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