Gilgamesh (26 page)

p. 182,
“I laid out the structure, I drafted plans:
This line actually occurs a dozen lines later; I have moved it forward.

p. 183,
rope makers brought their ropes, and children / carried the tar. The poor helped also, / however they could-some carried timber, / some hammered nails, some cut wood:
Literally, “[ … ] heavy axe. The young men were [ … ], the old men carried palm-fiber rope, the rich men carried pitch, the poor brought the [ … ] tackle.”

p. 183,
an acre:
Literally, “1
ikû”
= 3,600 m2 = .89 acres.

p. 183,
two hundred feet:
Literally, “120 cubits” = 180 feet.

p. 183,
the ship's height was divided in seven:
“The boat as described is clearly a cube, not at all like ordinary Mesopotamian boats, and is probably a theological allusion to the dimensions of a ziggurat, the Mesopotamian stepped temple tower. The ziggurat was a massive solid structure with a square base and four to seven levels, the maximum height being the same as the length and width; it served as a monumental platform for a temple that stood on top” (Kovacs, p. 99). “The ship's … volume (about 7,600 tons) is condensed in the extreme … The Biblical account (Gen. 6) speaks of three storeys; the Ark measured 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits in breadth, and 30 cubits in height (about 20,000 tons)” (translated from Tournay and Shaffer, pp. 228-29).

p. 183,
three thousand gallons:
Literally, “3
šár,”
which, according to Bottéro, equals 10,800 l. (2,808 gal.).

p. 184,
I gave my palace:
Utnapishtim's generosity is, of course, pointless: if his faith in Ea's words is justified, both the gift and the gifted will soon be underwater.

p. 185,
No one could see through the rain, it fell / harder and harder, so thick that you couldn't / see your own hand before your eyes:
Literally, “One couldn't see another, people couldn't recognize one another in the downpour.”

p. 186,
Anu's palace in the highest heaven:
“[The Mesopotamians] imagined at least three superposed celestial vaults: the highest was the dwelling of the sovereign and founder of the divine dynasty” (Bottéro, p. 191).

p. 186,
Aruru:
Literally, “the goddess.” “It is customary to take
dištar
as a proper noun. However, the following line, which develops the idea further, shows that the mother goddess is the subject here … Ištar is quite out of place as the lamenting goddess on this occasion. The parallel passage of OB Atram-£asïs has a similar couplet with
il-tum
in the first line and
dma-mi
in the second … thus I take
dißtar
as a common noun, anticipating
bëletilï
( … for another example in SB Gilgameß see SB I 274, where
dißtari ummïßu,
‘the goddess, his mother,' is Ninsun)” (George,
BGE,
II, p. 886).

p. 186,
when I spoke up for evil in the council of the gods!:
In the first passage about the gods' decision, p. 181, Aruru is not involved, and no mention is made of a council of the gods.

p. 186,
Their lips were parched, crusted with scabs:
“Not having human beings to provide them with offerings, they are dying of thirst and hunger. (Thus they later swoop down onto the final banquet)” (Bottéro, p. 192).

p. 187,
as flat as a roof:
“In this hot country, in which rain is quite rare, the roofs were, and still are, entirely flat, and serve as terraces” (Bottéro, p. 192).

p. 187,
a half mile away:
14 × 10
ninda
= 1,680 cubits = 2,520 feet.

p. 187,
For six days and seven nights, the mountain / would not release it:
Literally, “One day, a second day, Mount Nimush held the ship and would not release it. A third day, a fourth day, Mount Nimush held the ship and would not release it. A fifth day, a sixth day, Mount Nimush held the ship and would not release it.”

p. 188,
her necklace of lapis lazuli:
“A necklace with carved lapis lazuli fly beads, representing the dead offspring of the mother goddess Beletili/ Aruru” (Kovacs, p. 102).

p. 189,
how did it happen that you so recklessly / sent the Great Flood:
Here Ea, like Aruru a few lines above, seems to have forgotten that he and three other great gods collaborated in Enlil's decision. Perhaps Sîn-lëqi-unninni has used two different and conflicting traditions about Ea's involvement and Enlil's sole responsibility.

p. 190,
but be merciful, do not allow all men / to die because of the sins of some. / Instead of a flood, you should have sent / lions to decimate the human race, / or wolves, or a famine, or a deadly plague:
Literally, “Be lenient, lest he be destroyed; bear with him, lest [ … ]. Instead of sending the Flood, let a lion arise to diminish the human race. Instead of sending the Flood, let a wolf arise to diminish the human race. Instead of sending the Flood, let famine arise to destroy the land. Instead of sending the Flood, let pestilence arise to destroy the land.”

p. 190,
I only whispered it to a fence / and Utnapishtim happened to hear:
Literally, “I made a dream appear to Atrahasis, and thus he heard the secret of the gods.” “The poet betrays his source by calling his hero Atrahasis here [instead of Utnapishtim]” (Tournay and Shaffer, p. 239). “Ea defends himself against the charge that he broke the solemn oath not to speak to any human about the flood decided upon by Enlil: he did not ‘speak' to Utnapishtim, since he only ‘made a dream appear'; and if he did ‘speak,' it was to ‘his reed fence' and not to any human. Ea is the cleverest of the gods and, as such, is Jesuitical well
avant la lettre”
(Bottéro, p. 196). In
Atrahasis,
by contrast, he is completely straightforward: “Enki (=Ea) made his voice heard / And spoke to the great gods, / ‘I did it, in defiance of you! / I made sure life was preserved'” (tr. Dalley).

p. 191,
at the source of the rivers:
In an earthly paradise reminiscent of Eden, which was at the source of four rivers (Genesis 2:10-14). “This distant place” has a Greek echo as well, in
Works and Days,
ll. 168 ff. (Hesiod is speaking of the fourth age, the age of heroes or demigods):

p. 191,
How would they know that you deserve it? / First pass this test: Just stay awake / for seven days. Prevail against sleep, / and perhaps you will prevail against death:
Literally, “Come, don't sleep for six days and seven nights.”

p. 193,
Look down, friend, / count these loaves that my wife baked and put here / while you sat sleeping. This first one, rock-hard, / was baked seven days ago, this leathery one / was baked six days ago, and so on for all / the rest of the days you sat here sleeping. / Look. They are marked on the wall behind you:
Literally, “[Come,] Gilgamesh, count your loaves, and may [the days you slept] be made known to you. Your [first] loaf [is dried hard], the second is leathery, the third is soggy, the fourth has turned white, the fifth is spotted with mold, the sixth is fresh, the seventh was still baking on the coals when I touched you and you woke up.”

p. 196,
If you find this plant:
“These instructions are clearly abbreviated, since they omit most of the information that Gilgamesh needed in order to act as he did” (Dalley, p. 134).

p. 196,
Gilgamesh dug a pit on the shore / that led down into the Great Deep:
“GilgameÅ¡ digs a shallow pit in the beach and soon reaches the water table. The fact that he makes the hole on land, not at sea, becomes clearer later, when he complains that he cannot rediscover it because the tide will have washed away any trace. The water table is the uppermost level of the cosmic domain of Ea, which in Üta-napißti's realm is particularly accessible. Consequently the pit gives him immediate access to the subterranean Apsû. He dives down into the water, finds the plant but does not return the way he came. Instead he rises from the Apsû by way of the sea and, emerging just offshore from Ur-Å¡anabi, is carried back to land by the surf” (George,
BGE,
I, pp. 523-24).

p. 197,
If that succeeds:
I have followed an alternative reading of George's,
ßum-ma,
“if,” rather than
ßumßu,
“its (
or
his) name”: “If the old man grows young (again), / I will eat some myself” (George,
BGE,
I, p. 723).

p. 197,
At four hundred miles they stopped to eat, / at a thousand miles they pitched their camp:
Literally, “At 20
bër
(= 216 kilometers, or about 134 miles) they stopped to eat, at 30
bër
(= 324 km., 201 mi.) they pitched their camp.” Even though this is not explicitly a three-day march, the lines are a verbatim repetition of the march to the Cedar Forest, and I have kept the same distances.

p. 197,
it cast off its skin:
“This sudden sloughing is a symbol of immortality. The serpent was considered in the ancient Near East an animal of prolonged life, beneficent and healing, whence the emblem of the caduceus” (Tournay and Shaffer, p. 245).

p. 198,
a reptile:
Literally, “the lion of the ground,” an epithet for the snake.

p. 198,
I plucked it from the depths, and how could I ever / manage to find that place again? / And our little boat—we left it on the shore:
Literally, “Now the tide has been rising for twenty leagues. When I opened the channel, I left the tools there: how could I find a landmark? I left the boat on the shore, and I have come too far to go back (
or,
in George's interpretation: Had I only turned away and left the boat on the shore!).”

Bottéro, Jean,
L'Épopée de Gilgameß: Le grand homme qui ne voulait pas mourir,
Gallimard, 1992.

Dalley, Stephanie,
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh and Others,
Oxford University Press, 1989, revised edition 2000.

Ferry, David,
Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992.

Foster, Benjamin R.,
The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation, Analogues, Criticism,
Norton, 2001.

Gardner, John, and John Maier, with the assistance of Richard A. Henshaw,
Gilgamesh: Translated from the Sîn-leqi-unninnï version,
Knopf, 1984.

George, A. R.,
The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts,
2 vols., Oxford University Press, 2003.

George, Andrew,
The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian,
Penguin, 1999.

Kovacs, Maureen Gallery,
The Epic of Gilgamesh,
Stanford, 1989.

Sandars, N. K.,
The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Version with an Introduction,
Penguin, 1960, second revised edition 1972.

Schott, Albert,
Das Gilgamesch-Epos,
neu herausgegeben von Wolfram von Soden, 5th edition, Reclam, 1989.

Schrott, Raoul,
Gilgamesh: Epos,
Carl Hanser Verlag, 2001.

Speiser, E. A., in James B. Pritchard,
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament,
third edition, Princeton University Press, 1969.

Tigay, Jeffrey H.,
The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

Tournay, Raymond Jacques, O.P., and Aaron Shaffer,
L'Épopée de Gilgamesh,
Les Éditions du Cerf, 1998.

A
DAD

God of the storm.