Sumer PalaeographyGilgamesh Collection Gilgamesh is the best known of all ancient Mesopotamian heroes. Numerous tales in the Akkadian language have been told about Gilgamesh, and the whole collection has been described as an odyssey - the odyssey of a king who did not want to die.
The fullest extant text of the Gilgamesh epic is on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets found at Nineveh in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (reigned 668-627 BC).
The gaps that occur in the tablets have been partly filled by various fragments found elsewhere in Mesopotamia and Anatolia. In addition, five short poems in the Sumerian language are known from tablets that were written during the first half of the 2nd millennium BC; the poems have been entitled 'Gilgamesh and Huwawa', 'Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven', 'Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish', 'Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World', and 'The Death of Gilgamesh'.
Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Nether World.
Tablet held in University Museum, which helped to clarify plot.The Gilgamesh of the poems and of the epic tablets was probably the Gilgamesh who ruled at Uruk in southern Mesopotamia sometime during the first half of the 3rd millennium BC and who was thus a contemporary of Agga, ruler of Kish; Gilgamesh of Uruk was also mentioned in the Sumerian list of kings as reigning after the flood. There is, however, no historical evidence for the exploits narrated in poems and epic.
The Ninevite version of the epic begins with a prologue in praise of Gilgamesh, part divine and part human, the great builder and warrior, knower of all things on land and sea. In order to curb Gilgamesh's seemingly harsh rule, the god Anu caused the creation of Enkidu, a wild man who at first lived among animals. Soon, however, Enkidu was initiated into the ways of city life and traveled to Uruk, where Gilgamesh awaited him. Tablet II describes a trial of strength between the two men in which Gilgamesh was the victor; thereafter, Enkidu was the friend and companion (in Sumerian texts, the servant) of Gilgamesh. In Tablets III-V the two men set out together against Huwawa (Humbaba), the divinely appointed guardian of a remote cedar forest, but the rest of the engagement is not recorded in the surviving fragments. In Tablet VI Gilgamesh, who had returned to Uruk, rejected the marriage proposal of Ishtar, the goddess of love, and then, with Enkidu's aid, killed the divine bull that she had sent to destroy him. Tablet VII begins with Enkidu's account of a dream in which the gods Anu, Ea, and Shamash decided that he must die for slaying the bull. Enkidu then fell ill and dreamed of the "house of dust" that awaited him. Gilgamesh's lament for his friend and the state funeral of Enkidu are narrated in Tablet VIII. Afterward, Gilgamesh made a dangerous journey (Tablets IX and X) in search of Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Babylonian flood, in order to learn from him how to escape death. He finally reached Utnapishtim, who told him the story of the flood and showed him where to find a plant that would renew youth (Tablet XI). But after Gilgamesh obtained the plant, it was seized by a serpent, and Gilgamesh unhappily returned to Uruk. An appendage to the epic, Tablet XII, related the loss of objects called pukku and mikku (perhaps "drum" and "drumstick") given to Gilgamesh by Ishtar. The epic ends with the return of the spirit of Enkidu, who promised to recover the objects and then gave a grim report on the underworld.
The discovery of the Assyrian Tablet Collection was the achievement of Hormuzd Rassam, (b. 1826, Mosul, Ottoman Mesopotamia [now in Iraq] - d. 1910), Assyriologist who excavated some of the finest Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities that are now in the possession of the British Museum and found vast numbers of cuneiform tablets at Nineveh (Ninawa, Iraq) and Sippar (Abu Habbah, Iraq), including the earliest known record of archaeological activity.
He first served as an assistant (1845-47) to the famed British Assyriologist Austen Henry Layard and participated in the excavation of Nimrud (Khorsabad, Iraq). After studying at the University of Oxford, he again accompanied Layard (1849-51) and took part in the excavation of Nineveh. Layard entered political life shortly thereafter, and in 1852 Rassam was retained to continue excavating antiquities for the British Museum. At Nineveh, Nimrud, and elsewhere he unearthed notable sculptures, stelae (carved slabs), and inscriptions. In 1853 he discovered at Nineveh the well-known lion-hunt relief of King Ashurbanipal. Shortly thereafter he found the remainder of the royal library, including much of the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh and a terra-cotta prism inscribed with the annals of Ashurbanipal's reign. Subsequently, he held British political appointments in Aden and Ethiopia for a number of years.
In 1876 he again became the British Museum's supervisor of Mesopotamian excavations. His final efforts (1878-82) yielded important results. About 15 miles (24 km) from Mosul, at a mound known as Tell Balawat, he excavated the palace of Shalmaneser II and found a pair of great bronze gates that are now one of the glories of the British Museum. Possibly his most valuable contribution to Mesopotamian studies was his discovery in 1880 of a tablet of King Nabu-apal-iddin, which identified the site as the temple of the sun god Shamash in the city of Sippar. In the following 18 months Rassam excavated about 170 chambers surrounding the temple and found 40,000 to 50,000 inscribed cylinders and tablets. One cylinder recounted how Nabonidus (reigned 555-539 BC), the father of Belshazzar and the last king of Babylon, had excavated the temple to its original cornerstone, laid 4,200 years earlier by Naram-Sin, the son of King Sargon of Akkad. Rassam recounted much of his work in Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (1897).
Akkadian Cycle: [Prologue] [The Coming of Enkidu] [The Forest Journey] [Ishtar and Gilgamesh, and the Death of Enkidu] [The Search for Everlasting Life] [The Story of the Flood] [The Return] [The Death of Gilgamesh]
Sumerian Cycle: [Gilgamesh and the Land of Living] [Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven] [The Deluge] [Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish] [Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Nether World] [Death of Gilgamesh]
