Poetic Odyssey: Gilgamesh (Grammar-stage)

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translated and edited by B.R. Foster. A Norton Critical Edition.

(Grammar-stage) reading.

Initial thoughts: lots of repetition and formal phrases.

• Tablet 1

Gilgamesh is an arrogant King who mistreats his people. He is super-strong; son of Lugalbanda and the goddess Ninsun. He is 2/3 divine and 1/3 human. (?)

The gods create Enkidu, a wild man, to rival him.

A trapper tells Gilgamesh about Enkidu. Gilgamesh sends Shamhat the harlot to seduce Enkidu. Shamhat seduces Enkidu, he sleeps with her, after which the animals reject him.

Shamhat persuades Enkidu to meet and challange Gilgamesh. Enkidu has gained understanding and reason after sleeping with the harlot.

Gilgamesh tells his dreams to Ninsun, his goddess mother, who tells him they are about Enkidu. Shamhat tells Enkidu Gilgamesh’s dreams.

• Background

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a 4000 year old tale of love, death and adventure. Gilgamesh is a hero-king of the Sumerian city of Uruk.

There are old, middle and late versions. The old versions were written in clay tablets; fragmented and found widely distributed. They were written in Babylonian around 1700 B.C. The middle versions were written 1500-1000 B.C. and the largest surviving versions are from a group of manuscripts from the 7th centuary B.C. (the ’standard version’). The late vesions were after 7th centuary B.C.

The author is unknown but probably Mesopotamian. The 11 tablet version is associated with Sin-leqe-unninni a scholar who lived in the second half of the second millenium B.C.

Direct speech: considerable amount.

Parallelism: repeated formulation of the same message such that subsequent statements may restate, expand, complete, contrast, render more specific or carry further the same message.

Narrative contrasts. Figures of speech.

Word play: suggestion of one word through the use of another with the same or similar sound.

Use of fantastic numbers: 2/3 god and 1/3 human.

Compound expressions: linked with -man.

Themes: knowledge. “The significance of gilgamesh’s story lay not so much in the deeds themselves as in the lessons his experience offered future generations” (p. xxi)