34

Appendix 34

Actually, we are up against a completely incomprehensible narrative of events which occurred during a sea voyage. The plant, according to Albright (AJSL 36, p. 281, n. 2) literally “thorny grapevine,” is supposed to grow in the apsu, and to be accessible by way of a “waterpipe.” This pipe, rātu, however, is a conjecture right here: the word occurs only later when, after his bath in a well, and the following loss of the plant, Gilgamesh complains bitterly about his frustration, i.e., about having obtained a boon for the “earth lion” instead of for himself. The “earth lion,” identified with the thievish serpent, is assumed in its turn to live “in a well which communicated with the apsu” (Albright, AJSL 35, p. 194). It is then (GE 11.298) that the hero says: “When I opened the water-pipe and (. . .) the gear, I found that which has been placed as a sign for me: I shall withdraw and leave the boat on the shore” (Speiser trans., ANET, pp. 96f.). Heidel makes it: “When I opened the . . . I have found something that (has been set) for a sign unto me; I will withdraw!” Instead of that “sign,” Albright (RA 16, pp. 17 Sf.) recognized a flood rising out of the pipe (if so, why does Gilgamesh talk about it only after his bath in the well?): “When I opened the water-pipe, I overturned the cover (?). Let not the sea rise to my side, b(efo)re (it) let me retire”; and so did Ungnad-Gressmann (pp. 63f.) and Schmoekel (p. 111). From this passage the translators derive the occurrence of the word rātu in the earlier passage, where Gilgamesh dives for the plant. Speiser alone [1] refers to another occasion where the word is used, and it is a decisive occasion; namely, in the (wrongly called) “Eridu creation story” (v. II), where it is told that before anything was created and when all lands were sea (tamtim), then “the spring which is in the sea was a water pipe; then Eridu was made, Esagila was built” (Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis [1963], pp. 61f.). Sayce (ERE 4, p. 129) makes it a “current” within the sea; with Jensen (Assyrisch-Babylonische Mythen und Epen [1909], p. 41) it is a “Wasserbecken”; with Ebeling (AOTAT, pp. 130f.) a “Schoepfrinne.” Considering that Eridu is Canopus, and Esagila is " l-Iku" the Pegasus-square between the two Fishes that ruled the hibernal solstice during the Age of Gemini — this particular rātu seems to have been the connection between the two depths of the sea, between Pisces as the depth of the salt sea and Canopus as the depth of the apsu, the sweet water ocean.

Although it is probable that the conception of one or more such “pipes” is the same as the Jewish one of the “channels,” shithim, that went down to the tehom and were dug by God during the creation, this is not the place to deal broadly with this plot. In any case, Gilgamesh opening one or the other rātu comes close to David, who, when digging such a channel, found the Eben Shetiyyah. The relevant (and revealing) material has been assembled by D. Feuchtwang in his article, “Das Wasseropfer und die damit verbundenen Zeremonien,” *Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft *des Judentums 54 (1910), pp. 535-52,713-29; 55 (1911), pp. 43-63.

Of remarkable interest are pieces of information dealt with by Langdon (MAR 5, pp. 227-29) coming from Nicander, and Aelianus (De natura animalium 6.5 1 ), who in his turn refers to Sophocles, [2] and several poets whose works are lost. Aelianus — to whom, by the way, we are indebted for the only mention of our hero’s name in Greek literature (De natura animalium 12.21: Gilgamos) — when dealing with a particularly fiendish small snake called Dipsas (literally “thirst”), tells the following:

It is said that Prometheus stole fire, and the myth goes that Zeus was angered and
bestowed upon those who laid information of the theft a drug to ward off old age. So
they took it, as I am informed, and placed it upon an ass. The ass proceeded with the
load on its back; and it was summer time, and the ass came thirsting to a spring in its
need for a drink. Now the snake which was guarding the spring tried to prevent it
and force it back, and the ass in torment gave it as the price of the loving-cup the drug
that it happened to be carrying. And so there was an exchange of gifts: the ass got his
drink and the snake sloughed his old age, receiving in addition, so the story goes, the
ass’s thirst. (The Sophocles fragment says that since then, snakes slough their old skin every year, kath’hekaston eniauton.)

Nicander, as quoted by Langdon, supplements the story by telling us of the date when this “exchange of gifts” took place, namely, on the occasion of a new distribution of the “Three Ways,” reporting “that when Cronus’ eldest son became master of Heaven, he divided up in his wisdom glorious governments among his brethren, and gave youth as a reward to short-lived men; so honouring them, because they disclosed the thief of fire, fools that they were! for they got no gain from their evil counsel.”

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1. ANET, p. 96, n. 232. The conclusions drawn from this footnote by N. K. Sandars in his rendering of the GE in the form of a “straightforward narrative” are, as is his whole undertaking, a willful misrepresentation of the truth, unless one accepts the whisking away of the 1,001 stumbling blocks and obscurities and the fabrication of a “Gilgamesh made easy” for a praiseworthy progress (Gilgamesh Epic [1960], pp. 53, 113).

2. Frg. 362 (Pearson ed.) frg. 335 *Tragicorum Graecorum *Fragmenta, ed. A. Nauck (1964), pp. 209f., from Kōphoi Saturoi.