The ancient Near East was the home of the first recorded human civilization. From this civilization, we have been gifted with the Epic of Gilgamesh, which details his hero’s journey and was written during the late 2nd millennium BC. In its oldest iteration, the story is nearly four-thousand years old.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the first of the heroes’ journeys in literature. Like any great work of literature, Gilgamesh tells us about ourselves. It is the exploration of the self and an understanding of how our actions shape both our lives and the lives of those around us. It is the discovery of self-control, basic goodness and wisdom – all learned through some hard lessons.
In the story, Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu go on many adventures together. One such journey has them crossing seven mountains and brings them to the great Cedar Forest which is guarded by Humbaba, a demigod appointed by the gods to defend this forest against intruders.
Scholars surmise from the Babylonian version of the story that the Cedar Forests were located in (present day) Lebanon. Lebanese cedar was sought by empires all over the ancient world. Egyptians used cedar to build sarcophagi, Solomon famously used cedar to build his temple, and Phoenicians used cedar for their merchant ships. Cedar is even mentioned in the Old Testament:
“that the king said unto Nathan the prophet, See now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains.“
―2 Samuel 7.2, KJV
As we read The Epic of Gilgamesh it is important to remember that it is an incomplete text. Many words and, in some cases, whole lines are missing. In the original version that I read for decades it was understood the Gilgamesh and Enkidu journeyed to the Cedar Forest and defeated the monster/guardian Humbaba who was keeping mankind from accessing the forest. Once they defeated Humbaba, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and many lumberjacks felled huge swaths of the forest to build the fabled walls of Uruk, Gilgamesh’s city.
However, in October 2015 it was announced that the Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq had discovered 20 new lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh. These lines all relate to the Cedar Forest. The description now reads like this:
17 [Through] all the forest a bird began to sing:
18 […] were answering one another, a constant din was the noise,
19 [A solitary(?)] tree-cricket set off a noisy chorus,
20 […] were singing a song, making the … pipe loud.
21 A wood pigeon was moaning, a turtle dove calling in answer.
22 [At the call of] the stork, the forest exults,
23 [at the cry of] the francolin, the forest exults in plenty.
24 [Monkey mothers] sing aloud, a youngster monkey shrieks:
25 [like a band(?)] of musicians and drummers(?),
26 daily they bash out a rhythm in the presence of Humbaba
(Al-Rawi and George, 2014, p. 77)
With these new lines, we see that Humbaba is no monster – he is a ruler who enjoys the beauty of the world around him and the music that the natural world shares with him. The Royal Musical Association examines the sounds of the Cedar Forest here.
As Lebanese history demonstrates, the Cedar Forests were a prize to be taken, either through trade or military action. If we change the word “cedar” to “oil” then the irony is clear. Gilgamesh, an invader, wages war against a sovereign king (Humbaba) to claim a finite natural resource that his kingdom cannot do without.
Now, the lands that Gilgamesh walked – and defiled – nearly four millennia ago are threatened with extinction. It appears that climate change will accomplish what Gilgamesh began – the destruction of the forest for a selfish gain.
I have long extolled the virtues of reading ancient texts as a way of understanding the people who lived in the time before and yet shared the same hopes, fears, and questions that we have today. In doing so it encapsulates all of us in the web of humanity. The Epic of Gilgamesh has always shown Man’s search for understanding and the divine in all of us. Sadly, it also shows us at our worst. Nearly four-thousand years later you would think that we would know better by now.
Clearly, we still have some hard lessons to learn.
* * *
References
Al-Rawi, F. N. H., George A. R., 2014. ‘Back to the Cedar Forest: The Beginning and End of Tablet V of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgameš’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 66, pp. 69-90.
Leave a Reply