49: Gilgamesh

Hello and welcome to classical stuff. You should know a podcast about the classical world put on by three educators in a classical Christian school in sunny sunny Austin, Texas Sunny is sunny. It is the summer when we recording this and I believe the current temperature is 106 that is very hot. It's been that hot this week This is not this the fact that people live in such a hot places testament to man's arrogance But that's a whole other podcast.

Wow. We're just AC. Yeah, that's the president of our condition. Yeah, that's as good Bailing out with technology, but anyway today.

I am joined my name is Graham Doncen and I am here with Thomas Maggie Hello the ambassador on bods minifone and Arthur Jan Hanenburg has me who is with us Your teacher your teacher of rhetoric which has its own and lord of ceiling you're your pretty Your purchase Teroldry isn't isn't all With blood wow Purchased it with paper cuts like that Hamburg you are taking us way back throwback podcast to the world of ancient Mesopotamia the fertile crested fertile crescent my gentleman Go on me with a journey to modern day Iraq. Okay. Okay. I pretty sure I'm not gonna call the fertile crested present that served just amazing Shorma's oh, but it's awesome.

Oh, but they'll be snagging. Okay, so today I will be talking about the epic of Gilgamesh Which we kind of forgot existed as a species until the 1800s. Yeah, it was like it was lost to us By I think I named Henry layered and his buddy and it was in that kind of era of Like going around and taking things back. Absolutely.

Yeah, I'm not trying to downplay that I'm saying this is the Indiana Jones era of archaeology where I don't have to speak your language But I'm gonna go there brandish and guns and take all your relics like that's and so Henry layered in his buddy get all of these tablets Not cowboys you're taking these are British cowboys Okay, anyway, I'm You guys are sad track so easy anyway So Henry layered went down and they found in Nineveh the ancient city of Nineveh and you might remember Nineveh from such books as Jonah Ah, yes, right. Yeah, that's who he preached to well turns out Nineveh's real place And there was a king there named Ashurbanable and after there was a rebellion he kind of squash and he was king of a whole bunch of Different ways still place like it is a populated city in Syria you can go there I think it's like the oldest one of the oldest continuing habitant cities I usually these ancient things like Troy no one lives inside of Troy, but people still live in Old Town of Nineveh Anyway, right so in Nineveh he wanted to compile a library and basically sent out a call for anything that would aid in the administration of his kingdom which included tax records which included the advice of previous kings and one of the greatest epics of their time period which was the Epic of Gilgamesh and we know that it was big and popular because we have copies ranging all the way back to I think Around what was it? I think it was like 2600 BC something like that like a long long time ago The addition that we have was compiled by we call him by the inscription that he made on the copy which was it's in leki Unini which basically means God of the moon here my prayer or receive my prayer so we don't actually know the guy's name He didn't write his name on it. It's really anonymous, but that little inscription We just use that as his name and he was thought to live somewhere between a thousand BC to 1300 BC So a thousand years before the coming of Christ this guy compiled the Epic of Gilgamesh Oh and he compiled it and he did not write he didn't write he was actually working from ancient text So there's sort of a language thing where for the longest time Sumerian was the language of intellect right which was it was kind of like the Latin of their day right just like for a long time Latin was like if you Regicated if you were scribe you learned Latin and the same thing was true of Sumerian right even in the time when the language of Acadia Acadian or a cad that category anyway Acadian was kind of like the language that everybody used Sumerian was still regarded as a language of Learning so if you were scribe you learned that and they wrote in a language called cuneiform Right you know cuneiform is no so it's it's basically when writing was invented was cuneiform and they're like these little wedge shapes And the audience can't see I'm making a little view of my hands But it's kind of like if you think like a little chicken claw scratch It's kind of what it looks like and it was easy to make with a chisel and you can make them really fast There's no real curves or at least not really read you snip off the top of a read I think actually where the word cuneiform comes from I think cuneiform means cone shaped Oh, so it's the shape of the little wedge that they make and basically started out as kind of a pictographical writing Like if I had and it was for records right if I was like I'm gonna send you three bushels of corn you're gonna So it was counting it was counting I would make the shape of corn on like a little tablet or whatever And then I would send you the tablets a record right and you can write down It basically came up when the administration of the local temple was too complicated to keep track of what was going on for human Memory I had to start writing stuff down watching this block.

Yeah watching They invented cuneiform writing and it eventually became complex enough to be our system of writing and they wrote on these clay tablets that were Easily preserved right anything they also wrote on sort of wood covered in wax but anything that was that sort of dissipated It's a clay tablets they would be kind of damp or wet and you could push the dry them Yeah, you would write on them when they were damp and then they would they would still harden and then you would have this record Yeah, so it was a great system of writing and there's a proliferation of these tablets still left over just because Yeah, so Henry layered when he went to Nineveh he found Ashramenples library and it was just like I'm talking like tens of thousands of these great like clay tablets sort of sitting around and in there as they were looking through They found a record of the deluge and by the deluge I mean the blood from the Bible and this was a huge discovery and it turns out that this is pretty much the oldest complete narrative Epic that we have so if you're ever wondered what is the oldest book of humanity like what's the oldest book? I can read the epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest like complete narrative book tale that we have and So compiled by some like a new new in thousand to thirteen hundred I think it was for Asir Bannepul's library Which eventually got destroyed when somebody else came through I kind of lost to antiquity until they finally uncovered it in digs in Inova and then started translating these tablets and there's so many tablets about Gilgamesh I'm not talking just some like uninnese. I'm saying from hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of years before there's things that reference Gilgamesh And his tale and not necessarily in the same light maybe with a couple changes maybe in a different language Like it was that popular popular enough to have spread to distant regions of the empire and be translated into two different languages and Have sort of different versions of the tail And so as we put together some like uninnese tail because pieces are missing in the tablets are broken We're having to supplement from different places, but translators are generally confident that eventually we're gonna find enough to sort of put the whole thing back We are there pieces that we're missing. Oh, yeah, we probably are missing about a fifth like just because of broken tablets thing We're missing things.

We're guessing at it's a big piece of it in fact one of the the version music school is incomplete and I'm supplement with a tablet that came out after the publication of our version that talks about one of the episodes in the tail that kind of brings some light to some of the things that Are happening so then with the gaps the translators usually try and write something in like in the style of the epic Or will they just kind of do a plot summary to say you know this happens between these two so in one instance They they actually plug the gap with a summary for that another Scribed it a long time ago, but it's a scribe It's an ancient text But it's kind of summarizing what happened and for the most part they can pull from different tablets that are older or from elsewhere to Sort of like fill in the gaps and you can tell when the language is the same and they can just sort of slot things in or they Can guess it by context or they can kind of reconstruct it good translations will show you where those are right if there's three dots There's a piece of a line missing and they pretty much wrote in sometimes couplets sometimes quadrains and couplets were joined sometimes five lines There isn't really a strict meter to it. It's identifiable beyond couplets which are pretty identifiable But beyond that there's no real meter that we can discern. Yeah, um So he put together this tale and the tale takes place in ancient zoom area and just to give you a picture of their world They assumed that man was created to serve the gods that is your point and it's not that far off from Christianity, right? We are here to serve the god, but I'm the same token what does he send us?

I'm going to enjoy it very well done Exactly, but our god also serves us So it kind of flips things on their head for them what happened was the gods were working to provide for their own needs But you guys work as hard because you know, and so they thought what they would do is they're like You know what you do is just make people to do this for us That's awesome So they made him out of dirt and then gave him a way to make more of them and said off you guys go gave him big Swiles of land and that those became the city's and each city was dedicated to a deity And your job as a city was to sort of tell the land and then make sure that the gods had everything they needed and usually that temple was smacked out in the center of the town and you have a primary god that was like Rick lining and you had to make sure he was clothed and make sure he was fed that he was entertained he would dance in front of Them sometimes he would have a wife and you'd have to provide for her and you'd have to provide a big marital bed for these two gods and then Sometimes like a god court that you have to serve and so the action at the temple was really complicated and involved a lot of people and sometimes orphans and widows that They were dedicated to the temple now is their job Sometimes in the case of any temple dedicated to ishtar that also involved prostitution right ish tar is the ancient goddess of love and war And they have a whole pantheon and mostly what it is is there's an upper firmament Which is kind of like probably at the stars then there's the air and then there's the ground and very much like the Greeks If you think back to a few podcasts ago when I talked about the Odyssey or even before that we talked about the spheres Right there are different cosmologies and this one's pretty basic basically There's space air earth and it's dome-shaped just like usual sitting over a big flat disk and at the edges of it Are two big mountains that sort of protect the Sun as it rises and sets and beyond that water and the realm of the gods It's very much like Greece where if you pass the ocean river you're into the realm of the gods same is true of these folks right and The flat earth. Yeah, I kind of like flat earth society that's pretty cool. You want to go down to YouTube wormhole Who I have done before why it's fascinating doing research. Yeah.

Oh, it's fun I'm really a huge fan of the notion that ancient pyramids were giant generators. Have you guys seen that one electricity generator? St. Salience is that from the history channel thing?

I think so I look at those things because I try to find good logical policies for a rhetoric class. Oh, it's so fun. Yeah, it's just great Okay, so there's also a side creation story where man was pretty much like a hairy beast and he wandered around and wasn't very good at doing Mm-hmm, and then and then they had the gods had to create the race of kings Over the counselors and so they're beautiful. They're strong They're smarter and it's only yeah They're almost kind of a different race which gives them credence to claim like I am a king over everybody else So the story takes place in Uruk and Orks from Lord of the Rings.

It's one of the provinces and risk All right, so it centers around a king named Gilgamesh and Gilgamesh is a fella that may have actually Existed very much like King Arthur right he's kind of a mythical character, but they're not a king Arthur We don't really know he may have lived around he was probably the first the first the first ruler of the first dynasty of Uruk around 2750 BC we know this because there's a king list that kind of lists the kings and he's listed and guess how long his reign was 10 years 126 years. That doesn't sound quite right. That's a long time. I think the historical Gilgamesh if I'm thinking right was kind of a warm Hunger he took over some other towns.

He was a big successful king. He fought a lot that was kind of his deal as far as we know but This king list is supposed to be like an actual list of the kings right as far as they're concerned Yes, and I modern scholars say there's no way he could have rained that long But in the Bible they record all kinds of ages that are way past 126 years And they just sort of filter down until common ages What the deal with that is if it's one of it's a symbolic thing We don't talk about it But I'm just I've heard that is something that I've never put to bed in my own mind Is it a symbolic thing that they're doing or is it some sort of is there actually a biological thing going on that is Took that the game of the just the decay of from like Garden of Eden to now our timelines are getting short I've heard I've heard theories about a cloud cover now pretty much covered everything and then once the cloud cover rain down in the flood More radiation could reach the human DNA and sort of breaking down faster. Yeah, but I mean there's there's all these theories, but I mean I'm not typically like the cloud make it look forever. So we just What's gonna be our name it's gonna be called like clouder, but CLDR Anyone that actually knows science out there's probably just rolling around like just looking to be a seed capitalist in our new venture Please be a louder class Clowder Probably I don't I think the modern tendency to discount ancient man Yeah, the things he said that are hard for us to believe must have been lies or symbolic I think it's incredibly Euryistic area right I think it's much easier to take that take it at face value and say we probably just don't know what was going on Yeah, or maybe they were measuring things by different.

I don't know I'm but when they put 126 years That's not a vague number. Yeah, that's not two hundred years That's real specific and the and the even we're the thing is I think his dad and I'm remembering this so don't take this It's absolutely true You know dad rain for something like 36 years and so it's like the King list isn't like a hundred hundred fifty two hundred It's like 36 126 like 12 like it's it's recording at least that's what you straight up ages in the same vein of that fantasy That we're talking about before like I like the idea that it's like It's believable numbers of years that they were leading and then there's this like mystical story in the middle of it And then it continues because it's the same like the purpose of King Arthur's to give this history to the people of England in the same way Gilgamesh is giving the history to the people of say or it was the name of the history of Babylonians So I kind of like the mingling of you know quote-unquote history and myth with the Gilgamesh Yeah, so all these people lived in the furlcrescent It was a good place to farm way in the distance were cedar forest It's called for like your bineland there if you wanted to build big houses though You kind of needed straight trees and straight trees were kind of hard to come by right even in for us Texans Right? We have a lot of straight trees. Oh, we got like oak and man oak does not want to grow straight.

Yeah, you're weird mesquite Shacks. Yeah, are they what I'm just assuming like, you know, I think about it You just it would be all like gnarly and not in the not in the surfer not in the surfer way Not gnarly All right, so let me let me sort of jump into the tail here again So Gilgamesh was the legendary builder of orux walls. That's kind of how the tail opens They're like dude Gilgamesh good king built some wicked walls and now it's easy to just count these walls But I mean think about it if I'm a king and resources are scarce Which they often were especially nice straight trees and and Graham over here has some nice great trees And I know I've got more people than he does if I just wait until it's nighttime And he doesn't have walls I can just walk in trouble one. I'm trouble.

He's in trouble I'll have to go take it beautiful spruce. Yeah, sometimes I don't know if they were standing armies and so you had to pull from the men of the town to make that when they weren't fighting they were farming and so The walls were important is what I'm saying and so building good walls for your town meant safety meant solidity It meant that you could grow while everyone else was fighting and dying and then maybe you make some money for your town And he like it's like walk along it touch it art the bridge Awesome. Oh, yeah, really goes into detail about how great these walls are as walls. Yeah, but it turns out Gilgamesh is kind of a jerk He's a tyrant and we don't exactly know how he was stealing their rest But he really is stealing the rest of every dude in town They just can't just what it says it says he steals their rest pretty much that he annoys them night and day and it could be that There's a few parties like either he's working really hard where he's taking him for his armies Or maybe he likes to play games and all day He wants to just play games and the games are kind of violent And so there all the dudes are tired and all the ladies are caring for the dudes that are falling apart because he likes to play games In any case, he's really hard on his people and he also Subscribes to the tradition of pre-monautica.

You guys know that is okay For our listener that means that he has conjugal rights with the bride prior to the husband right on the night of the wedding Which is not like that's not okay. No, and so he is he's not a solid guy. He's an okay king They're not dying does the the poem actually judge him for it like oh, yeah, and the gods do too They immediately say like look we've got to solve this problem Everyone in a rook is like hey gods can you help us out this guy's kind of the worst and so they decide to make a new man? And you'll get by the way is a demigod his mom his mother is ninsun which is like I think a cow God for goddess It actually says he's two-thirds God and one-third man, and I'm not exactly sure how the ratios sort of shake down But I'm not gonna ask any questions I'm just gonna leave it leave it at that and he's supposed to be very handsome in the ancient world that often came with kingship Right you are right big strong handsome good fighter and wise all that was sort of expected of kingship Didn't always happen, but it was it was a bonus if you had it Yeah, so they pray to the gods and the gods say look well Just make somebody to be his equal to sort of take out his energies on it And so they make a guy named in Kaidu and in Kaidu lives in the woods He's super hairy like cattle and he runs around with his elves and he hangs out hangs out the water holes And he's basically basically a wild man and if you remember back to the creation stories He's almost like a replication of the first man who's wild he's hairy he didn't have a mother They actually make him out of clay and which mirrors almost the creation stories of Genesis and it's gonna mirror a little more in a second So there's a trapper that sees in Kaidu and Kaidu helps the animals he like digs up the traps and he We got a one and poor one and dog downstairs, so he's digging up the traps He's filling in the holes.

He won't let the trapper do his job and remembering Kaidu is enormous He meant to tangle Gilgamesh who's the strongest guy ever so what was the reason that the gods decided to make him I do again just we're gonna give someone Gilgamesh to he's he's a they say stormy heart for stormy heart They're gonna be best buds and and sort of Like expend their energies on each other rather than taking out all those youthful energies on the people of the town Gotcha, and so the trapper's like I got to solve this problem So he goes to his dad and he's like look man this guy's making my job really hard What do I do and the dad says look you need to go find sham hat sham hat is a temple prostitute and He goes and he talks to Gilgamesh and he's like Gilgamesh I need some help I need one your temple prostitute and go to my like ah you need sham hat and Sham hat is a name that pretty much means pretty well set up bodily You're you're pretty good looking and so she goes and she entraps Gilgamesh or entraps in Kaidu in the way that one might expect Right being a temple prostitute and being pretty well set up bodily and so they hang out for a while and then he has in this Instance about the ninth graders just love this. Oh, yeah, it's the most awkward thing We usually skip the page and they all they read it. Yeah, I don't think I've ever had a ninth grader honestly skipped that page I try And Berg told us not to read it. Oh, no I actually try to downplay it so it's not even like on their radar I'm like and now we're gonna skip to this spot right here And then I hear like three or four giggling in the corner and I'm like, all right They found it.

Oh, no whatever So he hangs out with the prostitute lady and now when he tries to return to the the beast He can't they shun him because he's basically become human and it says like you've grown wise right? You have become now an actual man and then he goes and he eats some bread and he has some wine and at first He doesn't even know how to eat bread because he's used to living off the milk of beasts and then he has a lot of wine And he gets a little drunk and then after a while like he's living with the shepherds. He's doing him solids right He's helping him out. He's help like fighting off wolves off there.

She becomes a shepherd Yeah, a beast man would seem like a good thing to have on you And he was the guy with kind of a night watch you fall off all the wolves at night Perfect and after a while they see a guy walking past and I said bring that guy over here I want to because shame had still there She's just she sticks around so bring that guy over I want to see what the deal is and the guy says I'm going to a wedding But it's the worst because Gilgamesh has been taking all the brides and it's really hard and in Kaidu is furious He loses it and so he heads back to the town because of the taking of the brides Yeah, it's not okay and also he wants to show that he's stronger than Gilgamesh And he's the best thing around and so he stands in the doorway when Gilgamesh is heading in to take his rights And he says it's not gonna happen buddy And so they fight and they fight and they fight really hard and they like knock some doors down and they make a big mess in town And then Gilgamesh throws in Kaidu and he wins what so now if you are one of those men what attitude are you gonna have right after this? I got shot If you're a king and you've been like just lorn it over everybody you're probably 22 you're flippin jacked You're smart you're wise you have anything you want You've been doing this and all this on this huge hairy dude This is big as you and as young as you stands in your way and says no way buddy And then you wrestle and he's actually kind of awesome at it What how do you feel mad? Do you want to kill the guy maybe but if first of all you sort of beat him so yeah You feel like you can one up them so maybe you're like you won't be my friend. That's what happens Isn't it yeah?

I mean they instantly sort of high-five and say like friendships seal. It's like the end of a hockey fight Yeah, it really is their instant friends. It's like the end of those eighties where they jump in high-five and freeze frames And that's what happens they become best friends and then they're sort of hanging out and They decide to go on a trip to talk to this forest guardian named kumbaba and this is where it's a little weird Because stick with me. This is where it gets weird.

We're not even the weirdest weirdest stuff yet So they go to fight this forest guardian named kumbaba now Humbaba watches the cedar forest way off in the distance and basically Gilgamesh thinks I want to set myself up frantically I want everyone to know my name forever. No, I'm gonna do that is by killing this guy and There's a dog. We gotta fix this. That's the dog's you should know Classical dogs, so if you just hear a dog he's up here hanging out with us and he's probably gonna go sit in the corner and pant a little bit Hope so a lot his name is doc great dog.

Okay, so they're gonna go kill this guy named kumbaba and he he's really powerful He's an ogre of some sort. It doesn't really make clear what his dangers are he has like auras that are troublesome and in kind of pretty much says look man I know that guy don't do it. Oh, there's no reason to and the gods are kind of like that's not a good idea And the elders of the town say that's not really a good idea and yet Gilgamesh insists. He's like I'm big I'm huge.

Don't be a weakling. Let's go. I was not like bugging anyone just kind of not forest Yeah, just hangs out in the forest. He's not a big deal and then so they go and they get a bunch of weapons And they travel and this is where it's very much like bail wolf in that they travel like what would be a month's journey like during the morning They they hike really fast and on the way Gilgamesh has a bunch of scary dreams they get there and they attack him Baba And humaba says like and how do I know you what what's the deal?

I do me like this yeah, why you doing like this stop Gilgamesh because they catch him sort of before he has his Terrors on and he can't really defend himself and he says like stop Gilgamesh from doing this and I think he even promises like Hey man, I'll build you a palace you only alone and In kaidu says kill him fast like you got to kill don't trust his words We got ice him so they put him on ice and then they try to kind of hide it from the gods because this really isn't okay They know they shouldn't be doing this and the most recent tablet found actually highlights this even more that Humbaba is sort of in his palace and the creatures are praising him and the birds love him And it's all great and then these two yogals show up and decide to wreck the whole thing But they so they sail back with a bunch of cedars and Bob's head like Fred Rose Yeah, just like bros being bros just doing things. I shouldn't be doing and trying to hide it Yeah, and this kind of sets the gods against him. Yeah, and then when they get back Ishtar so ishtar is the goddess of love and war which isn't surprising as that those two things would coincide in a goddess, right? You guys have you guys will have wives not anything It's just you know conflict might be a part of marriage what?

So he's talking about yours right now Graham You don't get pearls without Breaking a few questions is that without friction? I don't know Sand little sand needs to are you making a proverb? Yeah trying to reverberate get my way out of this So ishtar sees him and she's like dang it will mesh you hot. Oh wow ishtar and she says hey man You want to be my husband?

I'll do this crazy house and give you this some sweet chariots And he he says no because all of your previous lovers She doesn't have a great record with dudes. She's got us of love and war and she's got kind of an insetiable appetite for both She was also usually the patron goddess of the town most towns really like to star Yeah, and he basically says no every other lover you've ever had you've hurt or broken his leg or turned him into a dolphin or whatever You do none of it's good So I'm gonna say no so she cries to her dad and says you can mesh the same all this lander about me and the dad says well He's right. It's not slander. It's true honey You did kind of bring that on yourself didn't you and she is Lived with the whole situation so she says give me the bull of heaven Which in this case is sort of representation of famine right?

Give me the bull of heaven or I will smash the doors of hell and let all the zombies and they'll walk around with the living and there'll be no Differentiation the dads like that's probably a bad thing But you got to make sure they got enough food to live and she's like we've already saved it up Give me give me the big bull of heaven So she takes it down and tries to kill Gilgamesh with it But he slays it oh bull heaven the bull of heaven and it's awesome because the when the bull stamps is he's I think he snorts and 100 people Die and then he stamps his foot and 200 people die people dying all over the place And then Kaidu jumps on it like grabs it by the tail and then Gilgamesh dabs it in the head That's kind of dispatch it really quickly and then they carve it up and then barbecue And then they take a ham-hock and they throw it at his heart who's crying on the wall right now And he's like and I think it's in kind of it says if I get my hands on you I do the same thing And I cover your hands with guts like they make fun of her and she's not having a good day after that Did she get hit by the ham-hock? Yeah, and then her and her serving women sort of cry because it was this beautiful of heaven I don't know and then he takes the horns and donates them to the temple. No, that's a good thing So now you're the gods. How do you feel about these two dudes?

This is we have a problem, but I don't know like they just kind of honored the gods with the um bull sacrifice right the horns That's kind of a good thing. They're in the temple, but I don't know if they really honored the in any case They're not have the made in Kaidu to try to like keep the other mission under control And now they're just like running shopping everything Yeah, they're kind of doing things they shouldn't really do so they say one of them has to die and it's and they kind of Condole conclusion is gonna be in Kaidu right someone Kaidu has a dream He knows he's gonna die and by the way death in ancient America is bad. Oh hell is like it's under the earth It's literally a cave with like bird weird winged bird people that watch you and you have no clothes and all day You eat dust and this is where everyone goes. This isn't just for the bad people Yeah, everybody goes here.

So dying is not not a positive for any human being Yeah, so in Kaidu knows that it's a problem and he laments and he starts cursing everyone he curses sham hat He curses the gate he curses his life He curses the gods and then kind of takes it all back when he realizes that he's being unreasonable and then he dies and Gilgamesh Who is still a young man? Schloss's best friend. Yeah, he loses it. I bet I mean think about it.

You said there were frebos bros, right? Yeah, I mean that's essentially what they are and he's never really thought about death And he just lost his best friend and so he has a crisis and he thinks what just happened to my best bud He's gonna happen to me and I gotta stop that from happening So he gets his stuff together and he leaves on a journey to find eternal life He leaves his town he leaves his people and he starts looking around he travels all the way to remember those two mountains I told you about that kind of separate the realm of the gods from man and there he meets the keepers of the way and they are Scorpion men have scorpion half men. That's kind of cool. Oh, it's really cool.

But better than that They try to be like super nice. Here's the nicest guys ever I think partially because he's he is divine so they're allowed to let him through right? He's got divine blood in him and the kind of guardians But they're like hey man, what's your story and he says my friend just died and I'm super sad I've been on this journey And I just I want to find the secret to eternal life and they're like oh that is rough You know, it's wicked dark in those mountains and he's like yeah, I do. They're like all right good luck buddy So he goes through the mountains and takes him some while but he gets to the other side and by this time the Sun God His kind of patron has already told him that he's not gonna find it.

You're not gonna get eternal life buddy He gets through and he meets a goddess named Suduri who's sort of the tavern keeper goddess wine and we're in sort of a garden of jewels Like everything is jewels. He is in the realm of the gods and she says what's your story? She actually thinks he's a felon at first so she shuts the door and then climbs on a roof and talks about from the roof Yeah, what's your story? He says well, I've lost my best friend I'm looking for eternal life and she's like not really not really gonna find it But I'll tell you know how you can maybe find out he's going to find the ancient Noah the guy named Uta Napishtim He was the guy that survived the flood and the story is actually really very similar build an arc survive Afterwards, you know, you're you get to live on and not what that was his story And so he goes and he finds the boatman of Uta Napishtim named Urshanabe And I think this is one of the first instances of the classical character heron C-H-R-O-N who shows up in Greek mythology all the time.

He's the infernal boatman fairies people across the way But Kilgamesh even have a lot of sense, right? He threatens to force the answers out of everybody and so he says He sees Urshanabe with his crew the stone ones who are impervious to the waters of death, right? They're made out of stones, so they've only heard him and he just goes and kills him all and then he finds Urshanabe He's like Urshanabe take me across tell me how to do it Urshanabe is like you you killed my crew I can't do it. I can't go now and in one translation Gilgamesh is like I still don't get it How why can't we sail and he's like because your hands killed my crew?

He's like Can you explain it better? I think there'd be a test Didn't really think it through so he he's forced to go and cut a bunch of poles So he can do the job himself They hop in the boat and he like once the poles in he can't use it again So he pulls himself and pushes the boat and he's got to use the next one eventually he runs out of poles And so in what is my maybe my favorite scene of Gilgamesh? He takes off his shirt and then holds it up like a sail and just sort of holds his shirt and sails all the way to uten The pitch to him who stands on the shore and he's like I don't recognize that guy He's not one of mine. He's not a stone man So Gilgamesh shows up and he comes off and he's like ooh in the pitch to him you which is my shirt I had to use my shirt to get here and he's any day and every time he talks to somebody he tells the whole story I've been on this journey.

I'm I'm all like weathered because my friend died and I'm really sad I'm scared to die I don't want to die and who did the pitch to him says he kind of tells his story he says well What happened was that we were being noisy and the gods didn't like it So they decided to kill all of us But one of the gods had mercy and gave me a warning and so I dodged the bullet and afterwards I sent up a Unoffering and they liked it and I'm really caught at sort of dumbing this down here but basically they took me and Exempted me from death and basically said I get to be like a god now and then instituted certain death for every other man The implications kind of that before this men would only die from disease or accident and that they set the date that men would die Like after the flood but he was tempted But he's been living on this island way off in the realm of the gods by himself, but that's the thing is it's a one-time deal He's the only one that gets to live forever. He's the only one that gets to live forever. It's not a repeatable instance It's not something you can do again, and so Gilgamesh is shattered by this news right obviously and he's like you you you want to do this thing Prove that you can stay awake for five days something like that seven days. I have to get the number Gilgamesh instantly falls asleep And and so they bake bread to place next to his head to count time So I really have clocks right if you wake up I was not sleeping for five days and he does he slits for like five whole days And so the loaves of bread just go totally nasty, but you can see the progression of time It's funny and then he's like he wakes up and you know The pishtim gives him kind of this big speech and part number one is basically saying kings dress good and you're not dressed well Basically, you're playing the part of the fool right not the part of the king and you've left your people You're not doing the things of a king.

You're not caring for your men. You're not caring for your wife You are not being kingly and lastly this errand you're on to find eternal life It's a fool's errand you can't do it. Yeah, and then he says weirdly he's like but there's a flower under the ocean that might give you You again, so there's way kind of yeah, so but I think he knows that Gilgamesh isn't gonna end up keeping it So Gilgamesh swims under grabs the flower and he's like yes I'm gonna go test it on the old people and see if it works and then try it myself and I'll be young again And then he on the way home bathes once and a snake steals flower Oh, and sheds his skin and the snake is like I'm young And then takes off which I think is an explanation of how she why she snakes shed their skin It's kind of adorable and Gilgamesh is like flipping dang it He like can't believe it But on the on the bonus note Uda Napishtim gave him like gave him clothes that wouldn't wear down until he got home Which is kind of like a symbol of renewal of mind right he's become wise he also banned urchinabe for the moment Come back which is a bummer Job Gilgamesh stinging so he travels with Gilgamesh all the way back and then at the very end they reach or look and Gilgamesh takes Urshanabe and he's like check out my walls Kind of how the tail and that's it that's the story That's the guy that was kind of a tyrant got a best friend lost the best friend and then had this huge crisis of Existential like he had an existential crisis, right? It's the story of a football player learning that he's one day going to that nothing against football players But you're like standard stereotypical meathead having that realization And isn't it touching that humanity's oldest story deals with humanity's greatest questions Right that how do we deal with the fact that we're gonna die and that kind of wisdom that it is better not to search after You know like a few least search after immortality to seek these things that you'll never get to waste your life on these adventures Trying to find something that can't be yours when you've got a wife at home We've got kids when there's bread and wine to be drunk and partying to be done And you have a job and you're a king and you should be guiding your people and building walls and sort of so when he returns and shows the walls It's not a silly or bad thing He's returning and sort of reveling in the good work that he's done and returning to domestic life I mean that's that's the theme of the tale is that he has grown up It's the moment when he sort of gives up on that dream of eternal life and sells sells down at home And strangely enough, he does become a deity in the underworld.

Wait really? Yeah, his mom knows it's gonna happen She's like isn't he gonna be a deity later when she's about to send him off on the journey to Obama and the song I was a brother. Yeah, he's gonna be fine. So he becomes a ruler of the underworld, but it's the underworld So he's like a fraction he's got a like job set up for him So do you guys have any have any thoughts concerning the tale or questions?

Oh there was one other question big question I have for you But I'll ask that after you give basic thoughts So I mean what happened so in kind of just he dies Yeah, I got any under under world story where Gilgamesh gets to meet in Kaidu or in kind of comes back and is like like grow up like not in the literature I've read it could very well be that there are some poems out there that deal with it There is a like I said, there is a wealth of Gilgamesh literature a lot of its jokes and the other thing I want to tell you yeah, so it's what is jokes? Knock knock who's their eventual death? The other thing I want to tell you and this this is gonna real really treat you I think is that a lot of those tablets that we found yes where they came from Iraq well Iraq but scriptoriums they were gathered from places where students were trained Most of those tablets were found in the homes of their instructors or in the schools themselves cool So we know the curriculum and we even have their old jokes like I went down the hall and they asked for a hall pass I'd have to be me I went to get some water and have a pass sleep beat me and then he was like you're speaking to Katie and not some Buryan be me like their little combs my students and so like graded papers are the things that have saved ancient literature Oh, and so next time your students turn in papers You can be like look guys when the world goes down in flames right when they have the most common written record is going to be student papers So how good do you feel about what you just turned in because it might be what they try to decipher some British adventurer is gonna Commentake this and they're gonna reconstruct the iliad from quotations from my essays You want to tell me about this there's a there's a book like a dystopian book that is basically that it's The world ends and they're trying to piece together these old classical works, but it's like it's from student papers That they're doing I don't know I mean it's the last couple years. I can't remember the name I mean it's hilarious that might be the case like you want to take another crack at it before it goes down in history as your work And your names on it So I think that's fun.

My other big question is this is a tale of the deluge that was written down Right roundabouts near when the access happened and the deluge tale from the scriptures is written down near that same time By at least we think so by Moses right around 1400, but the tail is from far far far earlier How do you as a Christian deal with that knowledge that there is a flood narrative that is perhaps far older than that in the scriptures? so I read the field of mesh in high school and the way they talked about it is that that flood was evidence of The biblical flood you're saying the hang up of that is they have a two different times No, the the flood is recorded in both places I'm saying this record the Gilgamesh myth is older than that we find in the scriptures or at least it appears to be the records We have our far older and the It appears to be an older account and to me it just signals that at some point in the ancient world There was a massive flood in multiple civilizations had different ways of talking about that flood Thing that's weird is like okay, so you think if they were recording the same event they would have the same character names Right isn't that kind of the problem of the story? Well different languages well there is so but there are also other variations like the reason they kill them in the flood comes in the Gilgamesh narrative is because humans are stinking noisy and won't shut their dang mouths up and they're proliferating too fast And so they kill them all and it's not even a happy thing for the gods They're like oh, we really stepped over our bounds there What's the no a flood to look God looks and you see where's it the nephilim he sees the angels breeding with man? And then there's you know, there's lots of evil and gods like odd and You're great.

What do you mean? It's yeah, similar story This is not rock my boat. No, it doesn't rock your eyes a little bit I remember reading in the ice won't be and there's no introduction It was like you know, this is your reading for tomorrow And it was like reading reading it is like reading the account for the Bible like it is shocking the similarities between the stories themselves So do you remember having that moment of like why there are two of them? I don't think those are the only two recorded worldwide floods I think there are others from antiquity which if I were better prepared I would actually know about but again I do think that presents the multiple stories would point to either they're having been an actual flood which I think is a good thing Right the point of the historicity of the arc.

Oh, I think it happened I'm not I'm not married to the idea of it being a worldwide flood because for them They say it covered the world well They're world was like to the mountains right? So are you saying that like a rock your boat because you thought that may be exodus was just stealing the story right? I mean if it's possible stealing or it's using other sources or you know It just calls in question the primacy and an erancy of scripture. Mm-hmm.

That's only if scripture is in errant because like someone sat down in a room with no access to the outside and a voice from heaven told them what to write Right, that's not how the gospels were written. That's not how I was like something can be Like God can use human things to To make his story known. It doesn't have to be this like like a voice like write this thing and don't change any of the words I know yeah, I understand that is that that can be like a stick and point for lots of people but The idea that like God save the world by becoming a human It does not surprise me that God communicates himself by using human things which is so human's writing stories. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah Mm-hmm anyway, so that yeah, but I can see yes I The way the way that I reconcile that was a few fold number one I mean it's it's gonna be oral narrative before it gets written down either way right and I know that the Smitty people's tend to be very scrupulous about the way they keep their records oral or otherwise That's one thing that lends screens to me the other one is that the biblical narrative and for those of you listeners I usually subscribe to an air and see a scripture and usually I mean I subscribe to it. Yeah, and Let's it say and stuff that I really don't like in which case, you know, that's cultural In this case there are a few things that lend I think creams to the story in the scripture one is details right details of the size length Construction of the boat there's a lot of things in there that aren't just like he built a boat But like he built a boat and it was 30 feet long and it had this much pitch and it took this long But more than that we have genealogies which had another level of credence to it And even more than that like the thing that really sticks with me is that after the after the flood happened Noah like finished he was there with his family and he had just seen everyone he knew die and what does he do? Do you remember? He gets wicked stuck in trash he gets drunk and that is not like that doesn't glorify him It would in a piston comes out looking pretty good.

No, what it's a really human moment And the kind of thing that you probably wouldn't record if you're trying to set up know what to be a hero Yeah, and it's drunken like lays falls asleep naked and his kids are like, oh man That's it kind of have to cover him up and it's this really embarrassing thing at the end of like this Passage that seems to glorify him as one of the last righteous men Existing and so that for me just says like look they're not it doesn't seem like they're trying to gloss over anything So you would say that the Gilgamesh one is more likely to have been Fabricated as a strong word, but yeah less accurate to actually happen. Yeah, I mean the details changed Yeah, it seems like it to me and I've read other flood narratives There's one in Ovid that has the guy read like creating more people by chucking rocks behind him afterwards And like there's just weird things that add to it But that really human moment of no I getting drunk and then falling asleep and like that that lends a little Greetings to me anyway, I think that's a bottle of their mind to I think sometimes it can for me I mean also just the presence of more flood narratives kind of gives a little bit of half to the story Like something happened right if it's that down and if they have a list of kings and they're enumerating them since the flood like Flood happened this was the first king afterwards. That's what's that like this it's a thing that happened It's just you know, what are the details of question like that? Yeah Is about these like that we can still relate to the story of the image I think it's the most interesting thing of it.

Yes With the issues of friendship issues of life and death. Yeah issues of being bros Like those are still things that resonate with us today. Yeah, and it's easy to toss out ancient man Just because they write a little bit different and they spend more time in the temple as really fundamentally different from us And that we're so far progressed But really they like his biggest question is what do I how do I deal with the notion that I will one day die? Yeah, which is I think the fundamental question of all pretty much all philosophy.

Yeah, mm-hmm. Anyway, that's my story for today and so his conclusion is Go home and like do your job. Yeah, you're gonna die like deal with it And it's kind of a harrowing it's a really hard pill to swallow for Gilmesh and for a bunch of others But and for my greatest and I mean the same the same kind of ideas and not great each I go to Ecclesiastes and a bunch of other their wisdom literature of the time is basically like look death happens You it is better to live your life rather than chase after ways to get out of it. This is the first thing you read with your Night Greater.

Yeah, what a way to start. Yeah, it's real rough. I mean first I make a memorize the prepositions, which I want to beat the spirit out of them before I go further. You know the song above below be on the gun Nope, I do it with memory palace.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think you've done that before on the podcast. Yep I'm for all of our bewildered and amused listeners. Yep.

Okay. That's that's it for me. Well, this has been classical stuff You should know with Graham Thomas and AJ and The spirit of Gilgamesh Yes, I hope he's doing well. Oh one last detail That's really cool that I want to throw in there about the creation of man So when they created men to be servants out of clay well They had to give them life somehow so they killed one of the gods who and like used his blood to infuse life into clay Wow, but because they didn't want to kill one of the good gods They killed one of the dumb ones so he was the rebellion God and they kind of they smoked him And that explains a lot about why we're kind of lazy and rebellious and cantankerous and angry is because the material they use for creation It's like doing it was like yeah, they just defeated him and said like well We can just make the workers out of this guy, but that also explains the eternal soul Ah, there's the divine blood the little piece that wasn't every man and so we can live forever And that's kind of cool.

That's all I got it. This is classical stuff You should know you can email us at classical stuff at veritasacademy.net you can find us on classical stuff net you can tweet us tweet tweet at us at Colosk stuff and dot Twitter So if you yeah, maybe I want to write a fun fan fiction story about that eternal snake Yeah, that's snake that got the flower and can't live forever or about what or should not be dead after losing his position as the Infrontal boat. What's he gonna do? I mean what kind of job does all of his stone man bros and his boat was wrecked and But he's back in the roof now, right doesn't come back.

Yes, but he's been a boat Like if you spent that long as the infernal boatman with people made out of stone I wonder if your people skills are really killing it. Yeah, I'm one of his resumes like his job skills voted Big font and again if you want to invest the capital series a funding into clouder our eternal life Yeah, you can also email us at classical stuff dot net and we will write up a term sheet for you Thank you. This is Graham Thomas and AJ signing off