The Ancients - The Epic of Gilgamesh: Quest for Immortality

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest surviving works of storytelling in history. It begins with the tale of Gilgamesh’s friendship with the wild man Enkidu. But after Enkidu is killed, King Gilgamesh embarks on a journey into his distant past in search for immortality. In this episode of the Ancients, the second part of our series on the Epic of Gilgamesh, Dr Sophus Helle returns to speak to Tristan Hughes about Gilgamesh’s quest and his encounters with a mysterious sage called Ut-napishtim - who some claim may have been the inspiration behind the biblical figure of Noah & his famous Ark.The first part of our Gilgamesh series, The Epic of Gilgamesh: Rise of Enkidu can be found hereThis episode was produced by Joseph Knight and edited by Aidan LonerganDiscover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we are continuing our special bumper episode on the extraordinary piece of ancient literature that is the Epic of Gilgamesh, written more than 3,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. Now in the last episode we covered the first half of this story, how King Gilgamesh of

Uruk and the wild man Enkidu became great friends, fighting supernatural creatures such as Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. We left the story at the halfway point, on a cliffhanger. Enkidu has had a worrying dream. And what happened next? Well, it would completely change Gilgamesh. Join us as we explore this second and final half of the tale, centred around Gilgamesh and his quest for immortality. Our guest for this episode, once again, is Dr. Sophus Hell, a writer, translator, a seriologist, and expert on the epic. I really do hope you enjoy. And here's Sophus.

Sophus, it is wonderful to have you back on the podcast. Wonderful to be here. Now, we are kicking off from where we left, this cliffhanger, as we enter the second part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Just before we start that, Sophus, give us a quick overview, a quick recap of what happens in the first part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. So the first part of the Epic is the positive and optimistic one in which Gilgamesh becomes deep, deep friends with this wild man Enkidu.

The two go on a series of adventures. They defeat first the monster Humbaba and then the Bull of Heaven. Already some notes of ambivalence and ambiguity are starting to creep in. We have gotten a sense that things might not be quite as they seemed, but that really reaches a climax at the end of part one, where Enkidu wakes up terrified from a nightmare that he has just had. And how does the first part end? Is it I've had a dream or something like that? Yeah we hear the lines Enkidu too went to bed and had a dream. Enkidu got up to interpret his dream and said to his friend and then there's what's called a catch line so the first line of

the next tablet which goes why my, were the great gods in council? So let's get going. What is this dream that Enkidu has had and why is it bad news? So Enkidu has had a prophetic dream in which he sees the gods assembled in council. And in that council, they essentially determined that he must die. And so it turns out that these killings of Humbaba and the bull of heaven were, as had already been indicated in part one, but as becomes very clear right now, very much not blessed by the gods. They were in fact an affront to the gods and the gods determined that Enkidu must die. And how does Gilgamesh react to this news? We've kind of already set the scene in part one that Gilgamesh is now, he sees Enkidu as his

great friend. And you've also mentioned in some versions, a lover. I mean, how does he react to this devastating news that his friend must now die? Well, actually, at the very first, he's quite chill about it. And there's a good reason for that. So I mentioned in the first part that the Babylonians were entirely obsessed with omens. They saw omens everywhere, the path of the planets, the entrails of sacrificed animals, and so on and so forth, and of course in dreams. And so these omens were one part of the system of omens for offerings, which is sort of like the highway of communication between gods and humans in the Babylonian worldview. So the gods send omens of what will happen to us, and we then send offerings and praise and hymns and so on and so forth to the gods,

which might, you know, appease them if they are angry. So at first, Gilgamesh just is operating within that standard system. So he sees this as an ominous dream and says, don't you worry, we'll offer lots and lots of gold to the gods and they will change their minds. Relax, bro. I've got this. Yeah, exactly. But Enkidu makes clear that that isn't going to happen. He has, you know, the Babylonian equivalent of a terminal disease. In this case, the gods are not going to change their minds. And, you know, then in tablet seven, we witness Enkidu on his deathbed, giving a series of rambling speeches, seeing these terrifying visions of the underworld, and Gilgamesh attending to him and watching his friend die.

Is that quite a poignant, somber part of the text? I mean, when Enkidu is on his deathbed, does the text convey that now this once quite fearless figure, is he scared of what comes next? Is he scared of the underworld? What kind of emotions are going through the text? I'm not sure that Enkidu ever is fearless. He at one point said that he is fearless, but he's actually quite fearful at various times, as is Gilgamesh. Because again, they are also these quite sensitive men in their own way. But yes, he sees this absolutely terrifying vision of the underworld. And I think it's interesting that scene because it accords well with descriptions of the underworld in other Babylonian texts.

But at the same time, the epic casts a lot of doubt on it by telling us that this is not Enkidu at his sanest. It says that his mind was deranged or that his mind was transformed or something like that. And it sort of indicates that this description of the underworld is not fully reliable. I think this is an epic that is, especially it's the second part, but really throughout, very much about death. Death is one of the central concerns of the epic, but it is very much death told from this side of the divide between us and the underworld. So the epic sort of offers us a glimpse here of what the afterlife might be, but then sort of retracts and confuses it again.

It kind of gives you a little tantalizing taste, doesn't it? So Enkidu dies and he heads to the underworld. Gilgamesh now kind of figuring out, as you say, that he can't save his friend. Yeah. How important a moment is this in the whole epic? Is this a massive turning point in the story? Yeah, this is the absolute pivotal moment. Everything changes after Enkidu's death. And Enkidu's death is very much the centrepiece of the epic. And after

Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh launches on this huge elegy, which is one of the most moving emotional points in the epic. And I think it's so interesting that when they are both alive, the heroes are very not explicit about their feelings for each other, which is why their relation can be described in different ways. But after Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh is very explicit. He says, you know, Enkidu whom I loved. He says nothing of the sort to Enkidu when he is alive. And another wonderful point that was noticed by a scholar called Martin Worthington is that when the heroes talk to each other when they're both alive, they never use each other's name. They only call each other my friend. So other people call them

Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and they call other people by their name. But when talking to each other, it's only ever my friend and my friend, which is why again, at some points, it can almost be difficult to tell the difference between them. But the first word that Gilgamesh says after Enkidu's death is Enkidu. And, you know, if you've noticed this pattern, it breaks your heart. It really does. Because suddenly there is this distance between them. One is dead and the other is alive. And as I mentioned, throughout the first part of the story,

their constant drive is to be more and more like each other, to melt into one. And suddenly this deep radical difference is introduced between them. And Gilgamesh mourns over Enkidu's body for six days and seven nights until a maggot falls from his nose, mirroring how in the beginning of the story, Enkidu became human by having sex for six days and seven nights. So that week of sex and humanization is here matched by a week of decay and dehumanization. And Gilgamesh emerges from this experience like totally broken. You know, he had tried to be more and more like Enkidu, and now he doesn't know who he is. Now he wants to become a god, he wants to shed his human side, he leaves the city behind, he wanders the wild like an animal. And there is some

indication that he also loses part of his male identity. You know, he had been this hyper masculine figure, but now in his grief, the text is constantly comparing him to mourning women, and to a lioness that has lost her cubs, or to a female eagle. So like, he loses all of these sides of himself, because in a very real way, he became himself in the relation to Enkidu. And so when he loses Enkidu. And so when he loses Enkidu, he also loses who he is. Does Gilgamesh or whoever, do they ever see that he does have a really elaborate burial before Gilgamesh almost quite loses it and goes raving through the desert and so on? Yeah, there's a huge elaborate funeral. Unfortunately, that section is very,

very fragmentary. It's also incredibly repetitive. I. Unfortunately, that section is very, very fragmentary. It's also incredibly repetitive. I think if I had to choose which passage of the epic to find, I'm not sure I would choose to find the very long description of the various funeral gifts that Enkidu has given. But who knows? Maybe there's something incredibly interesting hidden there that I just don't have the fantasy to imagine.

But who knows? But yes, there is at the end of that tablet a very long description of the various funeral gifts Enkidu receives. Okay, so Gilgamesh almost loses a part of who he is following this. I mean, how does he decide to try and almost resolve this crisis in his soul? What does he decide to do next as this alone figure now that he doesn't have Enkidu? So at the beginning of tablet nine, we sort of see an emotional slippage in the text where Gilgamesh goes from mourning for his friend to deciding that he wants to become immortal. And those seem like opposite forces. But I actually think, again, if you follow the logic of the emotions here, it actually does

make some kind of sense because they had tried to be more and more like each other that fails with the scene of death and now and you know Gilgamesh has to say okay how can I be unlike Enkidu how can I hello how can I be myself after Enkidu's death and so the very words that he speaks are I too will die am I not like Enkidu grief has stepped into my heart and it is in that moment in those lines, that he decides that he must become immortal. And so, unlike the friend that he watched die. And the way that he will try to become immortal is given in the next line. He says, afraid of death, I wander through the wild toward Utanapishti, son of Ubaratutu. So Utanapishti is the only figure that Gilgamesh knows who has become immortal.

So, it's this ancient, ancient sage. First of all, why does this figure appear just now? I know you mentioned that he's trying to sort immortality. But what's also the backstory to this figure, that he is the only figure on the world that has found the way to become immortal? So, that is the story that Gilgamesh will end up discovering at the end of the text. And so the epic sort of feeds us bits and pieces of that story until at the end we hear it from the immortal horse's own mouth, as it were. And so that is sort of like the mystery that we are sitting with here at this point in the epic. Like, why did Uttanapishti

become immortal and can Gilgamesh replicate that story? And so his journey towards Uttanapishti become immortal and can Gilgamesh replicate that story? And so his journey towards Uttanapishti is this journey through a series of fantastical lands. He meets these scorpion people who guard the entrance to the land of the gods. He steps into the garden of the gods, which is a perfect mirror image of the cedar forest that we saw earlier. So where the cedar forest is full of life and sound and scents, the Garden of the Gods is this land where there grow crystals and, you know, precious gems and, you know, precious stones on the trees, which is a very lifeless landscape, but also a luminous landscape, you know, which is, you know, really brings out the distance between the lands of the gods and the lands of the living. And that's just one of the many scenes of mirroring between the

first part and the second part, and so on and so forth. Gilgamesh goes through these various adventures on his hunt for Utnapishtim in the second half. Is that also quite a contrast with part one, how when, let's say, Enkidu and Gilgamesh are searching for Humbaba, they know where the Cedar Forest is, as you say, in Lebanon. But with Utapishtim, he doesn't know where he is. This is almost a figure who does seem to live at the edges of the world and in the realms of the supernatural almost. Yeah, absolutely. And to get there, Gilgamesh has to interact with a number of characters, including the innkeeper of the gods, Shiduri, who again, there's another scene of mirroring before we had Ishtar seeing Gilgamesh and being immediately attracted to him. Here, Shiduri, who again, there's another scene of mirroring before we had Ishtar

seeing Gilgamesh and being immediately attracted to him. Here, Shiduri sees Gilgamesh and is immediately revolted by him because his body has fallen into so much decay after Enkidu's death. But eventually, he convinces her to point him to the next person who will help him, who is the boatman, who will help him cross the waters of death that lie between, you know, even the land of the gods and the island on which Utnapishtim lives. So I'm getting very strong kind of Charon kind of vibes there, isn't it? The boatman crossing the river Styx. I mean, it's so interesting how figures like that turn up and up again. So how does Gilgamesh going from Duri, the bartender of the gods, I love that title,

that figure to finding the boatman of the gods, I love that title, that figure, to finding the boatman of Utnapishtim? So Gilgamesh has to tell his own story to each of them in turn, to sort of convince them to point him to the next person. And that is so interesting to watch him tell his story

first to Shiduri, then to the boatman Ushanabi, and then when they have crossed the waters of death together, finally to Uttanapishti himself. So Gilgamesh tells the story a total of three times, convincing each character to lead him on to the next one, but also repeating it word by word. And there are a number of odd things about the story that Gilgamesh tells, and that will become very important later. For example, he tells some events in the wrong chronological order. He is stuck repeating it over and over again. He says that he did some things with Enkidu that we know he did after Enkidu's death, and so on and so forth. So Gilgamesh at this point is

in a loop, and that loop is broken. He's like a broken record. He can't tell his story right, but yet he engenders such pity and sympathy in his audience that they are convinced to help him. So they're convinced almost more through pity, but rather than through amazement, which as you say is that other great kind of contrast, isn't it? And they all remark on the pitiable state of his body, which is really in decay at this point. Okay, so he has won over the boatman and he crosses over to the island of Utnapishtim. What happens next when he gets to this figure's house? Does he uncover the true story of how he became immortal, this figure? Yeah. Before that, though, he has to listen to a sermon that Utnapishtim gives him,

which is another show-stopping moment in the epic, Utnapishtisch's lecture on death. So a lecture from an immortal person about the nature of death, which is really, it's just 25 lines, but it is really some of the most amazing lines in the epic. And I think some of the most amazing lines in Babylonian poetry, full stop. These lines are a very somber, but also very beautiful depiction of what death is like. And I think they sort of bring out the most fundamental paradox of death to the Babylonians, but I think also to this day, which is that death is at the same time absolutely certain and absolutely uncertain. It is absolutely certain in the sense that, you know, we must all die, like, and there are no exceptions to that.

But we know nothing about death. We don't know when it will happen, how it will happen, where it will happen, how it will feel like, or what it will look like. So death is described in this passage only through negation. Death is that which we cannot see and cannot hear. We cannot draw the image of death, as the text puts it. And I think there is this two couplets, this quatrain at the middle of the speech that really just is so enormously powerful. And it just goes like this, and it's very few words. It's even fewer words in the Akkadian. One day we build a house. One day we found a home. One day the air is divided. One day the suns grow bitter. And so between these two couplets, which describe first the creation of a family,

and then that family dividing the inheritance, Somebody has to die, you know, for one couplet to lead to the other. And the epic describes this as this like cyclical rhythmic event, but that can again only be described through silence. Like death structures this miniaturist story that Uttanapeshti tells, but death is at the same time indescribable.

It is removed from it because death is nothing. Death is entirely an abstraction at the same time that is entirely a certainty. And I think Uttanapishti's reflection on death is so powerful for bringing these two features so neatly together. What's the whole purpose of Utt Pishtim therefore saying that sermon? Is it to kind of make a figure like Gilgamesh realise, look, you know, this is something that is part of the story and it is an unknown, but don't start always seeking immortality because that's not the usual kind of thing. Yeah, and like Utana Pishtim, and he won't fully manage to do this, at least not yet, but he's trying to nudge Gilgamesh towards an acceptance of death that is not occupied with death. Constantly thinking about death

is also a pointless activity because death is a nothingness. Death is not something that has positive content to think about. Is there any sort of thought in this sermon, or maybe we're diving too deep into this, that Utana Pishtim actually kind of, does he feel some regret that he is immortal and can't experience this end almost, or am I reading too much into it? We don't know that. I'm not sure that regret is the right word, but it does seem at least to many readers to be a certain bitterness in the character of Uttanapishtim. He's not exactly a happy figure as he sits there on his island with his wife removed from everything and everyone, it doesn't exactly seem like a joyous kind of existence.

well on to the next part then so Gilgamesh he's listened to this sermon by Utnapishtim but he's come all of this way so does he then find out the story of how Utnapishtim gained immortality yeah and here we reach so the 11th of the 11 tablets in this version of the story so this really is the climax of the entire epic. And I think it's so interesting that the epic's climax is not like yet another huge battle or, you know, a kiss and a romance or whatever it might be, but the climax of the story is another story inside the story. And that is Uttanapishti relaying how he became immortal during the cataclysmic flood or the deluge, which destroyed almost all of humanity except him and the people aboard of his boat. And that is in itself, like it's a masterclass in

storytelling. It is really a beautifully told story that we are witnesses to here in Tablet 11. But it is also for Gilgamesh, at least at first, bad news. Because, you know, not even the desperate Gilgamesh would be willing, let's hope, but certainly not able to recreate these circumstances of the flood. So in a sense, Utnapishti must disappoint him. He says, you know, I became immortal myself under conditions that were so unique that you have no hope of recreating them. And I think what's so interesting about the flood story in Gilgamesh is that it does two things at once. It, first of all, tells Gilgamesh, you cannot become physically immortal.

Because these events, they belong to a past that even for Gilgamesh is a distant, epic, ancient past. Because, you know, he's traveled back to reach this ancient ancestor of his who has become immortal. And he says, no, that was then. This will never happen again. So Gilgamesh is told in that moment, you cannot become physically immortal. This will not happen for you. But at the same time, through this masterclass of storytelling, Gilgamesh is given the key to another kind of immortality, the literary immortality, the immortality that will come from telling his own story. So as I said, on the journey to Utnapishti, he's stuck telling his own story and does so badly. And then when he has heard this amazing story from Utnapishti,

Utnapishti's account of his own life, he will, at the very end of the epic, return to Uruk and begin to tell his own story. And that telling of his own story is the epic that we are reading. So the story within the story allows Gilgamesh to finally do the thing that will give him some kind of immortality, which is to write down the story that we've been reading all along. And that's when the epic really goes into this whole meta dimension, which I really do love. It feels quite Inception-like when we're talking at the beginning

of the first part, how the scribes who are writing this epic, they are setting the story of Gilgamesh in their distant past. And then Gilgamesh going to this figure who's got a mortality is from his distant past. So going way, way, way, all these different layers like an onion. Yeah, there's really is like

always an older fish because like when, you know, so we've traveled from our present day back to the Babylonians. The Babylonians have brought us back to Gilgamesh's age. And then Gilgamesh has traveled all the way back to his ancient ancestor, Utnapishti.

And Utnapishti then begins his story. And he says to Gilgamesh, You know the city of Shurupat, the city that lies on the banks of the Euphrates. That city was old, and the great gods were there, where their hearts led them to unleash the flood. And you know, those lines like, that city was old, even in this absolutely remote past, that city was already old. I think the epic produces this dizzying historical effect on us, like historical vertigo almost. We're nearing the end of the epic now, but before Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, I must ask about this

test that I have in my notes that Utnapishti sets for Gilgamesh. to Uruk, I must ask about this test that I have in my notes that Utnapishti sets for Gilgamesh. Now, what is this particular test? So Utnapishti has told Gilgamesh the story of the flood. And Gilgamesh may have realised on an intellectual level, whether he actually has realised that on an intellectual level is also an open question, but at least he should have realized that he cannot become physically immortal. But Utnapishti really brings it home in his mind with a test, a physical test, in where he asks Gilgamesh to stay awake for as long as the flood lasted. So that is again six days and seven nights. And Gilgamesh fails the test spectacularly. Instead of staying away for six days and seven nights,

he sleeps for a full six days and seven nights. So the exact opposite of what Utapishti had asked him to do. But again, the audience remembers here the previous times we heard this line. So first we saw Enkidu become human by having sex for six days and seven nights. Then we watched Enkidu become inhuman to be returned to the animal realm and for Gilgamesh to decide to become a god fully immortal through these six night six days and seven nights of mourning and then here we watch Gilgamesh re-become human and like surrender to his humanity to his mortality by sleeping for six days and seven nights so this rhythm of the epic of sex

and mourning and sleep, all of which are like activities that, you know, take us out of ourselves and transform us. I mean, absolutely. And it's quite the contrast if he actually sleeps for those six to seven days. I mean, before we completely leave Uttanapishti, I must also ask about his wife, because you did mention that Uttanapishti lives with his wife on this isolated

island. But we haven't really heard much from her until this point of the story. Does she have a role, an influence as to what happens next? Yeah, so I think actually Ut-An-Apishti's wife is a great example of the ambiguous role of women in the epic. So on one hand, we've seen a lot of these very powerful women like Ishtar and Gilgamesh's mother, and we've seen the innkeeper of the gods, Shiduri, and we have seen Shamhat, the woman who seduces Enkidu. And they all have a very prominent, powerful role in the epic. All the figures I just mentioned have speaking lines, and they all change the course of the story in one way or other. But I think at the same time,

these women are also often relegated to the margins, to the margins of power, and never more explicitly so than when Gilgamesh and Enkidu reject Ishtar's advances and, you know, add insult to injury when they have defeated the bull of heaven. Enkidu cuts off the penis of the bull and flings it in Ishtar's face, which is as, you know, as direct a rejection of women as you can possibly have. And I think Udunapishti's wife is another great example of that. She does give Gilgamesh one last shot at achieving not immortality but youth by revealing to him the secret of the plant of youth. That is the last episode in the epic. But at the same time

she only speaks while Gilgamesh is either away from Utana Pish's island or asleep so it seems like there is some sort of social expectation that she can't speak while Gilgamesh is there but when she does speak she has no problem speaking back to her husband and changing his mind and convincing him to give Gilgamesh one last chance, not at immortality, but at youth. So women are both weirdly marginal and central to the story. And I think there might be, like this might have its foundation in a sort of misogynist fear and awe of women, like, you know, that women are to be kept silent

in part because when they speak, they can change everything. You know, there's also a bit of like a male fearful fantasy of the exaggerated power of women as both like part of what makes these women in the epic so incredibly fascinating and so interesting to read about, but also constantly having to be put to a side. Now, I love this last twist in the tale, almost, of the story. You mentioned it there, this attempt to grasp youth by Gilgamesh through this plant. Now, what is this story of Gilgamesh and the plant? Because I think this

is fantastic. Yeah. So Gilgamesh is given one last chance and he goes down into what's called the Apsu, where this plant grows. And that's like an underwater sea. And eventually this is yet another one of his failures. So in the first part, he kills Humbaba and kills the Bull of Heaven. In the second part, he fails to achieve immortality and then fails to re-achieve youth. Because just as soon as he gets the plant, he then loses it to a snake that eats it and sheds its skin and is rejuvenated. So that's like a small explanation of why snakes shed their skin and become rejuvenated. Because, you know, they had

this ancestor snake who ate the plant that Gilgamesh gave them. But again, from the first of the failures, the failure to achieve immortality, Gilgamesh learns to tell his own story. So something good comes from that failure. And likewise, something good comes from the second failure, because he goes down, as I said, to retrieve the plant in what's called the Apsu. And that was the realm of the Lord of Wisdom, the God of Wisdom, Ea, who it seems by implication that Gilgamesh gains the wisdom for which he will later become famous by going down into the Apsu. So Gilgamesh may lose youth, but he gains wisdom. He may lose immortality, but he gains storytelling. And so how does the epic end? Is it, as you've highlighted, this return to Uruk? I mean, what's the style of the wording to finish off one of these great epics of ancient history?

So the last lines of the epic, we have had all of these metagames, all of these mirrorings, all of these literary complexities. So you know, okay, all right, we're back at Uruk, what does the text do? Well, the text does two incredible things at once. So you know, okay, all right, we're back at Uruk, what does the text do? Well, the text does two incredible things at once. So it repeats the description of Uruk that we read in the beginning. And so it repeats not just the description of Uruk, but of the walls that surround the city of Uruk. We heard that description in the beginning, we hear it here at the end. And so the walls encircle the text just as they encircle the city. And what's crucial about that is that Gilgamesh is now the narrator of that description. He speaks the praise of the walls

of Uruk, which we had heard from the narrator in the beginning of the story, implying that Gilgamesh thereby begins telling the story. He becomes a narrator of his own poem. So he repeats the words that we heard in the beginning, he opens the story, and so the story sort of loops back in this, you know, huge circle, and we start over again. But at the same time, the story, in a very real sense, gives the last words to the city. And we have heard for these 11 tablets about the adventure of the king of Uruk, and the king of Uruk in Babylonian is the Sharrul of Uruk. And then we hear, instead of having heard so much about the king, we now hear just for a brief moment about the citizens of Uruk.

And the last lines of the epic are, But the word for 2,000 acres here is shar, which sounds a lot like the word for king, but we go from being focused on the king, the sharro, the individual, to being focused on the collective, the whole, the totality of the city. And so we gaze out onto these citizens who are planting and building and living life. And so it takes us in the very last moment from an individual perspective to a collective perspective in the lens. It is just such a beautiful piece of literature.

I mean, for you, Sophus, what was it like? I mean, it must have been incredible to explore this tale, doing the translation, really delving into the detail of almost every word and understanding, and this isn't an exaggeration, the beauty of the writing itself, that something that was comprised more than 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. It's incredible. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is part of the joy of translating, that you really have to spend a lot of time with the nitty gritty details of the text. And I think a lot of the points that I've just relayed over the course of the podcast came to me when I was translating it specifically. So one example is this point that Utnapishti opens his story by talking about how old the city was. It was only really when translating that line, I was like, wait a moment, what? What did he just say? So being slowed down

in your reading of the text like that, I think is such a delightful experience. And also just, you know, noticing the amazing literary structure of it, all the half rhymes and the alliteration and the whatnot. Like, I think it's such a, it's not just a joy to translate, it's also really a privilege. It feels like being invited into the, you know, the command set deck of the text and seeing the text come together one line at a time. Sofus, when looking at the overall meaning of this epic, what do you think, and I'm sure there are so many different theories to this, as it's still quite a young text since its rediscovery,

what do you think were some of the key takeaways that the scribes who created it wanted someone who either listened to it or read it to take away from this epic? So again, we can see the epic going through a number of changes over the centuries. And I think one of the things that we can see is that the epic begins its literary life as, you know, relatively straightforward, like heroic adventure, and becomes more and more philosophical. It becomes more and more somber in its tone. And it becomes more and more focused on some of the things I've been

talking about, like the importance of storytelling, the importance of wisdom. And that probably does coincide with the fact that, you know, it becomes integrated into the school curriculum, and it becomes more and more a thing that is read by scribes, and that is studied by scholars. And so apart from anything else, I mentioned previously that one of the main messages that gets highlighted in the epic is how rash, emotional kings need wise scholars to keep them in check. But I definitely think over the history of the epic, it becomes more of a philosophical tragedy and less of this, you know, exuberant adventure that it is in the beginning. Measuring the popularity of ancient texts is not as a straightforward thing, but it is one of the Babylonian texts of which most copies

survive. It is also, by quite a bit, the longest, I think it's three times as long as the second longest Babylonian text that we have. So it really does occupy a very special position in the Babylonian world, and was certainly, especially in the first millennium, studied in schools and would have been a key component of the scribal education. And Gilgamesh is also a figure outside of the epic. So Babylonians who, you know, when they died, they might have expected to meet Gilgamesh physically in the underworld as a judge among the dead. After this 11 tablet narrative, there's a sort of an appendix, which is another story about Gilgamesh, in which he learns the structure of the underworld. And so this is quite different from the dream that Enkidu sees in the main narrative. Here, Enkidu actually physically

goes to the underworld and is then brought back and then reports on what the underworld is like. So this is a story that is like not really compatible with the 11 version, 11 tablet version. It's just another story. And there Gilgamesh is instructed in how the underworld works because according to the Babylonians, he would become one of the rulers of the judge of the underworld. So Babylonians might have expected to actually physically meet him when they died. And we see prayers to Gilgamesh as judge of the underworld. And there are other literary texts in the Babylonian world that reference him. The impact of Gilgamesh the Epic on the surrounding cultures is a bit of a debated topic. During the late 2nd millennium BCE, so like in the 1200s, there are copies and translations of the Epic throughout the cuneiform world, and this is a time when the cuneiform world is quite large. So you see translations of the epic in what is now

Turkey into Hittite and Hurrian. You see copies of the epic in Ugarit and in Megiddo in what is now the Levant. So the text travels quite widely, but always within the cuneiform world. And it's not fully clear what its direct relation is to texts like the Hebrew Bible or Homer. Both of those are separately, but very intensely debated topics in the scholarship. What is the relation between Homer and Gilgamesh? And what is the relation between the Hebrew Bible and the Babylonian texts in general, but Gilgamesh in particular? And different scholars will have very different opinions on that. Absolutely. That's definitely a topic for another podcast or maybe 10 podcasts in its own right, I must admit. So this has been amazing. I mean, last but certainly not least, when we think of this story, it is one of the most well-known, if not the most well-known story

from ancient Mesopotamia. But I mean, why do you think this story is still so alluring to so many people today? Because I must admit, I still struggle to resonate quite a bit with the figure of Gilgamesh, this demigod and quite a pitiful figure at times, but he's also been an absolutely terrible ruler at the start. But is there something that people can really identify with this figure? I mean, why would you argue that this epic is so alluring? What is it about it? I think the thing that interests me most as a scholar of Gilgamesh is how differently people react to it. And I think that is really the joy, not just of translating him, but you know, very physically being there when people meet

Gilgamesh for the first time. I think that's one of the best parts of my job. Like if I give a lecture about Gilgamesh, I see people react to him and to his story in real time. And people react so differently. So for some people, this is a story about death and the longing for immortality. For some people, this is a story about grief and losing a loved one. For some people, this is a story about the passionate love between two men. For some people, this is a story about the clash between culture and nature. For some people, this is a story about kingship and community and leadership. For some, it's a story about the importance of history, and so on and so forth. People really find all sorts of individual angles through which to relate to Gilgamesh. And I think that is what interests me, that he is this kaleidoscopic

figure that will mean different things to different people. And that sense of endless possibility within the epic. And again, this epic is quite short. Like it's 3000 lines, you know, it's comes out to about 110 pages in translation, and it contains all of what we just talked about and more. And there's everything from, you know, monkey musicians to scorpion people to, you know, the bull the size of the city in it, compressed into this text. And so I think having so many different themes ensures its ongoing relevance in part because it allows different people to pick out which part of it speaks to them. It is an extraordinary story, and I'm really grateful for your time to go through it in detail today, Sophus. You have,

of course, done a translation of the Epic of Kilgormesh. Now tell us briefly a bit about that. Yeah, so my translation is out with Yale University Press, and it includes a translation of the standard Babylonian version of the Epic, as well as an introduction and five essays that unpack the history of the Epic, its literary themes, and its literary structure. Well, Sophus, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. Well, there you go.

You made it to the end of our bumper episode on the epic of Gilgamesh. From the beginning, with the introduction of figures like Gilgamesh and Enkidu, to the ending at the walls of a rook, just as the epic began. I hope you enjoyed this awesome double whammy on the epic. We love Mesopotamian content, Sophos was great, so please do let us know your thoughts in the comments below. It's always

wonderful hearing your feedback. Now, last thing from me, wherever you're listening to the podcast, whether it be on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, make sure that you are following The Ancient so that you are notified when we release new episodes twice every week. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.