Post on 31-Jan-2021
Lecture 3
The Epic of Gilgamesh memory — representation
HUM 101, September 30, 2019
—Edw. Mitchell
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Major cities of the Sumerian–Akkadian-Assyrian eras
Austen Henry LayardHormuzd Rassam
first to excavate ancient Nineveh
Mesopotamian fashion
Henry Moore 1931
Barbara Hepworth 1929
Alberto Giacometti ca. 1930
decoding the tablets cuneiform
Rawlinson and the Behistun inscriptions
1872 — George Smith discovers the story of the Great Flood
the epic
epos — song-poem
poiesis — making / creating / bringing into being
epic poem — song-poem story (which brings something into being)
Epic - Representation - Memory
I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh.
He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things…
He went on a long journey … he engraved on a stone the whole story.
He said to Enkidu, 'I have not established my name stamped on bricks as my destiny decreed;
I will go to the country where the cedar is felled.
I will set up my name in the place where the names of famous men are written …’
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Representing Totality
Inside the walls: food - shelter - authority order > civilization
In Uruk he built walls, a great rampart, and the temple of blessed Eanna. Look at it still
today… it has no equal.
inside the walls: an ideal of order
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Outside the walls?
Otherness • mythic space
outside the walls: disorder
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outside:
Liminal [threshold / eșik] space: where boundaries are crossed and re-crossed.
>> real or dream? god or monster? good or bad?
Oppositions (mythic pre-conditions) in Gilgamesh:
• Nature < > Culture (beast < > human)
• Order < > Disorder (proper rule < > oppressive rule)
• Life < > Death (immortality / memory < > mortality / forgetting)
These oppositions are represented in 3 major transformations.
These transformations take place outside the city walls — in the liminal, threshold space.
• Enkidu – wild man/beast transformed into a human (civilized). Raw ➞Cooked.
• Gilgamesh — god/king ➞ wild man. He leaves Uruk. Cooked➞Raw. Epic journey.
• Gilgamesh — wanderer / stranger ➞proper King. He accepts his mortality and returns to Uruk as king.
He was innocent of mankind; he knew nothing of the cultivated land.
'Enkidu, eat bread, it is the staff of life; drink the wine, it is the custom of the land.'
the transformation of Enkidu
knowledge / death / memory
Enkidu’s dream
There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat … … they see no light, they sit in darkness.
I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth,
their crowns put away for ever…
I have wept for Enkidu day and night. I thought he would come back because of my weeping.
What my brother is now, that shall I be when I am dead.
… that is why I have travelled here in search of Utnapishtim.
I want to question him, concerning the living and the dead.
Epic Journey: from king to ?
epic journey
land of Dilmun
garden of the sun
(and Utnapishtim)garden of the gods
and Siduri
waters of death
wearing the skins of beasts and eating their flesh
Order (again)
Gilgamesh: ’Urshanabi, climb up on to the wall of Uruk, inspect its foundation terrace, and examine the brickwork; see if it is not of burnt bricks; and did not the seven wise men lay these foundations?'
ReproachWorks2019