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By Root 5275 0

George Smith unveiled his translation of the story in 1872, because what Utnapishtim describes was the Sumerian version of the Biblical myth of Noah's flood. He recalls how the human world had become a babel of pride and greed, how the gods had decided that mankind must be punished for its wickedness with a great flood and how they had ordered him alone to build a boat to enable him to survive. The god Enlil, born of a marriage between earth and air, then unleashed the deluge which covered the earth. After seven days the rains ceased and, as the waters went down, Utnapishtim found, like Noah, that his boat had grounded at the top of a high mountain. He then, like Noah, sent out a succession of birds, ending in a raven, which told him, after seven more days, that dry land was re-emerging. The god Ea, the supreme god of wisdom `who alone knows all things', told Enlil he had gone too far. Although it is right that sinners should be punished, they must not be driven too hard or they will die. Relenting a little, Enlil therefore decided that Utnapishtim and his wife should become immortal.

In answer to Gilgamesh's plea that he too should be given the secret of eternal life, Utnapishtim sets him a test. He can have what he craves if he can survive for seven nights and six days without sleeping. Long before the seventh day it is clear that Gilgamesh, filthy and worn out from his ordeals, has hopelessly failed. But Utnapishtim too now relents, and promises that at least Gilgamesh can be made to look fresh and young again for his return to Uruk. After an intervention by his wife, Utnapishtim relents still further and tells Gilgamesh how he can obtain the secret of eternal youth, by diving down into water and plucking a magical herb. The hero does this and sets on his long journey home. But eventually he wearies and falls asleep by a well, from which a serpent emerges, `sensing the sweetness of the flower', and snatches the herb away. From that day forth, snakes had the power to renew themselves, by sloughing off their old skin to emerge looking fresh and young. But Gilgamesh had to return home empty-handed. He was hailed as the king who had been on a long journey, `who was wise, who knew mysteries and secret things'. But now he was `worn out with labour', and so he died, the greatest of heroes.

This great Sumerian epic brilliantly reflected how far mankind had travelled since it began the long process of emerging from unconscious dependence on instinct and nature. It tells the story of a man who begins at the mercy of his egocentric physical appetites, without any controlling discipline or self-understanding. To reach maturity and self-awareness it is first necessary for him to begin an inner dialogue, which is what is represented by the arrival of his shadowy alter-ego Enkidu. Just as Enkidu has emerged from the state of nature, so the two-in-one hero now overcomes Humbaba, further representing the unconscious state of nature which has to be subdued to make the self-advancement of mankind possible. This is repeated in their victory over Ishtar. But all these victories for ego-consciousness, marking an ever greater emancipation from unity with nature, also bring with them an awareness of the inevitability of death. Gilgamesh then has to set out on his lonely quest, symbolised as an outward journey, in fact an inner journey, in search of that lost connection with the totality of life. Although, as he grows physically old and weary, he at least seems to come near to grasping the elusive secret he is seeking, it slips away from him. At last, full of years, he is forced to accept that which he has dreaded so long: the extinction of his separate conscious existence.

In showing how its hero eventually dies a natural death of old age, the epic of Gilgamesh was in fact to remain highly unusual in the history of storytelling. The riddle of how humankind was to cope with this new realisation that each individual centre of consciousness must die was one to which it would continue to come up with differing answers. But what was to remain