The world’s earliest epic literature appears in Mesopotamia in the form of several cuneiform texts composed in the Sumerian language. Most scholars date them to the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2112-2004 bce) even though most of the texts detail the heroic exploits of much earlier kings and come from archives that date to a slightly later time (i. e., the Old Babylonian period, ca. 2003-1595 bce). These dates notwithstanding, we know that the genesis for Mesopotamian epic traditions is far more ancient because of several textual fragments from Abu Salabikh and Fara that relate to these epic traditions and date to the twenty-sixth century bce (Biggs 1974; Bing 1977).
The kings of the Ur III period, however, appear to have been the first to promote epic traditions widely. They probably did so because the glorification of previous heroes (each of whom was a ‘‘Lugal,’’ a Sumerian term for a military leader and king or ‘‘En,’’ a king with close ties to the cult) created a precedent for the glorification and support of their current regimes. They also legitimated their kingship at Ur by claiming ties to Uruk, a city that Sumerian tradition considered the seat of the first kings (Jacobsen 1939; Klein 1976). Moreover, two of the Ur III kings, Ur-Nammu (ca. 2112-2095 bce) and his son Shulgi (ca. 2094-2047 bce), were deified, and both claimed the epic hero Lugalbanda as their father and the goddess Ninsun as their mother, thus making the famed Gilgamesh their brother. Such claims provide additional evidence that the epics served ideological and propagandistic purposes (Michalowski 1988).
Early Sumerian epics, therefore, must be read on at least two levels: one that praises the heroic accomplishments of the ancient kings they name, and one that uses this hero paradigmatically in a ‘‘supra-historical role’’ to echo or justify the exploits of the reigning monarch (Alster 1974; Berlin 1983, but cf. Cooper 2001). A lack of sufficient information makes it impossible to ascertain to what degree any of the epics were adapted to meet the ideological needs of the kings under whom they were produced.
Enmerkar traditions
Two of the Sumerian epics probably date specifically to the reign of king Shulgi, even though they glorify an earlier deified king named Enmerkar (ca. 2800 bce) from Uruk and his war against the king of Aratta, a city near Hamadan in modern Iran (Majidzadeh 1976). It remains a matter of dispute whether the two Enmerkar epics should be read together as one poem or as two related, but separate poems (Wilcke 1969) analogous to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (Alster 1990, cf. Vanstiphout 2002, 2003).
The first of these epics, ‘‘Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta,’’ tells of how Enmerkar outwitted the king of Aratta in an effort to obtain tribute from him. After wooing to his side the king’s spouse, the goddess Inanna, Enmerkar is advised by the goddess to send a courier to Aratta to instruct its king to send luxury goods and ore to refurbish the temples of Uruk, Kullab, and Eridu. If he does not obey, Enmerkar warns, Aratta will be destroyed. The king of Aratta, realizing that Inanna is no longer protecting him from military threat, responds by saying that he will obey, but only if Enmerkar accepts a challenge of wits. Enmerkar is to send the king grain, not in tightly woven sacks, but in open nets. Enmerkar outwits the king in this seemingly impossible task by sending grain that has germinated. It thus holds together and does not slip through the mesh. The king then requests that Enmerkar send a scepter made of no known wood or ore. Enmerkar grows an exotic plant that yields him the needed scepter. Finally, the king asks him to send a champion to duel with an athlete from Aratta. The king stipulates that the champion must wear clothes decorated in a color unknown to humankind. Enmerkar’s champion is sent dressed in undyed cloth. Having outwitted the king at every turn, Enmerkar then threatens to annihilate Aratta by sending a written missive to the king. Since we are told that Enmerkar invented writing just for this purpose, we must again see this act as a demonstration of his superior intelligence. Having lost the battle of wits, the king then sends Enmerkar the tribute he desired.
The epic contains three features that remind us of the later rule of king Shulgi. The first is that of Aratta. Like Enmerkar, Shulgi’s long reign was marked by a huge territorial expansion, much of it into ancient Iran. The second is the goddess Inanna’s special relationship with Enmerkar. During the Ur III period the kings represented the god Dumuzi when performing the sacred marriage rite, and thus were regarded the husbands of Inanna. The third feature is the invention of writing, a detail that echoes Shulgi’s later and unique claim of mastery of the written arts.
The second tale belonging to this cycle of traditions, ‘‘Enmerkar and Ensukhesh-danna,’’ opens with a demand by Ensukheshdanna, the king of Aratta, that Enmerkar acknowledge him as the goddess Inanna’s preferred ruler of the land. When Enmerkar disobeys, Ensukheshdanna seeks the advice of his counselors. One of the counselors proposes that a magician from Aratta perform a spell that causes the milkgiving animals of Eresh to withhold their produce. When this is successful, two shepherd twins step in and request the aid of Utu, the sun-god. Utu responds, and it is decided that a fishing contest will be held to settle the issue of which king is superior, Enmerkar or Ensukheshdanna. Pitted in the contest are the magician, representing Aratta, and an old woman, representing Uruk. Though the magician is able to catch five creatures from the river, the woman catches larger ones, each of which devours the magician’s smaller catch. Enmerkar is recognized as superior, and therefore the favorite of Inanna, and the magician is drowned in the river.
Lugatbanda traditions
Two Sumerian epic poems involve a hero named Lugalbanda, the successor of Enmerkar. Though both Ur-Nammu and Shulgi claimed Lugalbanda as their father, the historical evidence for Lugalbanda, and it is meager, suggests that he reigned some time around 2800-2700 BCE. Like the Enmerkar tales, the plots of these two epics are so interconnected that many read one against the other as two parts of a longer epic tradition, even though they are the work of two different authors.
In the first, “Lugalbanda in Hurrumkura,’’ Aratta once again takes center stage, this time in a war waged by Enmerkar. Eight brothers are selected to lead the war, the youngest of them being the future king Lugalbanda. When Lugalbanda falls ill while en route to Aratta, his brothers leave him in a cave along with some food; the story goes into great length to describe the food. When he recovers, he receives divine favor after showing his great piety through prayer and food offerings (here again the food is described in detail). He then leaves the cave and makes his way back to his brothers and the war, overcoming a number of other obstacles along the way.
The second related epic, ‘‘Lugalbanda and Enmerkar’’ (also referred to as ‘‘Enmerkar and the Imdugud [or Thunder] Bird’’), was perhaps used as political propaganda to flatter envoys fTom ancient Iran when visiting the court of Ur (Jacobsen 1987). It tells of Lugalbanda’s encounter with the mythical Anzu bird, a giant raptor with special powers whose very flight frightens wild oxen and mountain goats. Upon finding the bird’s nest while the bird is hunting, Lugalbanda feeds its young and straightens its nest. When the bird returns he is so taken with Lugalbanda’s deeds and smooth talking that he offers him a number of special gifts, including wealth and strength in battle, all of which Lugalbanda refuses, with one exception - the ability to run quickly. The bird grants him this gift but tells him that he must tell no one how he received it. Lugalbanda then speeds to Aratta, where his brothers have been waging an unsuccessful year of siege. When king Enmerkar requests that someone embark alone on a dangerous journey to Uruk and obtain advice on how to proceed from the goddess Inanna, Lugalbanda steps up to the challenge. He races off and, in one day, arrives at Uruk where Inanna reveals to him how to defeat Aratta. Through a ritual act of what appears to be sympathetic magic, she advises Enmerkar and his troops to catch and eat a certain fish associated with Aratta. They eventually do so and Aratta is defeated. Its precious stones and raw materials are transported back to Uruk.
Epic ofShulgi
A more straightforward epic in honor of King Shulgi appears in the form of another poem sometimes classified separately as a ‘‘hymn’’ because of the hymns it contains. It is roughly six hundred lines long and referred to by scholars as ‘‘Shulgi the Avenger’’ (Westenholz 1983). In this text, which opens with a hymn in honor of King Shulgi and an account of Shulgi’s miraculous birth and ascension to the throne, the king decides to avenge the death of his father, Ur-Nammu, by annihilating the Gutians who had killed him while waging a raid against Sumer. Before launching his campaign, Shulgi receives a dream from the god of dreams, Zaqar, in which the gods of Sumer promise to aid him in a battle. After the successful battle, Shulgi travels to Sumer’s major sanctuaries, sharing with them some of the items obtained from the war. There then follows a long hymn placed in the mouth of the goddess Inanna praising Shulgi as a lover. The epic then closes with another hymn, again in praise of Shulgi. Though often not classified as epic because it praises a contemporary ruler, ‘‘Shulgi the Avenger’’ underscores how blurry the boundaries of ancient literary genres can be, and anticipates an important direction that Mesopotamian epics will take at a later date (see below).
Gilgamesh epic traditions
Gilgamesh (originally Bilgamesh), the famed king of Uruk and subject of a much later and longer series of epics written in the Akkadian language, appears first in a number of Sumerian epics. Though we cannot place the Sumerian epics in a certain chronological order, their transmission, if not also their compositions, probably also date to the reigns of Ur-Nammu and Shulgi since it is they who made the widest use of Gilgamesh in their royal ideologies (Falkenstein 1951; Klein 1976). Recall that both Ur-Nammu and Shulgi claimed Gilgamesh as their brother. Such a claim, however, does not fit well with what we know about Gilgamesh as a historical figure, since Gilgamesh appears to have been king of Uruk around 2700 bce, roughly six hundred years before the Ur III kings. Moreover, about one hundred years later his name appears in a cuneiform list of gods. Thus, even though Ur-Nammu and Shulgi certainly helped to popularize the heroic stories of Gilgamesh, and possibly may be credited with composing some or all of these epics, his fame certainly preceded them by several centuries.
Ironically, his fame also surpassed and long outlived them, and indeed all of Sumerian civilization, since epics about Gilgamesh continued to be written, copied, and even translated into other languages until the second century bce (Tigay 1982). The enormous popularity and longevity of the Gilgamesh tradition are probably related to its tragic vision (Jacobsen 1990), its themes of mortality and the overcoming of the fear of death which all of the Gilgamesh traditions have in common - themes that hold a universal and timeless significance (Mills 2002).
The first of the Gilgamesh Sumerian epics, ‘‘Gilgamesh and Agga,’’ relates the story of a siege upon Uruk by Agga the king of Kish that Gilgamesh brought about when refusing to acknowledge Agga’s lordship over Uruk. Though the elders of Uruk advise Gilgamesh not to rebel against Agga, the younger men of the city support him, and so Gilgamesh asserts his political independence from Kish. This incites Agga’s ire, and he and his army quickly come downstream in boats and lay siege to Uruk. After one of Gilgamesh’s contingents fails to break up the siege, Gilgamesh sends his servant Enkidu to the front lines. Enkidu is successful and drives Agga’s soldiers back to their boats. It is there that Enkidu captures Agga. Gilgamesh has Agga released, however, as an act of political kindness, and in repayment for a kind act Agga once did.
In ‘‘Gilgamesh and the land of the living’’ (also known as ‘‘Gilgamesh and Huwawa’’), the king sets out to establish his name for all eternity by searching out and destroying Huwawa (known later as Humbamba), a monstrous semi-divine guardian of the cedar forests. With the help of seven constellations shown to Gilgamesh by the sun-god Utu, he and his army navigate their way to the cedar forest, crossing seven mountain ranges along the way. When he arrives at the forest, his men begin logging its lofty cedars while he naps. The logging disturbs Huwawa, who comes to the camp hurling his frightening auras upon the men. This wakes Enkidu, who in turn wakes Gilgamesh, who quickly attempts to flatter Huwawa. After disarming the monster, Gilgamesh eventually enters Huwawa’s home, and through a ruse suggested to him by the god Enki, tricks Huwawa out of his auras of power by persuading him to exchange them for a marital alliance with his sisters, and for a number of luxury items. Once he is stripped of his powerful auras, Gilgamesh takes him captive. When Huwawa calls to the god Utu for help, Gilgamesh shows clemency and releases him. This does not sit well with Enkidu, however, who in a moment of anger and fear cuts off Huwawa’s head. The two then bring the head in a leather sack back to the god Enlil, thinking that it will please him. Enlil is enraged, however, and promptly removes the auras of power from Gilgamesh and bestows them upon a number of places and things (e. g., field, river, lion, woods, etc.). The remaining auras he keeps for himself.
The Sumerian epic ‘‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World,’’ tells the story of the goddess Inanna’s request that someone craft her a bed from a huluppu tree. Apparently, she has planted the tree in the hope of some day making the bed, but it has since become home to a serpent, thunderbird, and female demon. She calls upon Gilgamesh to help her, which he does by killing the creatures and felling the tree. With some of the extra wood he makes two playthings, a pukku and mekku (both of which defy precise interpretation). One day, while he is playing with his friends, the two items accidentally fall into the Underworld through a hole in the ground. When his friend Enkidu offers to retrieve them, Gilgamesh warns him not to associate with the dead. Enkidu fails in this endeavor, and hence becomes trapped in the Underworld forever. The gods then help Gilgamesh to raise Enkidu’s ghost, who then describes for him the bleak Underworld. He tells him, for example, that those who have died in fire do not enter the Underworld, and thus cannot receive offerings, and that Amorite tribes harass the shades of the people of Sumer and Akkad. He also instructs Gilgamesh to make statues ofhis ancestors, and remarks upon the importance of providing grave offerings for one’s deceased parents, since those who die childless never receive offerings. This news, in turn, informs Gilgamesh how to prepare for his own death, and thus serves to remind him of his own mortality. If this text was composed, as some have suggested (George 1999), after the Ur III Dynasty fell to Amorite invaders, Enkidu’s message would have been an especially powerful means of registering resentment against the new regime and of underscoring the importance of connecting to one’s ancestors through proper ritual.
There also are a number of fragments that appear to belong to other epic traditions involving Gilgamesh. The fragments of the texts ‘‘The death of Gilgamesh’’ and ‘‘The dream of Gilgamesh’’ are believed to belong to a single epic and concern the death and burial of the famed king of Uruk. The combined tale opens with a lament for Gilgamesh who is lying on his deathbed. While awaiting death, he receives a dream in which he sees the divine assembly debating whether Gilgamesh will become immortal or descend into the Underworld (he is after all semi-divine, the son of a goddess). They decide in the end that he should die like a mortal, but that for his heroic achievements he will become judge over the shades in the Underworld. They also decree that his death will be memorialized in an annual festival of ghosts in which torches are lit and wrestling matches occur. After a break in the text, we next find Gilgamesh diverting the Euphrates river from its natural course in order to build his tomb at a divinely selected location on the riverbed. A macabre passage then follows which describes how his wives, musician, steward, servants, barber, and others of his retinue were laid to rest in the tomb to accompany their king to the Underworld. When Gilgamesh is placed in the tomb, the river is again diverted so as to conceal its location forever, and the people of Uruk mourn. The text then concludes by underscoring the importance of making statues in honor of the dead and of pronouncing their names, both of which allow the dead to live on in the memory of others.
The third epic exists only in poorly preserved fragments and its meaning is unclear. Typically entitled ‘‘Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven’’ it is apparently a precursor to the sixth tablet of the later Akkadian Gilgamesh epic (see below). In it, and in a passage that reminds the reader of the sacred marriage rite, Inanna makes a series of sexual advances toward Gilgamesh, inviting him to become her husband. When he refuses she convinces the sky god An to unleash the colossal Bull of Heaven against Gilgamesh. With Enkidu’s help, however, he kills the bull and distributes its meat to Uruk’s poor.
Epic ofSargon
A final example of the Sumerian epic tradition that dates to the Old Babylonian period concerns the first king of the Akkadian dynasty, Sargon ‘‘the Great’’ (ca. 2334-2279 bce). According to this epic, Sargon has a dream while serving in the court of Ur-Zababa at Kish. In his dream he sees Ur-Zababa drown in a river of blood, an act that in essence ensures that Sargon would become king. Upon hearing about the dream Ur-Zababa secretly prepares to have Sargon burned alive in a furnace. When this is unsuccessful Ur-Zababa places a secret missive in a clay envelope and sends it by the hand of Sargon himself to Lugalzagesi, king of Uruk. The message instructs the king to kill Sargon. Sargon, however, is able to read the cuneiform document and thus escapes his intended fate. Some have seen the episode involving the letter as a subtle allusion to the invention of cuneiform referenced in the Sumerian epic ‘‘Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta’’ (Alster 1995). The end of the story is unfortunately missing, but most scholars assume it related the ascension of Sargon to the throne. The epic shares features with a number of other ancient Near Eastern stories including the biblical stories of Joseph (Gen. 39-41) and of Uriah (2 Sam. 11: 14-15) (Cooper and Heimpel 1983; Alster 1987). The latter account tells how King David sent Uriah to his death by his own hand, a motif that appears also in the Iliad’s account of Bellerophontes and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
World History
