Mythology

Then the gods build a temple for Marduk, the great Esagila temple in Babylon with its ziqqurat. At the command of Anu they proclaim the fifty great names of Marduk, a proceeding which occupies the rest of the poem. This is the outline of the Babylonian myth of creation, and the underlying Sumerian elements can easily be detected. But the elements which were scattered over a number of Sumerian myths have, in the Enuma elish, been brought together and welded into a coherent whole. We have no evidence that the various Sumerian myths ever formed part of a ritual. They can be explained, as Professor Thorkild Jacobsen has so ably done, on aetiological lines. But while the aetiological factor is still discernible in Enuma elish, the poem has now become a ritual myth; possessing magical potency, and playing a vital part in the Babylonian New Year Festival in connexion with the dramatic representation of the death and resurrection of the god. The Myth of the Flood The third of our basic myths is the myth of the Flood. In this case the somewhat fragmentary Sumerian myth has been considerably expanded in its Babylonian form and has been embedded in the Gilgamesh Epic. We shall deal with the Babylonian form of the saga of Gilgamesh later, but the Flood myth is linked up with the Gilgamesh Epic so as to form part of the adventures of its hero. A mythological theme almost entirely absent from Sumerian mythology so far as we know it at present, but very prominent in Semitic mythology, is the problem of the existence of death and sickness, and the quest for immortality. In the Gilgamesh Epic the problem is forced upon Gilgamesh by the death of his companion Enkidu, of whom we shall hear more when we deal with the other parts of the Epic; but at present we are concerned with the connexion between the Epic and the Flood myth. After the description of Enkidu’s death and the mourning of Gilgamesh for his companion, we are told that Gilgamesh is disturbed by the realization that he himself too must die, ‘When I die, shall I not be like Enkidu? Woe has entered my belly. Fearing death, I roam over the steppe.’ [12] The only mortal who is known to have escaped death and attained immortality is Gilgamesh’s ancestor Utnapishtim, the Babylonian equivalent of Ziusudra, the Sumerian hero of the Flood. Gilgamesh therefore resolves to go in search of his ancestor in order to discover the secret of immortality. He receives various warnings of the difficulties and dangers of the journey. He is told before he can reach his goal he will have to cross the mountains of Mashu and the waters of death, a journey which only the god Shamash has ever accomplished. Nevertheless, he braves the dangers and reaches Utnapishtim at last. The text is broken at the point where the two meet, and when it becomes legible again Utnapishtim is telling Gilgamesh that the gods have reserved to themselves the secret of death and life. Gilgamesh then asks Utnapishtim how he has attained the possession of immortality, and in reply Utnapishtim tells him the story of the Flood. This is contained in the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the longest and best preserved of the twelve tablets which comprise the Epic. That the myth was widely known in the ancient East is attested by the fact that Hittite and Hurrian fragments of the myth have been discovered.

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