The Epic of Gilgamesh - Anonymous [53]
UTNAPISHTIM: Old Babylonian Utanapishtim, Sumerian Ziusudra; in the Sumerian poems he is a wise king and priest of Shurrupak; in the Akkadian sources he is a wise citizen of Shurrupak. He is the son of Ubara-Tutu, and his name is usually translated, ‘He Who Saw Life’. He is the protégé of the god Ea, by whose connivance he survives the flood, with his family and with ‘the seed of all living creatures’; afterwards he is taken by the gods to live for ever at ‘the mouth of the rivers’ and given the epithet ‘Faraway’; or according to the Sumerians he lives in Dilmun where the sun rises.
APPENDIX: SOURCES
THE main sources for this version of the Epic have already been given (see pp. 50—57 ff.). Full bibliographies will be found in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, edited by James B. Pritchard, and Gilgameš et sa légende, Cahiers du Groupe François-Thureau-Dangin, and in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie; what follows here is a short note on the distribution of the material between the different tablets.
(i) The Sumerian poem ‘Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living’; text from fourteen tablets found at Nippur, one at Kish, and two of unknown provenance, giving 175 lines extant. All date from the first half of the second millennium. The following incidents are covered: the friendship of the Lord Gilgamesh and his servant Enkidu, the need to set up a lasting name, entreaty of Utu (Shamash), who appoints supernatural helpers, arming of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, departure with fifty companions, felling of the cedar, Gilgamesh overcome with weakness, dusk on the mountain, dialogue with Enkidu, Huwawa (Humbaba) found in his house, Gilgamesh uproots trees, goes to the house of Huwawa who pleads for his life and is refused on the advice of Enkidu, Huwawa is killed and his body presented to a furious Enlil. Here the Sumerian text breaks off.
(ii) The Sumerian ‘Death of Gilgamesh’ is still very fragmentary and it is not clear what is its relation to the other Gilgamesh poems, and especially to ‘Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living’. The text followed here is taken from the three tablets found at Nippur, dated to the first half of the second millennium. Two fragments, ‘A’ and ‘B’, give Enlil’s ‘Destiny’ of Gilgamesh, and the lament for the dead king and account of the funeral offerings; but recently Professor Kramer has identified other fragments which indicate that the ‘Death’ was inscribed on a tablet with at least 450 lines.
(iii) Old Babylonian versions, dating from the first dynasty of Babylon, first half of the second millennium: the so-called ‘Pennsylvania Tablet’ gives the coming of Enkidu and the dreams of Gilgamesh concerning him. The ‘Yale Tablet’ has the preparation for the forest journey up to the departure from Uruk.The ‘Meissner’ fragment, from Sippar, gives the Siduri episode and the meeting with the ferryman Sursunabu (Urshanabi). An independent publication of the Old Babylonian material was made by M. Jastrow and A. T. Clay in 1920 as An Old Babylonian Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Recently another Old Babylonian fragment from Tell Iščali has been published by T. Bauer (see now Ancient Near Eastern Texts referring to the Old Testament). It deals with the death of Humbaba and does not differ from the Sumerian account so much as do the later Akkadian versions. From the Ur tablets in the British Museum (UET VI), we now have a slightly fuller Middle Babylonian version of Enkidu’s sickness: C. J. Gadd, Iraq, 28, 1966, 105—21 and Old Babylonian fragments (published by A. R. Millard, Iraq, 26, 1964, 99) provide some additions to Tablet IX.
(iv) Hittite version, from tablets found at Boghazköy in central Anatolia, dated to the middle of the