.
    Equally important in the Epic are the kindly and just Sun God Shamash, whom the Sumerians called Utu, and Ishtar the beautiful but also terrible goddess of love. The sun is still ‘shams’ in Arabic, and in those days Shamash was the omniscient all-seeing one, the great judge to whom anxious mortals could make their appeal against injustice, and know that they were heard. The hymns from Nineveh describe his many attributes: ‘All mankind rejoice in you, O Shamash, all the world longs for your light ... in a hollow voice feeble man calls out to you ... when his family is far away and his city far-off, the shepherd boy fearful of the open field comes before you, the shepherd in confusion among his enemies ... the caravan which marches in dread, the trader, the pedlar with his bag of weights.’ Nothing escapes the sun’s eye, ‘Guide and beacon who constantly passes over the infinite seas, whose depths the great gods of heaven do not know; your gleaming rays go down into the Pit, and the monsters of the deep see your light ... you make it to burn over unknown stretches of distance for countless hours ... by your terrible brilliance the land is overwhelmed.’ The two aspects of the god as omniscience and justice are united in the figure of the net: ‘Spread out is your net to catch the man who covets‘, and ‘Thrown down like a net over the land are your rays.’ He is also the god of oracles: ‘By the cup of the diviner, by the bundle of cedar-wood, you teach the priest of the oracle, the interpreter of dreams, the sorcerer...’; and in another hymn he is the judge, ‘Daily you determine the decisions of heaven and earth; at your coming in a flame and fire all the stars of heaven are covered over.’ It was he also who gave to Hammurabi his system of laws.
    Ishtar (Sumerian Inanna) was worshipped in the great temple in Uruk, together with Anu. She is the queen of heaven, and as goddess of love and of war an equivocal character; ‘an awful and lovely goddess’ like Aphrodite. Most of the gods had both a benign and a dangerous aspect, even Shamash could be terrible; but in this poem, except for a single moment, we see Ishtar only in her darker character. That she could be gracious is shown by a hymn of about 1600 B.C. ‘Reverence the queen of women, the greatest of all the gods; she is clothed with delight and with love, she is full of ardour, enchantment, and voluptuous joy, in her lips she is sweet, in her mouth is Life, when she is present felicity is greatest; how glorious she looks, the veils thrown over her head, her lovely form, her brilliant eyes.’ This is the radiant goddess of love as she first appeared to Gilgamesh, but her aspect very soon altered to become that of the