Many of us have read or heard the story of Abraham, the
founding patriarch of Christianity and Judaism. A relative few have read or
heard the story of Gilgamesh, the heroic patriarch of ancient Sumer, the
forerunner of pagan Babylonian and Assyrian culture.
Experts reckon that the historical Gilgamesh lived sometime
around 2700 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Uruk. It is reckoned that Abraham lived sometime
around 2000 B.C., and came from the Sumerian city-state of Ur. Uruk and Ur were
only about twenty miles away from each other in the southeastern part of the
Euphrates River in ancient Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).
The world that Abraham was born into was very much like the
culture found in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh. Today the ruins of Ur
have a huge ziggurat, a pagan temple for the worship of the Sumerian gods. These gods and goddesses are described in the
epic poem Gilgamesh, and they become part of the story.
Archeologists have found clay tablets with cuneiform
writing that have excerpts of the Epic
of Gilgamesh that date to about 2100 B.C.
A reasonably complete version of the story of Gilgamesh dates to
1700 B.C. Experts state that it is the
oldest written story-book in the world. Tradition has it that Moses wrote the first
five books of the Bible in circa 1200 B.C., and many portions appear to have
been written later. (I use the terms Gilgamesh and the Epic of
Gilgamesh here interchangeably).
Abraham's story is found in the book of Genesis, the first
book of the Bible. His story spans 15 chapters of Genesis, and is written in
Hebrew. The story of Gilgamesh is found on 12 clay tablets (called books),
written in the ancient Akkadian language with cuneiform script, and earlier
portions written in Sumerian cuneiform.
The name of Abraham's father was Terah, and he lived in Ur.
In the end of the Book of Joshua, it states that Abraham's father Terah served
other gods, and that his kinsmen also worshiped other gods. This is the world
described in Gilgamesh's story. Let's try to understand the world that Abraham was born into and grew up
in by looking at the world described in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh and His World
Gilgamesh was the king of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh was both an historical king and a
legendary heroic ruler whose myths are told in the epic poem of his name.
Uruk was a real ancient city-state whose ruins have been
excavated by English and German archeologists since the 1850s. Many of the characteristics of Uruk described
in the Epic of Gilgamesh have been verified by archeological evidence. The ruins of Uruk are near the present-day
settlement of Warka in Iraq.
In Aramaic and Hebrew, Uruk is spelled Erech. Uruk is the
Sumerian form of the name. The Bible
refers to Uruk as either Erech or Arach,
depending on the translation. In the
book of Genesis, it states that early in the history of man, Nimrod the first
conqueror established Uruk as one of three cities in lower Mesopotamia--the
other two cities being Babel and Akkad.
In the epic poem, Gilgamesh is a towering character who does
enormous deeds and leaves a mythology in the process. He is the son of a great king of Uruk, and
his mother is the Sumerian goddess Ninsun, who is known for her wisdom. He has regular contact with the sensual
goddess Ishtar, and at one point she falls in love with him. He is confronted with a powerful Wild Man in
the forest, and Gilgamesh gains the help of a priestess in Uruk's Temple of Ishtar to tame the man in a unusual
manner. Gilgamesh is described as a powerful warrior king and a wise ruler; he
fights monsters, leads a huge building program in Uruk, and is loved by his
soldiers--who call him the protector of the people.
But at a certain point his best friend dies, and his
friend's spirit is sent forever to the Sumerian underworld. In the middle of grief, Gilgamesh asks the
question: "Must I die too?"
This question leads Gilgamesh to the quest of his life, as he seeks to see if
he can overcome death.
The prologue of the epic says of Gilgamesh:
"He had seen everything, and experienced all emotions,
from exaltation to despair, had been granted a vision
into the great mystery, the secret places,
the primeval days before the Flood. He had journeyed
to the edge of the world and made his way back, exhausted
but whole."
In his search for immortality, Gilgamesh hears the story of
the great Flood that is quite similar to Noah and the Ark. And when he obtains
something that could possibly give him immortality, Gilgamesh is threatened by
a snake that could take it away from him.
A symbolic image similar to the Garden of Eden.
Gods and Goddesses of Gilgamesh's World
There was a pantheon of gods and goddesses in the ancient
Sumerian city-states. Often, a
city-state would have a patron deity. In the case of Gilgamesh, the patron
deity of Uruk was the goddess Ishtar, and also the god Anu also had an
important temple there.
The triad of supreme gods who ruled over mankind, the
universe, and the pantheon of Mesopotamian
gods was Anu, Enlil, and Ea (Enki in Sumerian).
* Anu--chief god; father
a founder of the reigning divine dynasty; god of the sky; son of the first pair
of gods, Ansar and Kisar; father of Enlil and the goddess Aruru; major temple
to Anu in Uruk.
* Enlil--god of
earth, wind, and air; in later years he replaced Anu as chief god; grandfather
of Ishtar; he is generally favorable towards mankind, though can be irritable
and capricious; he sent down the Great Flood; he was patron of the city of
Nippur in Mesopotamia.
* Ea--god of
intellect, wisdom, magic, and medicine; with help of the goddess Aruru, Ea
created mankind; patron of the arts; the cleverest of the gods; well-disposed
towards mankind; god of waters and the deep; patron of the city of Eridu.
Two goddesses of note were Aruru and Ishtar:
* Aruru--mother
goddess; sister (wife) of Enlil; lover
of Anu; with the help of Ea, created mankind; known as "the Lady of the
Gods;" in the Gilgamesh story, she creates the wild man Enkidu from clay
and in the image of chief god Anu and the warrior god Ninurta.
* Ishtar (Sumerian
Inanna)--goddess of love, sexuality, and fertility; also goddess of war; often
called Queen of Heaven; daughter of moon
god Sin; consort of chief god Anu; patron of Uruk, Gilgamesh's city.
Other gods of Sumerian regions:
* Shamash--the sun
god; god of justice, a law-giver; patron of travelers and dream interpreters;
also concerned with fertility and warrior spirit; cult centers in the
city-states of Sippar and Larsa.
* Sin (Sumerian
Nanna)--the god of the moon; also god of fertility; father of Ishtar and
Shamash; chief temple in Ur.
* Adad--god of
storms.
* Ennugi--constable
of the gods; also concerned with irrigation and inspection of canals.
* Nergel--god of
plague and war; marries goddess Ereshkigal and together they govern the
underworld.
* Ninurta--chamberlain
of the gods; also god of irrigation; considered a warrior god.
* Sumaquan--god of
the wilderness; protector of animals; god of cattle.
* Endusugga--with
Nindukugga, Sumerian gods living in the underworld.
* Hanish--divine
herald of storms and bad weather
* Namtar--god of evil
fate and destiny; a demon of the underworld; chief minister of underworld
goddess Erishkigal.
* Ningizzida--god of
fertility; "Lord of the Tree of Life"; god of healing; with Tammuz
guards the gate to heaven; temple for him in city-state of Lagash.
* Shulpae--god of
feasts and feasting.
Other goddesses of Sumerian regions:
* Ereshkigal--Queen
of the Underworld, which she rules with husband Nergel; she is sister of
goddess Ishtar
* Antu--wife of chief
god Anu.
* Aya--goddess of
dawn; wife of sun god Shamash.
* Ninsun--minor
Sumerian goddess; known for wisdom; mother of Gilgamesh.
* Shiduri--goddess of
brewing; keeps a tavern at the edge of the world; known for wisdom.
* Mammetum--ancestral
goddess responsible for destinies.
* Ningal--wife of the
moon god, and mother of the sun.
* Ninlil--wife of
Enlil; mother of the moon god; goddess of heaven, earth, and air; worshiped
with Enlil in Nippur.
* Nisaba--goddess of
grain.
The people of Uruk, Ur, and the rest of Mesopotamia would
pray to their gods, worship them, offer up sacrifices to the gods, beg for their protection, build temples for
them, institute priesthoods to handle formal rituals, and tell of the
mythologies of their gods. Below are two
mythologies of their gods that we have in existence.
--The Sumerian Creation Myth.. According to their legends, in the beginning
there was the Abyss (called Apsu), which was the primeval sea. Sweet waters, bitter waters, and a cloud
combined with lightening, and the first gods were born from the cloud. The gods
Ansar and Kisar had two sons, the chief god Anu and Ea, the god of creation. Anu became the father of the god Enlil and
goddess Aruru. Enlil became the father of the moon god Sin, who became the
father of the sun god Shamash and the goddess Ishtar.
From the Abyss was born earth and the cosmic mountain of
heaven. Anu took control of the
firmament, and became the god of the sky, and father of the gods in heaven.
Enlil took control of earth, and became the god of earth and the winds. Ea became god of the waters. These three, Anu, Enlil, and Ea became the
three gods who governed the universe.
The god Ea and the goddess Aruru worked together to create
mankind. Aruru made man from clay in the image of the god Anu. Ea then sent mankind the Seven Sages to help
men form the first seven cities in Mesopotamia. The Seven Sages helped lay the
foundation for the wall around Uruk.
The gods had to defeat the powers of chaos so that there
would be order in the universe. The
young god Marduk defeated Kingu, the champion of chaos. Marduk later became the
chief god of Babylon.
So the seven principle gods and goddesses of Sumerian lands
were Anu, Enlil, Ea, Aruru, Ishar, Shamash, and Sin.
The Sumerian cosmology had a lot in common with the
cosmology of the early Hebrews, a major difference being that the Hebrews had
one Supreme God, and no other gods. (For
a diagram of the ancient Hebrew cosmology, see The New American Bible
translation.) The Sumerians recognized
the firmament (ruled by the god Anu), earth (ruled by the god Enlil), and the
waters (ruled by the god Ea). High in
the firmament was the heaven of the gods.
The sun (ruled by Shamash) and the moon (ruled by Sin) passed every
day.
Below the earth was the underworld, a nether lands or hell,
where all mortals went to when they died.
The underworld was ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal and her husband
Nergel. (The Hebrew underworld was
called the Sheol.) Below the underworld was the Abyss. Under the earth was a
passage that the sun passed through every night when it set in the west; the
sun would pass through this passage and come out at the dawn in the east. In the east was an earthly paradise of the
gods, called Dilmun. In the west was a
huge cedar forest.
--The Story of the Flood. In a time before Gilgamesh lived, the story
says there was a great flood that nearly wiped out all of mankind. The story is described in the Epic of
Gilgamesh. I've extracted this rendering of the story from Stephen
Mitchell's translation of Gilgamesh, as well as the Assyrian International News
Agency translation.
Earth was teeming with people. Mankind was making a huge clamor, and the
great god Enlil was aroused and angered by it.
He said to the council of the gods, "The uproar of mankind is
intolerable and sleep is no longer possible because of the babel." So five gods agreed in secret to destroy all
mankind. These five were the three
supreme gods, Anu, Enlil, and Ea, as well as Ninurta, the chamberlain of the
gods, and Ennugi, constable of the gods, who is also the caretaker of the
canals. Enlil said he would do the deed
by a great flood.
Ea, the wisest of the gods and co-creator of mankind, had second thoughts
about this huge flood. He gave a dream
to the king of Shurrupak, with a forewarning of the flood. Shurrupak was a city-state about twenty miles
north of Uruk. The king's name was
Utnapishtim. The god Ea told Utnapishtim
to build a huge boat, and take pairs of all living creatures into the
boat. And that he and his family should
be in the boat when the flood begins. So
this sounds like an earlier version of Noah's Ark.
The god Ea specified that the great boat should be square in
shape and have a vaulted roof. Each side
would be 120 cubits. There would be six
decks below, and seven decks in all.
Utnapishtim was worried as to what he should tell the people as he was
building the boat. Ea said that Utnapishtim should tell them that the god Enlil
had a personal wrath against him.
Utnapishtim built the great boat. The New Year's celebration had begun, and it
would be seven days of feasting and merry-making. The sun god Shamash ordained that the storms
of the flood would begin at the end of
the New Year's celebration. On the
seventh day, Utnapishtim anointed himself and put his family and some workmen
on the boat. The animals were already
loaded.
The rider of the storm began the rain. Then it thundered. Adad, the god of storms, began to ride the
storm. The gods Shulat and Hanish, heralds of bad weather, led on. Adad turned daylight into darkness. The gods of the abyss rose up. The underworld god Nergel pulled out the dam
of the nether land waters. Ninurta threw
down the dykes. The seven judges of hell, the Annunaki, held up their
torches, for many would come to the underworld nether lands that day.
It rained so hard that brother could not see brother. The
tempest raged, and the fury destroyed houses and buildings. For seven days and nights the storm came
down. It drowned every man, woman, and
child on earth.
Even the gods were afraid, and they made their way up to the
highest heaven. Ishtar, the Queen of
Heaven, spoke in the council of the gods that she regretted ever allowing man
to commit evil, and for commanding that there
be wars. The gods of heaven and hell wept and covered their mouths.
On the seventh day the rain stopped. Utnapishtim opened the hatch of the boat, and
he stepped on the deck. Everywhere was
water. Mankind had been turned into
clay. Finally the boat grounded on a
mountaintop, Mt. Nimush. The boat was
grounded for seven days. Utnapishtim let go a dove, but it came back for it
could find no resting place. The next
day he let go a swallow, but it came back for it could find no resting
place. On the third day, he let go a
raven. The waters had receded. The bird found food and a resting place, and
did not come back to the boat.
Utnapishtim offered the gods a sacrifice and poured a
libation on the mountain. He set up numerous cauldrons, and lit wood, reeds,
cedar, and myrtle. The gods smelled the
sweet fragrance, and gathered over the sacrifice. The goddess Aruru said, "All ye gods
should gather around the sacrifice, except Enlil. Without reflection, he brought this flood and
destroyed my children."
Finally, the god Enlil came to the area and saw the
boat. He was enraged. This meant there were some people still
alive. The chamberlain god Ninurta said
that Enlil should ask Ea, the god of wisdom, for an answer. Ea scolded Enlil for bringing down the
flood. He asked why Enlil could not have
put on mankind lions, wolves, a famine, or a pestilence. Those would not have
brought on total destruction of mankind.
Ea said to Enlil:
"Lay upon the sinner his sin;
Lay upon the criminal his crime;
Punish him a little when he breaks loose;
Do not drive him too hard or he perishes."
Enlil went to the boat, and took the hands of Utnapishtim and his wife. They kneeled before the god. Enlil declared that he would take Utnapishtim
and his wife to the earthly paradise of the gods, called Dilmun. There, Enlil would make Utnapishtim immortal,
and part of the assembly of gods.
So these were the gods that the people of Abraham's city
knew about and worshiped. The people of
Ur had a huge temple (ziggurat) to the moon god Sin. There is evidence suggested on Wikipedia that
there was some human sacrifice at ancient Ur.
A closer look at this evidence would be needed. At any rate, this was the world that Abraham
grew up in.
Religious Cult Practices of Gilgamesh's World
Stewart Easton, in his textbook on Western History, reports
that the city-god of a Sumerian city was the official owner and ruler of the
city. In a city like Uruk, the goddess
Ishtar would be owner of the city, and the god Anu would be the secondary. There was a huge temple there to Ishtar, and
another temple to Anu. The king of Uruk
would do as Ishtar wished, and so would the priestly class and ordinary people. The king would depend on the priests to
interpret Ishtar’s wishes.
Below is a listing of ten major city-states in Sumer, with
the patron gods and goddesses of the city:
Cult Centers of Sumerian Gods
In Ten City-States:
Uruk--the sensual goddess Ishtar; also to the sky god Anu; one of three supreme gods
Ur--the moon god Sin
Nippur--the god Enlil; god of the earth; one of the three
supreme gods.
Kish--the god Zabada, a warrior god; also the goddess
Inanna.
Shuruppak--the goddess Ninlil, a nature goddess.
Eridu--the god Ea; god of water and wisdom; one of three
supreme gods
Larsa and Sippar--the sun god Shamash; god of justice;
lawgiver
Lagash-- Ningizzida, god of fertility; "Lord of the
Tree of Life"; god of healing
Babylon--the god Marduk
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, characters sacrifice
animals and grain to the gods. They
offer up fragrant incense to the gods.
This is done at the temple, and other places where people go. There is no mention of human sacrifice in the
epic, but we know that human sacrifice to the gods occurred at times in
Mesopotamia.
The kings were the earthly representatives of the gods. The priests would preside over ritual at the
temples. They would also gauge the will
of the gods through dream interpretation, observing the stars and heavenly
bodies, or examining the livers of dead animals. It was man’s purpose to serve the gods. So news that came from the temple affected
the everyday citizens of Mesopotamia.
In Gilgamesh, the characters ask for help from their patron
gods and goddesses, and they interpret good fortune as help from their
deities. Likewise they are concerned
about angering the gods. For instance,
a series of slights to Ishtar get Gilgamesh in trouble, and the interpretation
of his friend’s death is that they had angered the gods.
The practices at the temple involving the priestesses should
be mentioned. The priestess group at the
temple would engage in sex for payment with any man who would provide the
coin. The coins were considered a temple
revenue, and the priestesses were considered to be doing the work for honor of
the god or goddess.
This same practice occurred in Judea in the pagan
temples. And the priestess groups were
called in the Bible: temple prostitutes, harlots, and strumpets.
The “Father of History” goes further. Greek historian Herodotus says this about the
practice at the temple in Babylon in the 5th century B.C.:
“Every woman in the country must once in her life sit down
at the temple of Ishtar and have intercourse with a stranger…The men pass and
make their choice. A woman who has once
taken her seat is not allowed to return home until one of the strangers throws
a silver coin into her lap and takes her with him beyond the holy ground. When
he throws the coin he says these words: ‘May the goddess Mylitta make you
prosper. (Ishtar and Aphrodite is called Mylitta by the Assyrians.) The silver
coin may be of any size; it cannot be refused, for that is forbidden by law,
since once thrown it is sacred. The woman goes with the first man who throws
the coin, and refuses no one. After the
intercourse, she is made holy in the eyes of the goddess, and she goes
home. Afterwards, no amount of money can
buy her favors.”
The Afterlife in Gilgamesh's World
The underworld of the ancient Sumerians was called
Irkalla. It was the palace of the Queen
of Darkness, the goddess Ereshkigal.
This underworld is called the netherworld in some phraseology, and hell
in some translations. Ereshkigal ruled
the underworld along with her husband, the god Nergal. At the feet of Ereshkigal was the minor
goddess Belit-Sheri who kept the book of life and of the dead. The seven judges of the underworld were a
group of gods called the Anunnaki.
Upon death, Sumerians believed their spirit became a
ghostlike entity, called a Gidim. Only a
few mortals escaped this and were promoted to the assembly of gods. The underworld was very unpleasant. The spirits squatted in darkness, with dirt
as their food and clay as their drink. They were dressed in garments of feathers,
bird-like. They were trapped there, and could not return to earth.
In the underworld there was a pile of crowns. Every dead king of the world, except a few,
resided in the underworld. And too, the high priests, acolytes, priests
of incantation and of ecstasy, and the servers of the temple were there. All in this miserable existence.
Two kings are mentioned in the epic as having escaped the
underworld and having been admitted to the assembly of gods. These are Utnapishtim, the king of Shurrupak,
and Gilgamesh's father, Lugulbanda, the king of Uruk. In later writings, Gilgamesh himself is admitted to the assembly
of gods, though in the epic Gilgamesh descended into the underworld.
One text about Gilgamesh and the underworld, called Tablet
XII, gives more information about the Sumerian afterlife from Gilgamesh's
friend Enkidu. One must not cause
attention to oneself in the underworld or it will arouse the "Cry of the
Dead." Enkidu says that vermin
devour his body. Also, the more sons one has, the better the situation in the
underworld. And the dead who are worst
off are those who left no mourners. Enkidu reported earlier being accosted by a
being that had the head of a man, body of a lion, wings of an eagle, and talons
of an eagle. The being sunk his claws
into Enkidu's hair, and transformed his arms into wings with feathers.
The ancient Hebrew concept of the afterlife was called the
Sheol, and it was also an underworld or netherworld. In their cosmology, it was located beneath
the earth. It is frequently mentioned in
the Book of Psalms, for instance. It was not as miserable as Irkalla of the
Sumerians, but things were very quiet there, and the spirits of the dead were
like shadows. Both the righteous and the
unrighteous were sent to the Sheol, upon death.
The Ancient City-State of Uruk and its Landmarks
In the Prologue of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient writer
says of the city of Uruk that:
Gilgamesh… “had restored the holy Eanna Temple and the
massive wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal. See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the
sun. Climb the stone staircase, more
ancient than the mind can imagine, approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar,
a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty; walk on the wall of Uruk,
follow its course around the city, inspect its mighty foundations, examine its
brickwork, how masterfully it is built; observe the land it encloses: the palm
trees, the gardens, the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops
and marketplaces, the houses the public squares. Find the cornerstone and under it the copper
box that is marked with his name. Unlock
it. Open the lid. Take out the tablet of lapis lazuli. Read how Gilgamesh suffered all and
accomplished all.”
Well that is quite a story about the city of Uruk isn’t
it. Is any of it true? We’ll see.
What was it like to live there?
What were its people like?
In the epic, a temple priestess speaks of Uruk with these
terms:
“You will see the city with its massive wall, you will see
the young men dressed in their splendor, in the finest linen and embroidered
wool, brilliantly colored, with fringed shawls and wide belts. Every day is a
festival in Uruk, with people singing and dancing in the streets, musicians
playing their lyres and drums, the lovely priestesses standing before the
temple of Ishtar, chatting and laughing, flushed with sexual joy, and ready to
serve men’s pleasure, in honor of the goddess, so that even old men are aroused
from their beds.”
The Encyclopedia Britannica online reports that Uruk was one
the greatest of the Sumerian cities, and was enclosed by a brickwork wall that
was 6 miles in circumference. The Britannica also says that urban life in Uruk
in 3000 B.C. was more developed than any other Mesopotamian city. This was about the time the historical King
Gilgamesh lived. Also, archeologists have found amulets and personal seals that
show great prosperity, brilliant miniature metal craftsmanship, and the generous
use of gold, silver, and copper. The Britannica
reports that there were two ziggurats in
Uruk, one to the sky god Anu, crowned with its White Temple on top. The other ziggurat was the Eanna (built to
the “Queen of the Sky,” in earlier times called the goddess Inanna, and Ishtar
by 1800 B.C.).
In his notes, translator Stephen Mitchell quotes top experts
saying that archeological excavations show that the wall around Uruk had a
perimeter of six miles in circa 2800 B.C.
Also that in 3000 B.C., the city
of Uruk probably had no equal in size and wealth. Earlier, in 3400 B.C., Uruk
was the largest urban settlement up to that time.
Mitchell reports these experts as saying that the
wall-enclosed territory of Uruk was 2.1 square miles in area—huge for its
time. These experts say that in 460
B.C., Athens was about 1 square mile in territory. Jerusalem in 43 A.D. was a little more than a
third of a square _mile in area. And
that not until the time of Emperor Hadrian in 120 A.D. was Rome larger in area
than Uruk.
Archeologists can attest that the temple district was in the
middle of town in Uruk. The city was
right near the Euphrates River, and canal systems came into the city and to the
large agricultural area outside the city.
Mitchell’s notes report that about a third of the area the inside the walls of Uruk was occupied by
public building and dwellings for the wealthy,
a third of the city had houses for the poor, and a third had gardens,
open spaces, and cemeteries (presumably for the wealthy).
Wikipedia reports that in circa 2900 B.C., Uruk had a
population of about 50,000 people. (In many Mid-Eastern cities of that time,
dwellings for the poor were built on top of each other, three stories high, and
ladders were used to move upwards.)
Political Factors of Ancient Mesopotamian Life
Stewart Easton, of City College of New York, reports that by
the time kings were rulers of the Sumerian city states, there was a clear-cut
idea that the kings were stewards of the gods.
The will of the gods moved the king’s actions and decisions. One of the
king’s main jobs was to find out what the gods willed. They sought the aid of temple priests in
this.
In the Epic, Gilgamesh can rule in a very arbitrary way for
a while, then the gods stop him. For
instance, King Gilgamesh decided that he would take for a night every bride
before the nuptials. The people in Uruk
were very disturbed over this and prayed to the gods to bring justice. The gods heard the prayer, and devised a
means to end the offending practice.
The political situation in lower Mesopotamia was generally
favorable for the independence of the various city-states until around 2400
B.C. Akkad, a city-state north of
Babylon, gained much power, and was able to conquer the other city-states. Their ruler was King Sargon, and he then
ruled an empire in lower Mesopotamia.
One of the achievements of the Sargon’s people is that Akkadian, a
Semitic language, replaced the old Sumerian language for the whole region. The city-states were able to gain back some
independence, until the next wave of conquests.
Around 2000 B.C. the Amorites conquered lower
Mesopotamia. The Amorites were a desert
people who had a wide range of settlements, in Syria, Canaan, and now Sumerian
territory.
Babylon was the main city the Amorites settled and turned
into the capital of an empire in lower Mesopotamia. The empire also extended far up the Euphrates
River to Mari, in Syria. These
Babylonians spoke the Akkadian language.
One famous king of Babylon was Hammurabi, who we’ll be discussing later. This
Babylon empire is not to be confused with the Neo-Babylonian Empire of circa
700 B.C. that one read of in the Bible, as in the Book of Daniel.
Babylon was sacked by the Hittites in 1595. After that, lower Mesopotamia was a region
that every conqueror in the area went after, including the barbarian Kassites,
and then the conquest of the Assyrian
Empire from upper Mesopotamia in 910 B.C.
Social and Cultural Aspects of Gilgamesh's World
The Sumerian social classes had the king and royalty at the
top, then the nobility (the warrior class), then free persons, with slaves at
the bottom.
Marriage was the norm.
There were strong rule systems against adultery. Divorce was possible.
An educated portion of the society could write. Lower Mesopotamia was the first place in the
world where writing took place. Cuneiform wedge marks were on clay tablets were
the means of writing.
People had beds, stools, and chairs. Homes had fire places with chimneys, and also
fire altars. Houses were built of mud bricks.
Music was popular, and lyres were plentiful, and also drums.
Beer drinking is cited frequently in Gilgamesh, and to a
lesser degree wine. Brewing beer was a
major activity in Sumerian territories.
About 89 percent of the population lived in the city-states.
Agriculture was done near the cities, with wheat and barley
the most plentiful crop. Onions and
garlic were also grown, along with dates and mustard. Animals included
oxen, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs.
Granaries and storehouses were in the cities, to handle
periods of surplus.
Clothing for the upper class involved a straight tunic robe,
and a fringed shawl, and a waist belt. Linen made of wool for clothes often had
brilliant colors. Clothing for the lower class males consisted of a lined
skirt.
Time was calculated in lunar months.
Those in power left accounts of their in lives in beautiful blue lapis
lazuli tablets. The common people upon
death were buried outside of the cities in graveyards.
Legal System in Ancient Mesopotamia
There were legal systems in the ancient Sumerian
city-states. Once Babylon through
conquest made the entire region of lower Mesopotamia a unified empire, there
was need for a uniform system of law.
Hammurabi, the most famous of the Babylon kings of this
period, set up such a legal code for the entire area in circa 1800 B.C. We know it as Hammurabi’s Code. Historians
often call it the first written legal code for a large region.
Hammurabi’s Code showed preference to the upper classes, and
violations had penalties that hit the lower classes more severely.
Private property was a given. Property crimes were punished more severely
than homicide.
The code couldn’t really be considered civil
legislation. The belief was that
Shamash, the god of the sun and of justice, gave the code to Hammurabi. So in this sense, it was thought as the gods’
wishes for a legal system for mankind.
Two Stories from the Epic of Gilgamesh:
--Gilgamesh, the Priestess, and the Wild Man. In the epic, it reports that King Gilgamesh
was “huge, handsome, radiant, prefect.”
It says that he would say: “I alone rule, supreme among men.” The story also says that Gilgamesh was a
‘wild bull of a man” and an “unvanquished leader.”
This presented a problem. In the story, King Gilgamesh
become arrogant and begins to trample on the citizens of Uruk. He takes the daughters of citizens and uses
and enjoys them before their marriages. If the groom complains, Gilgamesh
crushes him. The king does whatever he
wants, and no one dares to oppose him.
The people cried out to the gods for help. It says that because the gods are not
unfeeling, their hearts were touched and they responded to the lamentation of
the people.
The gods went to Anu, the king and father of the gods. They appealed for a means to end Gilgamesh’s
tyranny. Anu agreed that Gilgamesh had
exceeded all bounds, and he thought up a way to calm the heartrending cries of
the people. He decided to create a
balance of power situation for Gilgamesh, without really punishing him.
Anu instructed the goddess Aruru, the creator of mankind, to
create a new heroic man who was equal to Gilgamesh. The two strong men would balance each other,
and Uruk would be at peace.
Aruru took some moist clay and formed a man in the image
of Anu and Ninurta, the war god. She called the new man Enkidu, and threw him
into the wilderness. But Enkidu was a
wild man and did not know the ways of a civilized person. In fact, he ran wild naked and befriended the
animals. Trappers in the area began
seeing this, and called Enkidu a powerful savage man, and they were afraid of
him.
In Uruk, Gilgamesh began hearing reports of this wild man. He
came up with a plan to tame Enkidu. King
Gilgamesh ordered: “Go to the temple of
Ishtar, ask them there for a woman named Shamhat, one of the priestesses who
give their bodies to any man, in honor of the goddess.” Shamhat was to go into the wilderness where
the wild man was, and take her clothes off.
She was to use her “love arts” with him.
Nature would take its course, and she would civilize the wild man.
So Shamhat went into the wilderness with a trapper. There, at a water hole, she saw the wild man
come to drink with animals. She saw him
as huge and beautiful. “Deep in Shamhat’s loins desire stirred. Her breath quickened…” She stripped off her clothes and lay down
naked. Enkidu saw Shamhat and stared at
her, as he began to approach. He was full of lust. “She took his breath and kisses.”
Well, the epic get pretty graphic at this point—but suffice
it to say that nature took its course.
He made love to her “until he had enough.” His “life force was spent” and the animals
drew away from him for the first time.
Enkidu knew something: from the experience, “his mind had grown larger”
and he understood something that the animals would not comprehend.
Shamhat said to him, “Now, Enkidu, you know what it is to be
with a woman, to unite with her. You are beautiful, you are like a god. Why should you roam the wilderness and live
like an animal? Let me take you to
great-walled Uruk…” Shamhat said that she would take him there to the Temple of
the goddess Ishtar, and to the palace of the king.
Enkidu nodded affirmatively. Things were different now and he wanted to
leave the wilderness. Shamhat gave him a robe to cover his nakedness. She fed Enkidu bread and beer, for this was
the first time he had tasted prepared food.
He wanted more and more bread and beer.
They made their way
out of the wilderness to the city of Uruk.
Shamhat took Enkidu to see King Gilgamesh. Enkidu
wanted to say, “I am the mightiest!
I am the man who can make the world tremble. I am supreme!” But Gilgamesh and Enkidu settled to become
the best of friends. No longer did
Gilgamesh go roving with the young maidens who were about to marry. And there was peace in the city of Uruk—for a
while.
--Gilgamesh's Quest for Immortality. Gilgamesh and Enkidu were friends who
together were like an ancient dynamic duo.
They went on an adventurous quest to prove their heroic natures: they
killed a monster that guarded the huge cedar forests. And they killed the Bull of Heaven when it
threatened Uruk. These two actions however
angered the gods. On top of that,
Gilgamesh spurned the goddess Ishtar.
The gods concurred that the two heroic men should be
punished, perhaps even killed. The
contention was among them that Gilgamesh should not be the one killed because
he was the son of the goddess Ninsun, and he was created with special care by
the goddess Aruru. So it was Enkidu who
would die.
Upon the swift death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh dwelled with the
awful thought that his friend must now sit in the dark underworld for all time,
and would “never return to the sweet earth again.” Then Gilgamesh had a large question—“Must I
die too? Must be as lifeless as
Enkidu?” Gilgamesh fled the city Uruk
and went into the wilderness. His hair
became matted, and he wore only a lion skin.
He would not return until he resolved the problem. He was gripped with a need to gain
immortality for himself. The text says that “the fear of death relentlessly
drove him forward.”
This then becomes the major quest of the story—Gilgamesh’s
struggle to go to the end of the earth to find Utnapishtim, the survivor of the
Flood who the gods had granted immortality.
Gilgamesh was a man in search of an answer.
There is a lot of detail as to all the feats that had to be
accomplished before Gilgamesh finally reached Utnapishim. Once he was in the presence of the Immortal,
the immediate question was how Utnapishim
had overcome death, and why the assembly
of gods granted him eternal life. So
Gilgamesh heard the story of the Flood, which was covered earlier in this research
essay.
Utnapishim then asked Gilgamesh why the assembly of gods
would grant eternal life to him. Was
there any reason Gilgamesh deserved it.
Well, Gilgamesh was already in trouble with the gods. Utnapishim gave him a test of
worthiness. He told Gilgamesh to stay
awake for seven days. Gilgamesh sat down
and quickly sleep “swirled over him like a fog.”
Having failed this test, Utnapishim saw no reason to
consider further that the gods would consider Gilgamesh for immortality. Gilgamesh awoke and exclaimed, “What shall I
do, where shall I go now? Death has
caught me, it lurks in my bedroom, and everywhere I look, everywhere I turn,
there is only death.”
Gilgamesh was prepared for his journey home. He bathed in a tub, his hair was washed out,
his body was rubbed with sweet-smelling oil, his hair was bound in a bright
headband, and he was dressed in fine robes fit for a king. Utnapishim’s boatman
was to take him to Uruk. But before that, Gilgamesh was to be given one more
secret of the gods.
There was a spiny plant with thorns, Utnapishim told
Gilgamesh, that when ingested would return one to youth. It would be the antidote to the fear of
death. One could remain eternally young.
It would be difficult to reach the plant, though, because it was in the
waters of the Great Deep.
Immediately Gilgamesh ran and ran until he reached the
shore. He dug a pit in the sand until he
reached the Great Deep. In the manner of
a quest, Gilgamesh found the plant and brought it to the surface. He was
elated. Without thinking, he laid the
plant down and dove into the cool water to bathe.
A snake came and smelled the fragrance of the plant.
Stealthily it crawled up and took the plant, and carried it away. The snake shed his skin as he
disappeared. When Gilgamesh realized
what the snake had done he wept and said, “What shall I do now? All my hardships
have been for nothing. Was it for this
that my hands have labored? Was it for this that I gave my heart’s blood? I have gained no benefit for myself…”
In Gilgamesh as in Genesis, mankind loses eternal life by
way of the wiles on a snake.
But the powerful god Enlil came to Gilgamesh and said, “O Gilgamesh…You were given the kingship,
such was your destiny, everlasting life was not your destiny. Because of this do not be sad at heart, do
not be grieved or oppressed; he has given you the power to bind and to loose,
to be the darkness and the light of mankind.”
On his quest for immortality, Gilgamesh had met the goddess
Siduri, the maker of wine and beer for the gods. She said: “Gilgamesh…You will never find that life for
which you are looking. When the gods
created man they allotted him death, but eternal life they retained in their own keeping. As
for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and
day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe
yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your
wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man!”
So Gilgamesh went back to Uruk. He lived again in his palace with his “dear
wife, his son, his concubine, his musicians, his jester, all his household, his
servants, and his stewards.”
The final tablet of the epic is entitled The Death of
Gilgamesh. At old age, he “laid on the
bed of fate, and he did not rise again.”
All of the people of his palace mentioned above made a bread offering
and wine libation offering to the gods, especially to the goddess Ereshkigal,
the Queen of the Underworld. Gilgamesh
was placed in his tomb.
This was the ancient pagan world from which the patriarch
Abraham came from. The story switches
now and leads to a somewhat different conclusion.
Abraham's
World in Mesopotamia, Haran, and Canaan
The story of
the Biblical Abraham begins in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur sometime
between 2000 B.C. and 1800 B.C. Ur was
about twenty miles away from Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh. Abraham’s story spans fourteen chapters of the
Book of Genesis from the end of Chapter 11
to the beginning of Chapter 25. In the story,
Abraham becomes the founding patriarch of Judaism—and later Christianity
and Islam.
As it starts out in the city of Ur, Abraham is an adult
married to Sarah and they live in close proximity to his father, Terah. Abraham
had two brothers, and one of them had a son named Lot. This is the basic family group for our
narrative.
Terah decided that he would take his extended family out of
Ur and move to Canaan, present-day Israel.
He decided though not to head due west to Canaan, which would mean that
he would have to cross the Syrian desert.
Instead he decided to take the path of the Fertile Crescent—travelling
northwest up Mesopotamia, with the intention of curving to the southwest once
reaching the area of present-day Syria.
Terah took with him Abraham and Sarah, one of Abraham’s brothers, and
Abraham’s nephew Lot. They reached as
far to the northwest as the town area of Haran, in present day Turkey just over
the current boundary of Syria. At that point they settled for a while, and
it ended up being a long while.
Scripture does not say why Terah decided to make this move. At
the end of the Book of Joshua it states that Terah served the pagan gods of his
region, and that his family before him served these gods. There was no Judaism yet. In the New American Bible, a Catholic
translation, there is a note that says that Abraham before his conversion must
have made sacrificial offerings to the moon-god of Ur (1970, pg. 14b).
In the Sumerian mythology of Mesopotamia, the pagan god of
the moon was named Nanna, and his name in the Akkadian language was Sin. The patron god of the city of Ur was
Nanna/Sin, the moon-god. There is a huge
well-preserved ancient ziggurat/temple in Ur that the modern Iraqi government
has done restoration work with. That
ziggurat/temple was dedicated to the Sumerian moon-god Nanna/Sin. This
structure was built a couple centuries before Abraham—it was there when Abraham
was in Ur. If you look at the Wikipedia
photos of this ziggurat at Ur, you might wonder as I have if Abraham and his
father Terah offered sacrifices to the pagan moon god there, before Abraham’s
conversion.
There is
another ugly detail. Human sacrifice.
There is evidence that human sacrifice occurred in ancient Ur, as found in the
excavation of the royal tombs in Ur—going back to 2500 B.C. (New York Times, Oct.
26, 2009). The story of Abraham and
Isaac established that human sacrifice would not be allowed among the Hebrews.
Abraham lived
with his family in Haran for a number of decades. His father Terah died there. Then Abraham had a religious experience where
Almighty God told him to leave Haran and go to Canaan. Abraham obeyed, and took
Sarah and his nephew Lot with him, in addition to the other persons who had
become connected with their household.
God again appeared to Abraham and said that he would make a great nation
of his descendants, and the land of Canaan would be for his people. Later in a vision, God made a covenant with
Abraham where a great nation would come from him, and that the males of
Abraham’s people would be circumcised.
Abraham
decided that he would settle on lands west of the Jordan River, and Lot decided
to settle east of the Jordan River. There were five cities on the river plain
east of the Jordan, among them were Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot settled in Sodom, near the eastern shore
of the Dead Sea.
God visited
Abraham with two angels. God told
Abraham that he would have a son by Sarah.
Abraham was overjoyed. Then God
told Abraham that the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah for their sinfulness was so strong that
retribution was imminent. Abraham spoke
out in petition to God. He asked God if
there were fifty just men in Sodom, would he wipe away Sodom even though there
were innocent people there. God said
that if there were fifty good men in Sodom, he would not destroy the city. Abraham asked God if there were ten good men
in Sodom, would he spare Sodom. God said
he would. The problem was that there
were not ten good men in Sodom. God sent
angels down to Lot’s home in Sodom, and he was told to leave Sodom because he
was good and that God would destroy the city.
Lot left with his wife and two daughters. The next day God rained sulfurous fire from
Heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah, leveling the cities and killing all the
inhabitants.
Sarah bore
Abraham a son in his old age, and they named him Isaac. Abraham loved Isaac very much. God put Isaac
to the test of devotion. Human sacrifice
to gods existed in the ancient Mideast. God told Abraham to take Isaac to
Moriah and offer his son up as a sacrifice. Abraham obeyed. He put Isaac on the
sacrifice altar, but just as he was raising his hand with the knife, an angel
stopped him. A voice from Heaven said to
not harm Isaac, and that God now knew how devoted Abraham was to the
Almighty. Centuries later in the
Judeo-Christian tradition, Jesus would also obey God to the extreme—leading to
the cross. These are two stories full of
supernatural mystery.
Abraham lived
to be over one hundred years old. When
he died the Bible says that he was taken to be with his kinsmen, and he was
buried near Sarah in an area that Abraham purchased from the Hittites in the
field of Ephron. Scripture says that Abraham lived a full life.
There are many
other stories of Abraham in Genesis that are not mentioned here. This was intended to be a summarization. A
number of the additional details will be given in the sections below where more
analysis is given to the stories of Abraham and Gilgamesh.
Abraham and Gilgamesh--Comparisons and Contrasts
The cities of Abraham and Gilgamesh were only about twenty
miles from each other. One can see many of the aspects of ancient Mesopotamian
culture in the story of Abraham, and of course those aspects exist in the story
of Gilgamesh. It is in the contrasts though that one appreciates the signifying
aspects of the civilization that came from Abraham’s lineage.
Gilgamesh was a king who boasted of his greatness. He was a warrior who engaged often in combat.
He sought fame and glory for the sake of posterity. Abraham was a simple
commoner, a herdsman, by nature humble. He sought glory for God. He did not
engage in combat, except once when he and some retainers defeated a raiding
party that had captured his nephew Lot.
Gilgamesh lived in a palace, Abraham lived in a tent.
The great quest of Gilgamesh was for immortality, to be like
one of the gods. The great quest of
Abraham was to do God’s will, and to settle in Canaan to begin a covenant that
God was establishing for the descendants of Abraham.
Gilgamesh even gets to the point where he challenges the
gods, as with the goddess Ishtar when she develops desire for Gilgamesh. Abraham
always behaved with piety and reverence to Almighty God, and had fear of the
Lord to the point where he would not dare God.
Gilgamesh sacrificed animals to the gods and burned incense
to them. His altar to the gods was in
the temple at Uruk. When Gilgamesh was
in the wilderness, away from the temple, he made a make-shift altar to the
gods. This is described in the
epic. Abraham had no temple to his God. That
did not come until the time of King David. There was no city that Abraham lived
in. Abraham, once he was in Canaan,
lived in a tent mostly in the region of Hebron in the southern area of Canaan. But in his travels Abraham built altars to Almighty
God, for instance, in Sechem, Bethel, Hebron, and Moriah. Abraham also sacrificed animals. An important difference in Abraham’s community was that there was no
human sacrifice, whereas in many of the pagan religious societies of the ancient Mideast there was human sacrifice,
often sacrifice of children.
The Changes that Abraham's World Brought
One obvious change was that Abraham’s world practiced monotheism, one
God. Gilgamesh’s world was polytheistic,
many gods. In the Gilgamesh epic, the Mesopotamian gods talked to each other
and behaved like the Greek gods in Homer’s Iliad and the Roman gods in
Virgil’s Aeneid. The
Mesopotamian gods behaved very much like humans, with the same foibles. Abraham’s God was transcendent and above human
wrongdoing.
A second major change had to do with morality. In Gilgamesh’s world,
sexual immorality was the norm. Their
pagan temple was full of temple prostitutes. In the epic, one of the main
secondary characters was a temple prostitute.
The goddess Ishtar promoted sexual immorality, and that comes through in
the epic. In Abraham’s community, sexual immorality could be lethal. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed largely
because of gross excesses in sexual immorality.
Abraham had a concubine (Hagar), and Gilgamesh had concubines. Hebrew
morality developed over the centuries to the point where concubines became out
of the question. Lot fathered children from his two daughters when they got him
stone drunk and quite unaware. These two sons from Lot’s daughters founded the
Canaanite nations of Ammon and Moab. The Arab nations count their founding with
Abraham and Hagar’s son, Ishmael. Esau,
the brother of Isaac, founded the Canaanite kingdom of Edom.
The notions of an afterlife are a third major difference between
Gilgamesh’s world and a Judeo-Christian world that was begun by Abraham. The pagan Mesopotamian afterlife was miserable,
as described earlier. God promised Abraham
that when he died he would “join his forefathers in peace,” and that he would
be “buried at a contented old age” (Gen. 15:15). Once Christianity develops out of the belief
system begun by Abraham, a genuinely happy and joyful afterlife is promised,
one free of suffering.
SOURCES
Epic of Gilgamesh, Stephen Mitchell translation
(Atria Books, 2006).
Epic of Gilgamesh, Assyrian International News Agency
(Books Online).
Stewart C. Easton. The
Western Tradition to 1500. (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.,
1966).
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia Britannica online
“Mesopotamia—The Sumerians,”
video from Australian public television; narr. Simon Chilvers.
“Ancient Mesopotamia—Return to Eden,” Time-Life video, narr. Sam Waterson.
“ Iraq—The Cradle of Civilization,” video from BBC-National Geographic, narr.
Michael Wood.
Bible translations—
- Douay-Confraternity (1961)
- New American Bible (1970)
- The Living Bible (1973)
