"Returned to Uruk, Gilgamesh washes his
hair and garbs himself in festive attire. As he puts on his tiara,
Ishtar, the goddess of love (in Sumerian, Inanna), is entranced with
his looks and asks him to marry her. Gilgamesh rejects her,
reminding her in scornful words of what happened to her previous
mates, including the hapless Tammuz, later known as Adonis. It is
not unusual for a hero to refuse the love, and the
unheard-of-presents, offered by a goddess. In every such case only
two celestial personalities are possible candidates for this role:
the planet Venus, and Sirius, alias Sothis, who has some of the
reputation of a harlot. There is the story of Ugaritic Aqht, who
shows mocking haugthiness to Anat; of Picus who flatly turns down
the offer of Circe and who subsequently turned into the woodpecker
by the angry goddess; there is Arjuna - a 'portion of Indra' - who
rejected the heavenly Urvashi, whom he regarded as the 'parent of my
race, and object of reverence to me ... and it behoveth thee to
protect me as a son'.
There is
also Tafa'i of Tahiti (Maori: Tawhaki) who went with
his five brothers courting an underworld princess. As a test, the
suitors 'were told to pull up by the roots an ava tree, which
was possessed by a demon, and which had caused the death of all who
had attempted to disturb it'. Three of the brothers were devoured by
the demon; Tafa'i revived them, and then gladly renounced the hand
of the princess. (Ava = Kava, and stands for the
'next-best-substitute' for Amrita, the drink of immortality which is
the property of the gods; mythologically Polynesian Kawa
resembles almost exactly the Soma of Vedic literature; even the role
of the 'Kawa-filter' is an ancient Indian reminiscence; and,
as befits the pseudo-drink-of-immortality, it is stolen, by Maui,
or by Kaulu, exactly as happens in India, and in the Edda,
and elsewhere).
Meanwhile Ishtar, scorned, goes up to
heaven in a rage, and extracts from Anu the promise that he will
send down the Bull of Heaven to avenge her. The Bull descends,
awesome to behold. With his first snort he downs a hundred warriors.
But the two heroes tackle him. Enkidu takes hold of him by the tail,
so that Gilgamesh as espada can come in between the horns for
the kill. The artisans of the town admire the size of those horns:
'thirty pounds was their content of lapis lazuli'. (Lapis lazuli is
the color sacred to Styx, as we
have seen. In Mexico it is turquoise.) Ishtar appears on the walls
of Uruk and curses the two heroes who have shamed her, but Enkidu
tears out the right thigh of the Bull of Heaven and flings it in her
face, amidst brutal taunts. It seems to be part of established
procedure in those circles. Susanowo did the same to the sun-goddess
Amaterasu, and so did Odin the Wild Hunter to the man who stymied
him.
A scene of popular triumph and
rejoicings follows. But the gods
have decided that Enkidu must die, and he is warned by a somber
dream after he falls sick. The composition of the epic has been
hitherto uncouth and repetitious and, although it remains
repetitious, it becomes poetry here. The despair and terror of
Gilgamesh at watching the death of his friend is a more searing
scene than Prince Gautama's 'discovery' of mortality.
'Hearken
unto me, O elders, (and give ear) unto me! // It is for Enk(idu), my
friend, that I weep, // Crying bitterly like unto a wailing woman //
(My friend), my (younger broth)er (?), who chased // the wild ass of
the open country (and) the panther of the steppe. // Who seized and
(killed) the bull of heaven; // Who overthrew Humbaba, that (dwelt)
in the (cedar) forest - ! // Now what sleep is this that has taken
hold of (thee)? // Thou hast become dark and canst not hear (me)'.
// But he does not lift (his eyes). // He touched his heart, but it
did not beat. // Then he veiled (his) friend like a bride (...) //
He lifted his voice like a lion // Like a lioness robbed of (her)
whelps ...
'When I
die, shall I not be like unto Enkidu? // Sorrow has entered my heart
// I am afraid of death and roam over the desert ... // (Him the
fate of mankind has overtaken) // Six days and seven nights I wept
over him // Until the worm fell on his face. // How can I be silent?
How can I be quiet? // My friend, whom I loved, has turned to clay'.
Gilgamesh has no metaphysical
temperament like the Lord Buddha. He sets out on his great voyage to
find Utnapishtim the Distant, who dwells at 'the mouth of the
rivers' and who can possibly tell him how to attain immortality. He
arrives at the pass of the mountain Mashu ('Twins'), 'whose peaks
reach as high as the banks of heaven - whose breast reaches down to
the underworld - the scorpion people keep watch at its gate - those
whose radiance is terrifying and whose look is death - whose
frightful splendor overwhelms mountains - who at the rising and
setting of the sun keep watch over the sun'. The hero is seized
'with fear and dismay', but as he pleads with them, the scorpion-men
recognize his partly divine nature. They warn him that he is going
to travel through a darkness no one has traveled, but open the gate
for him.
'Along the road of the sun (he went?)
- dense is the dark(ness and there is no light)' (Tabl. 9,
col. 4, 46). The successive stretches of 1, then 2, then 3, and so
on to 12 double-hours he travels in darkness. At last it is light,
and he finds himself in a garden of precious stones, carnelian and
lapis lazuli, where he meets Siduri, the divine barmaid, 'who dwells
by the edge of the sea'. Under the eyes of severe philologists,
slaves to exact 'truth', one dare not make light of this supposedly
'geographical' item with its faint surrealistic tang. Here is a
perfectly divine barmaid by the edge of the sea, called by many
names in many languages. Her bar should be as long as the famed one
in Shanghai, for she has along her shelves not only wine and beer,
but more outlandish and antiquated drinks from many cultures, drinks
such as a honeymead, soma, sura (a kind of brandy), kawa,
pulque, peyote-cocktail, decoctions of ginseng. In short, from
everywhere she has the ritual intoxicating beverages which comfort
the dreary souls who are denied the drink of immortality. One might
call these drinks Lethe, after all.
Earnest translators have seriously
concluded that the 'sea' at the edge of which the barmaid dwells
must be the Mediterranean, but there have also been votes for the
Armenian mountains. Yet the hero's itinerary suggests the celestial
landscape instead, and the scorpion-men should be sought around
Scorpius. The more so as lambda ypsilon Scorpii are counted among
the Babylonian mashu-constellations, and these twins, lambda
ypsilon, play an important role also in the so-called Babylonian
Creation Epic, as weapons of Marduk." (Hamlet's Mill) |