Sunrise Magazine Online The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Spiritual Biography By W. T. S. Thackara Part I Part II Part III Introduction The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest and most moving stories rooted in the ancient wisdom-tradition of mankind. Recited for nearly three millennia, it was virtually lost for another two with the advent of Christianity. Modern generations came to know about Gilgamesh only after the first cuneiform fragments of his story were excavated in 1853 at Nineveh from the library of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, who reigned in the 7th century bce. Almost twenty years elapsed, however, before the clay tablets were deciphered by George Smith at the British Museum. On December 3, 1872, he announced to the newly-formed Society of Biblical Archaeology that he had "discovered among the Assyrian tablets . . . an account of the Flood" in one of the story's later episodes. This stirred up considerable interest and, before long, more fragments of Gilgamesh were unearthed, both at Nineveh and in the ruins of other ancient cities. After more than one hundred fifty years of archaeology and patient scholarship, the general consensus is that the 7th-century tablets, written in the Semitic Akkadian language, are a copy of a 12-tablet "Standard Version" dating back to about 1200 bce, composed by a Babylonian priest named Sin-leqi-unninni. This version in turn is a conflation and revision of earlier Babylonian traditions, themselves rooted in a number of Sumerian stories circulating centuries earlier in the third millennium. Since neither the Sumerians nor Babylonians wrote history in the modern sense, exact dating is difficult, nor do we know with certainty when and where the epic version actually originated. However, like the Jewish Talmuds, the Babylonian versions may well represent attempts to preserve, integrate, and expand upon oral Sumerian traditions that were in danger of being lost as its culture and language were dying out. Gilgamesh Tablet XI fragment (British Museum) From the Sumerian King List and other sources, we do know there was an historical Gilgamesh — in Sumerian spelled Bilgames, conjectured to mean "the (divine) old one is youthful": a name likely given at an initiation or coronation rite, symbolic of spiritual rebirth and divine kingship.* He is believed to have reigned sometime between 3000 and 2500 bce in the city-state of Uruk near the Euphrates in what is now southern Iraq. According to the Babylonian epic, Gilgamesh himself inscribed his story on a stone tablet. It had widespread and long-lasting appeal, for versions have been found all over the Mesopotamian region, as far north in Asia Minor as the Hittite capital of Hattusha (Bogazkoy) and west to Megiddo in ancient Palestine. This is fortunate because modern translations of Gilgamesh have literally been pieced together from widely-scattered fragments. About two-thirds of the Standard Version have been recovered in addition to texts in Sumerian, Old Babylonian, Hittite, and other languages or dialects. *Similar in concept is the name of Chinese sage Lao-Tzu (Laozi), interpreted as both “Old Master” and “Old Boy,” probably derived from his legendary birth as an old man. Variant Sumerian spellings of Bilgamesh also yield meanings such as “the forebear (was) a hero” and “the offspring (is) a hero.” Nevertheless, while story details often differ, Gilgamesh reflects much of the Sumerian world view as well as that of the Babylonians and Assyrians, who first conquered the Sumerians and then assimilated their culture. Like all epics, Gilgamesh contains both historical and mythic elements in all its versions, and thus is meant to be interpreted at several levels. In addition to its very human themes of friendship, courage, the problem of death, and the meaning of life, it is also an initiatory tale about the quest for enlightenment, the revelation of divine mysteries, the duality of man, and the evolutionary unfoldment of his spiritual nature. Implicit in the narrative are the cosmology and other metaphysical doctrines of the ancient sanctuaries. Even the physical composition of the Babylonian recension discloses an intentional number symbolism: 12 tablets, each containing roughly 300 lines divided into 6 columns. More importantly, Gilgamesh is meant to be read as an extended metaphor, a spiritual biography as much about ourselves as about the Sumerian hero-king. Calling across nearly 5,000 years, it is a potent reminder of the timelessness and relevance of the ancient spiritual path. Gilgamesh is a human story and it begins with his beginnings, not with the story of cosmic genesis, which nevertheless underpins the tale. Although no Sumerian theogony or creation account has yet been found, one has been provisionally reconstructed.* Briefly, the gods and goddesses unfold from the nameless divine mystery as follows: in the beginning there was An (Babylonian Anu), first-born of the primeval sea, i.e., the "wat...