History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 07 - Ch. 1: Ancient Chaldaea, pt. 7
* I have softened down a good deal the account of the seduction, which is described with a sincerity and precision truly primitive.
Shamash had reasons for being urgent.
Khumbaba, King of Elam, had invaded the country of the Euphrates, destroyed the temples, and substituted for the national worship the cult of foreign deities;* the two heroes in concert could alone check his advance, and kill him.
They collected their troops, set out on the march, having learned from a female magician that the enemy had concealed himself in a sacred grove.
They entered it in disguise, “and stopped in rapture for a moment before the cedar trees; they contemplated the height of them, they contemplated the thickness of them; the place where Khumbaba was accustomed to walk up and down with rapid strides, alleys were made in it, paths kept up with great care.
They saw at length the hill of cedars, the abode of the gods, the sanctuary of Irnini, and before the hill, a magnificent cedar, and pleasant grateful shade.
” They surprised Khumbaba at the moment when he was about to take his outdoor exercise, cut off his head, and came back in triumph to Uruk.
** “Gilgames brightened his weapons, he polished his weapons.
He put aside his war-harness, he put on his white garments, he adorned himself with the royal insignia, and bound on the diadem: Gilgames put his tiara on his head, and bound on his diadem.
” * Khumbaba contains the name of the Elamite god, Khumba, whichenters into the composition of names of towns, like Ti- Khumbi; or into those of princes, as Khumbanigash, Khumbasundasa, Khumbasidh.
The comparison between Khumbaba and Combabos, the hero of a singular legend, current in the second century of our era, does not seem to be admissible, at least for the present.
The names agree well in sound, but, as Oppert has rightly said, no event in the history of Combabos finds a counterpart in anything we know of that of Khumbaba up to the present.
** G.
Smith places at this juncture Gilgames’s accession to the throne; this is not confirmed by the fragments of the text known up to the present, and it is not even certain that the poem relates anywhere the exaltation and coronation of the hero.
It would appear even that Gilgames is recognized from the beginning as King of Uruk, the well- protected.
Ishtar saw him thus adorned, and the same passion consumed her which inflames mortals.
* “To the love of Gilgames she raised her eyes, the mighty Ishtar, and she said, ‘Come, Gilgames, be my husband, thou!
Thy love, give it to me, as a gift to me, and thou shalt be my spouse, and I shall be thy wife.
I will place thee in a chariot of lapis and gold, with golden wheels and mountings of onyx: thou shalt be drawn in it by great lions, and thou shalt enter our house with the odorous incense of cedar-wood.
When thou shalt have entered our house, all the country by the sea shall embrace thy feet, kings shall bow down before thee, the nobles and the great ones, the gifts of the mountains and of the plain they will bring to thee as tribute.
Thy oxen shall prosper, thy sheep shall be doubly fruitful, thy mules shall spontaneously come under the yoke, thy chariot-horse shall be strong and shall galop, thy bull under the yoke shall have no rival.
’” Gilgames repels this unexpected declaration with a mixed feeling of contempt and apprehension: he abuses the goddess, and insolently questions her as to what has become of her mortal husbands during her long divine life.
“Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth, thou hast condemned him to weep from year to year.
** Nilala, the spotted sparrow-hawk, thou lovedst him, afterward thou didst strike him and break his wing: he continues in the wood and cries: ‘O, my wings!
’ *** Thou didst afterwards love a lion of mature strength, and then didst cause him to be rent by blows, seven at a time.
**** Thou lovedst also a stallion magnificent in the battle; thou didst devote him to death by the goad and whip: thou didst compel him to galop for ten leagues, thou didst devote him to exhaustion and thirst, thou didst devote to tears his mother Silili.
* Ishtar’s declaration to Gilgames and the hero’s reply have been frequently translated and summarized since the discovery of the poem.
Smith thought to connect this episode with the “Descent of Ishtar to Hades,” which we shall meet with further on in this History, but his opinion is no longer accepted.
The “Descent of Ishtar” in its present condition is the beginning of a magical formula: it has nothing to do with the acts of Gilgames.
** Tammuz-Adonis is the only one known to us among this long list of the lovers of the goddess.
The others must have been fairly celebrated among the Chaldaeans, since the few words devoted to each is sufficient to recall them to the memory of the reader, but we have not as yet found anything bearing upon their adventures in the table of the ancient Chaldaeo-Assyrian classics, which had been copied out by a Ninevite scribe for the use of Assur-bani-pal, the title of the poems is wanting.
*** The text gives _kappi_, and the legend evidently refers to a bird whose cry resembles the word meaning “my wings.
” The spotted sparrow-hawk utters a cry which may be strictly understood and interpreted in this way.
**** This is evidently the origin of our fable of the “Amorous Lion.
” Thou didst also love the shepherd Tabulu, who lavished incessantly upon thee the smoke of sacrifices, and daily slaughtered goats to thee; thou didst strike him and turn him into a leopard; his own servants went in pursuit of him, and his dogs followed his trail.
* Thou didst love Ishullanu, thy father’s gardener, who ceaselessly brought thee presents of fruit, and decorated every day thy table.
Thou raisedst thine eyes to him, thou seizedst him: ‘My Ishullanu, we shall eat melons, then shalt thou stretch forth thy hand and remove that which separates us.
’ Ishullanu said to thee: ‘I, what dost thou require from me?
O my mother, prepare no food for me, I myself will not eat: anything I should eat would be for me a misfortune and a curse, and my body would be stricken by a mortal coldness.
’ Then thou didst hear him and didst become angry, thou didst strike him, thou didst transform him into a dwarf, thou didst set him up on the middle of a couch; he could not rise up, he could not get down from where he was.
Thou lovest me now, afterwards thou wilt strike me as thou didst these.
” ** * The changing of a lover, by the goddess or sorceress who loves him, into a beast, occurs pretty frequently in Oriental tales; as to the man changed by Ishtar into a brute, which she caused to be torn by his own hounds, we may compare the classic story of Artemis surprised at her bath by Actseon.
** As to the misfortune of Ishullanu, we may compare the story in the _Abrabian Nights_ of the Fisherman and the Genie shut up in the leaden bottle.
The king of the Black Islands was transformed into a statue from the waist to the feet by the sorceress, whom he had married and afterwards offended; he remained lying on a bed, from which he could not get down, and the unfaithful one came daily to whip him.
“When Ishtar heard him, she fell into a fury, she ascended to heaven.
The mighty Ishtar presented herself before her father Anu, before her mother Anatu she presented herself, and said: ‘My father, Grilgames has despised me.
Grilgames has enumerated my unfaithfulnesses, my unfaithfulnesses and my ignominies.
’ Anu opened his mouth and spake to the mighty Ishtar: ‘Canst thou not remain quiet now that Gilgames has enumerated to thee thy unfaithfulnesses, thy unfaithfulnesses and ignominies?
’” But she refused to allow the outrage to go unpunished.
She desired her father to make a celestial urus who would execute her vengeance on the hero; and, as he hesitated, she threatened to destroy every living thing in the entire universe by suspending the impulses of desire, and the effect of love.
Anu finally gives way to her rage: he creates a frightful urus, whose ravages soon rendered uninhabitable the neighbourhood of Uruk the well-protected.
The two heroes, Gilgames and Eabani, touched by the miseries and terror of the people, set out on the chase, and hastened to rouse the beast from its lair on the banks of the Euphrates in the marshes, to which it resorted after each murderous onslaught.
[Illustration: 068. jpg GILGAMES AND EABANI FIGHTING WITH MONSTERS.
] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the New York Museum.
The original is about an inch and a half in height.
A troop of three hundred valiant warriors penetrated into the thickets in three lines to drive the animal towards the heroes.
The beast with head lowered charged them; but Eabani seized it with one hand by the right horn, and with the other by the tail, and forced it to rear.
Gilgames at the same instant, seizing it by the leg, plunged his dagger into its heart.
The beast being despatched, they celebrated their victory by a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and poured out a libation to Sharnash, whose protection had not failed them in this last danger.
Ishtar, her projects of vengeance having been defeated, “ascended the ramparts of Uruk the well-protected.
She sent forth a loud cry, she hurled forth a malediction: ‘Cursed be Gilgames, who has insulted me, and who has killed the celestial urus.
’ Eabani heard these words of Ishtar, he tore a limb from the celestial urus and threw it in the face of the goddess: ‘Thou also I will conquer, and I will treat thee like him: I will fasten the curse upon thy sides.
’ Ishtar assembled her priestesses, her female votaries, her frenzied women, and together they intoned a dirge over the limb of the celestial urus.
Gilgames assembled all the turners in ivory, and the workmen were astonished at the enormous size of the horns; they were worth thirty _mimae_ of lapis, their diameter was a half-cubit, and both of them could contain six measures of oil.
” He dedicated them to Shamash, and suspended them on the corners of the altar; then he washed his hands in the Euphrates, re-entered Uruk, and passed through the streets in triumph.
A riotous banquet ended the day, but on that very night Eabani felt himself haunted by an inexplicable and baleful dream, and fortune abandoned the two heroes.
Gilgames had cried in the intoxication of success to the women of Uruk: “Who shines forth among the valiant?
Who is glorious above all men?
Gilgames shines forth among the valiant, Gilgames is glorious above all men.
” Ishtar made him feel her vengeance in the destruction of that beauty of which he was so proud; she covered him with leprosy from head to foot, and made him an object of horror to his friends of the previous day.
A life of pain and a frightful death--he alone could escape them who dared to go to the confines of the world in quest of the Fountain of Youth and the Tree of Life which were said to be there hidden; but the road was rough, unknown, beset by dangers, and no one of those who had ventured upon it had ever returned.
Gilgames resolved to brave every peril rather than submit to his fate, and proposed this fresh adventure to his friend Eabani, who, notwithstanding his sad forebodings, consented to accompany him.
They killed a tiger on the way, but Eabani was mortally wounded in a struggle in which they engaged in the neighbourhood of Nipur, and breathed his last after an agony of twelve days’ duration.
“Gilgames wept bitterly over his friend Eabani, grovelling on the bare earth.
” The selfish fear of death struggled in his spirit with regret at having lost so dear a companion, a tried friend in so many encounters.
“I do not wish to die like Eabani: sorrow has entered my heart, the fear of death has taken possession of me, and I am overcome.
But I will go with rapid steps to the strong Shamashnapishtim, son of Ubaratutu, to learn from him how to become immortal.
” He leaves the plain of the Euphrates, he plunges boldly into the desert, he loses himself for a whole day amid frightful solitudes.
“I reached at nightfall a ravine in the mountain, I beheld lions and trembled, but I raised my face towards the moon-god, and I prayed: my supplication ascended even to the father of the gods, and he extended over me his protection.
” A vision from on high revealed to him the road he was to take.
With axe and dagger in hand, he reached the entrance of a dark passage leading into the mountain of Mashu,* “whose gate is guarded day and night by supernatural beings.
” * The land of Mashu is the land to the west of the Euphrates, coterminous on one part with the northern regions of the Red Sea, on the other with the Persian Gulf; the name appears to be preserved in that of the classic Mesene, and possibly in the land of Massa of the Hebrews.
[Illustration: 071. jpg THE SCORPION-MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS OF MASHU.
] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio.
“The scorpion-men, of whom the stature extends upwards as far as the supports of heaven, and of whom the breasts descend as low as Hades, guard the door.
The terror which they inspire strikes down like a thunderbolt; their look kills, their splendour confounds and overturns the mountains; they watch over the sun at his rising and setting.
Grilgames perceived them, and his features were distorted with fear and horror; their savage appearance disturbed his mind.
The scorpion-man said to his wife: ‘He who comes towards us, his body is marked by the gods.
’* The scorpion-woman replied to him: ‘In his mind he is a god, in his mortal covering he is a man.
’ The scorpion-man spoke and said: ‘It is as the father of the gods, has commanded, he has travelled over distant regions before joining us, thee and me.
’” Gilgames learns that the guardians are not evilly disposed towards him, and becomes reassured, tell them his misfortunes and implores permission to pass beyond them so as to reach “Sha-mashnapishtim, his father, who was translated to the gods, and who has at his disposal both life and death.
” The scorpion-man in vain shows to him the perils before him, of which the horrible darkness enveloping the Mashu mountains is not the least: Gilgames proceeds through the depths of the darkness for long hours, and afterwards comes out in the neighbourhood of a marvellous forest upon the shore of the ocean which encircles the world.
One tree especially excites his wonder: “As soon as he sees it he runs towards it.
Its fruits are so many precious stones, its boughs are splendid to look upon, for the branches are weighed down with lapis, and their fruits are superb.
” When his astonishment had calmed down, Gilgames begins to grieve, and to curse the ocean which stays his steps.
“Sabitu, the virgin who is seated on the throne of the seas,” perceiving him from a distance, retires at first to her castle, and barricades herself within it.
He calls out to her from the strand, implores and threatens her in turn, adjures her to help him in his voyage.
“If it can be done, I will cross the sea; if it cannot be done, I will lay me down on the land to die.
” The goddess is at length touched by his tears.
“Gilgames, there has never been a passage hither, and no one from time immemorial has been able to cross the sea.
Shamash the valiant crossed the sea;
after Shamash, who can cross it?
The crossing is troublesome, the way difficult, perilous the Water of Death, which, like a bolt, is drawn between thee and thy aim.
Even if, Gilgames, thou didst cross the sea, what wouldest thou do on arriving at the Water of Death?
” Arad-Ea, Shamashnapishtim’s mariner, can alone bring the enterprise to a happy ending: “if it is possible, thou shalt cross the sea with him; if it is not possible, thou shalt retrace thy steps.
” * We must not forget that Gilgames is covered with leprosy; this is the disease with which the Chaldaean gods mark their enemies when they wish to punish them in a severe fashion.
[Illustration: 073. jpg GILGAMES AND ARAD-EA NAVIGATING THEIR VESSEL.
]
