22

Chapter XXII

1. See, for example, S. N. Kramer, “The Epic of Gilgamesh and Its Sumerian Sources,” JAOS 64 (1944), p. 11: “the poem was current in substantially the form in which we know it, as early as the first half of the second millennium B.C.”

2. E. Weidner, RLA, vol. 2, p. 379.

3. Actually, the goddess Aruru makes him “in the likeness of Anu,” literally “a zikru of Anu she conceived in her heart.” But Enkidu is also said to look like Gilgamesh “to a hair.” See A. L. Oppenheim, “Mesopotamian Mythology,” Orientalia 17 (1948), pp. 24, 28.

4. Huwawa in the Old Babylonian and Hittite versions, Humbaba in the Assyrian version.

5. Tabl. 3.136f., 109-11, Heidel trans., p. 35.

6. Langdon, Semitic Mythology (1931), p. 253. See also F. Hommel, Ethnologie und Geographie des Alten Orients (1926), pp. 35, 42, claiming hum to mean “creator,” and talking of Humbaba (= Hum-is-the-father) as of the “guardian of the cedar of paradise.”

7. F. M. Böhl, “Zum babylonischen Ursprung des Labyrinths,” in Festschrift Deimel (1935), PP. 6-23.

8. Hommel, Ethnologie und Geographie, p. 35, dealing with an Elamitic star list, makes “Amman-ka-sibar (derived from Chumban-uk-sinarra . . . i.e., Chumban, king of the bolt? . . .) = Ninib-Mars.” We would hazard a premature guess that apart from Procyon, Mercury would be the safest bet, the second candidate being Jupiter; but the latter would never make a convincing lord of entrails, nor would any other outer planet: their orbits do not allow for such notions — and Venus is much too regular for this role.

9. See C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Literature (1949), pp. 84-103. This “Legend of Aqht” is the more relevant, in that the goddess wants nothing but “the Bow,” made by the Deus Faber and in Aqht’s possession, and promises everything including immortality, if the youth will hand over mulBAN, that being its fateful name. Cf. above, pp. 215f., for this bow.

10. Mbh. 3.45-46. Urvashi, the goddess, “trembling with rage” condemned the hero to pass his time “among females unregarded, and as a dancer, and destitute of manhood and scorned as a eunuch.” She raged the more, as she had, in anticipation, before actually visiting Arjuna, “mentally sported with him on a wide and excellent bed laid over with celestial sheets.” Arjuna had to suffer the curse of Urvashi in the thirteenth year of the exile of the Pandava, but he regained his power on the expiration of that year.

11. T. Henry, Ancient Tahiti (1928), pp. 561ff.

12. Ugaritic Anat, after having been rebuked by Aqht, goes to her father too, asking for revenge, and she goes “toward ’Il, at the course of the Two Rivers / (at the midst of the streams) of the Two Deeps” (Gordon, p. 91). Ginsberg translation (ANET, p. 152): “Towards El of the Source of the Floods (in the midst of the headwaters) of the Two Oceans.”

13. Gen. xlix. 5-7 is frequently brought into the play here — the “twins” Simeon and Levi mutilating the bull — but we leave aside this whole chapter xlix bristling with allusions to lost knowledge.

14. The quotation marks that enclose the word “discovery” are a measure of precaution, advisable in our times ruled by Euhemerism; the most edifying among the relevant model cases we found in Diakanoff’s review article on Böhl’s translation of GE (see below): “F. M. Th. de Liagre Boehl shares the opinion of A. Schott that the problem of human mortality was originally raised in the reign of Shulgi” (= Third Ur Period, between 2,400 and 2,350 B.C., according to T. Jacobsen: The Sumerian King List [1939], Table II). This “originally” is enough to show what happens to Orientalists once evolutionist platitudes have taken hold of them.

15. See appendix #28.

16. Tabl. 8, col. 2; Tabl. 9, col. 1, 3-5 (Heidel, pp. 62-64); Tabl. 10, col. 2, 5-7, 11-12 (Heidel, p. 73).

17. The word which Heidel translates as “frightful splendor” and Speiser (ANET) as “halo” is melammu, the Babylonian equivalent of Iranian hvarna, the so-called “glory” for the sake of which the bad uncle Afrasiyab dived in vain, because it belonged to Kai Khusrau.

18. That the Mashu mountain(s) does so “every day,” as translated by Heidel, Speiser, and others, is obviously wrong. Even if we stipulate, for the sake of peace, the idea of a terrestrial mountain, the sun is not in the habit of rising on the same spot every day, and it needs no profound astronomical knowledge to become aware of this fact.

19. Old Babyl. Version, Tabl. 10, col. 1, 8, 13 (Heidel, p. 69).

20. Assyrian Version, Tabl. 10, col. 2, 21-28 (Heidel, p. 74). Shanabi meaning 40, Ur-shanabi means something like “he of 40”; Hommel rendered it “priest of 40.”

21. W. F. Albright, “The Goddess of Life and Wisdom,” AJSL 36 (1919-20), pp. 258-94.

22. See appendix #30. The name of the goddess is pronounced Ish-khara.

23. H. B. Alexander, Latin American Mythology (1920), p. 185.

24 The many-breasted Mother Scorpion of Central America goes well with the farmer’s calendar of ancient Rome which attributes Scorpius to Diana (see F. Boll, Sphaera [1903], p. 473; W. Gundel, RE s.v. Scorpius, p. 602). It remains still dark, however. what caused Athanasius Kircher to localize the many-breasted Diana of the Ephesians into Aquarius, calling, moreover, this celestial department “Regnum Canubicum.”

25. Sphaera, pp. 19f., 28, 48, 173, 246-51; Aus der Offenbarung Johannis (1914), pp. 71ff., 143. See also W. Gundel, Neue Texte de Hermes Trismegistos (1936), esp. pp. 235ff. (on p. 207 he votes for Centaurus as guardian of the netherworld instead of Sagittarius).

26. The coronation mantle of Emperor Heinrich II shows woven in the statement: Scorpio dum oritur, mortalitas ginnitur (= gignitur). E. Maass, Commentariorum in Aratum Reliquiae (1898), p. 601; R. Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt (1910), p. 13; Boll, Aus der Offenbarung, p. 72. We might also point to Ovid’s description of the fall of Phaethon, according to which the son of Helios lost his nerve, and let go the reins when Scorpius drew near, and to the death of Osiris on Athyr 17, the month when the Sun went through Scorpius (Plutarch, De Is. Os., c.13.356c).

27. Tabl. 11, 3-7 (Heidel, p. 80).

28. Trans. A. Sachs, ANET, p. 332, ll. 275ff. Concerning the Rectangle of Pegasus, see B. L. van der Waerden, “The Thirty-Six Stars,” JNES 8 (1949), pp. 13-15; C. Bezold, A. Kopff, and F. Boll, Zenit-und Aequatorialgestirne am babylonischen Fixsternhimmel (1913), p.11.

29. These divine beings of the “underworld” (their equivalent “above”: the Igigi) were also written A-nun-na-nun-ki (Deimel, PB, pp. 57f.), i.e., they belong to NUNki = Eridu (Canopus), the seat of Enki-Ea. The Sumerian name Anunna is interpreted as “(Gods who are) the seed of the ‘Prince’,” according to A. Falkenstein (“Die Anunna in der sumerischen Uberlieferung,” in Festschrift Landsberger [1965], pp. 128ff.). See also D. O. Edzard, “Die Mythologie der Sumerer und Akkader,” in Wörterbuch der Mythologie, vol. 1, p. 42: “Die ‘fürstlichen’ Samens (sind),” the “Prince” (NUN) being Enki-Ea of Eridu. Concerning NUN = “Prince,” defined by T. Jacobsen as “one of authority based on respect only, settling disputes without recourse to force,” Falkenstein, politely, mentions: “Ganz abweichend K. Oberhuber: Der numinose Begriff ME im Sumerischen, S.6f.” The title of this opus (Innsbruck 1963, lnnsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. Sonderheft 17) expresses sufficiently the hair-raising propositions that it contains, concerning ME, NUN, and other termini.

30. Speiser, ANET, p. 94, n. 207, remarks: “The term ŝuharratu . . . does not mean ‘rage,’ but ‘stark stillness, bewilderment, consternation’,” and he translates 11.105-06: “Consternation over Adad reaches to the heavens, Who turned to blackness all that had been light.”

31. Speiser: “The gods cowered like dogs, crouched against the outer wall” (11.115).

32. One is usually inclined to take such motifs as that of the sending out of birds — not to mention the particular species — for minor matters, but A. B. Rooth can teach us a remarkable lesson by means of her thorough inquiry: The Raven and the Carcass: An Investigation of a Motif in the Deluge Myth in Europe, Asia, and North America (1962).

33. De facie in orbe lunae 941A.

34. See frg. no. 55, Orphicorum Fragmenta, ed. O. Kern (1963).

35. The oldest and most exact traits have a perplexing talent of surviving, and of turning up at unexpected places. Says R. S. Loomis (Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages [1959] pp. 70-71): “We have a unique version of Arthur’s survival alluded to by Godfrey of Viterbo, secretary to Frederick Barbarossa, about 1190. Merlin prophesies that though the king will perish from his wounds, he will not perish wholly but will be preserved in the depths of the sea and will reign for ever as before.” How could the secretary to Frederick Barbarossa — an emperor who was himself bound to that place where expired ages and their rulers sleep — get hold of the “right” version? (We should be glad to learn, moreover, where the archaeologist Pierre Plantard [quoted by Gérard de Sède: Les Templiers sont parmi nous (1962), p. 280] got hold of the information on “Canopus, l’oeuil sublime de l’architecte, qui s’ouvre tous les 70 ans pour contempler l’Univers.”)

36. Speiser, p. 96, n.227.

37. And exactly as the Indian texts have a lot to say about the Seven Rishis with their sister (and wife) Arundati, so the Mesopotamian ones talk about the “Sebettu with their sister Narundi” (see H. Zimmern, “Die sieben Weisen Babyloniens,” ZA 35 [1923], p. 153; Edzard, vol. 1, p. 55; H. and J. Lewy, “The Origin of the Week,” HUCA 17 [1942-43], p. 44). Arundati=Alcor, the tiny star near zeta Ursae Majoris.

38. See also Langdon, p. 213.

39. T. Jacobsen, “Parerga Sumerologica,” JNES 2 (1943), pp. 117f. See also Edzard, p. 109.

40. Gudea Cylinder A XIV, in A. Falkenstein and W. von Soden, Sumerische und Akkadische Hymnen (1953), p. 152; see also F. Hommel, Die Schwur-Göttin Esch-Ghanna und ihr Kreis (1912), p. 57.

41. See, for example, S. Kramer’s Sumerian Mythology (1944), pp. 64-88; and his Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (1952), p.11. We feel strongly inclined to accuse the much discussed “God Boat” (Dieu Bateau) of many seal cylinders of “bringing the me from Eridu,” particularly when the seals show a ground plan, or a stage tower in the making. See P. Amiet, La Glyptique Mesopotamienne Archaïque (1961), pp. 177-86, plates 106-109; H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (1939), pp. 67-70, plates XIV, xv, XIX.

42. In Gilgamesh et sa légende (1960), p. 40. Cf. E. Ebeling, Tod una Leben nach den Vorstellungen der Babylonier (1931), p. 127: “der die Welträume überschaut.”

43. Ebeling, pp. 25f., 39; see also G. Meier, “Ein Kommentar zu finer Selbstprädikation des Marduk aus Assur,” ZA 47 (1942), pp. 241-48. H. Zimmern, “Zum babylonischen Neufahrsfest,” BVSGW 58 (1906), pp. 127-36. S. A. Pallis, The Babylonian Akitu Festival (1926), pp. 105-108, 200-43.

44. Apart from the Shabaka Inscription, the end of which is of the utmost relevance, the highest Egyptian oath was taken by “Osiris who lies in Philae,” as we know from Diodorus; the Greek gods took their most solemn oaths by the waters of Styx. We remember Virgil’s information on Styx who sees the celestial South Pole, and of the followers of Zeus who, before attacking Kronos, took their oath by Ara. “Oath-stars” are to be found, rather regularly, among the southern circumpolar constellations. As concerns swearing by Gilgamesh, see Ebeling, p. 127. Compare also Fallis (Akitu Festival, p. 238) who compares the “Mysteries of Osiris” in Abydos with the Babylonian New Year Festival built around the “dead” Marduk (who sits during the ceremonies “in the midst of Tiamat”).

45. Omphalos belongs among the words which are easily said and hard to “imagine”. Yet, during the Middle Ages, Jerusalem, with the Holy Sepulcher, was understood as the Omphalos of the earth and, moreover, the tomb of Adam localized under the Cross in Golgatha, “in the middle of the earth.” (See, for example, Vita Adae et Evae, in F. Kampers, Mittelalterliche Sagen vom Paradiese und vom Holze des Kreuzes Christi (1897), pp. 23, 106f.; W. H. Roscher, Omphalos (1913), pp. 24-28.

46. Cf. Atharva Veda 18.1.50 (Whitney trans.): “Yama first found for us a track, that is not a pasture to be borne away; where our former Fathers went forth, there (go) those born (of them), along their own roads.”

47. In our most unheeding times, nobody will even notice when in the not too remote future Leo will be drowned in the sea when he arrives at the autumnal equinox: the constellation of Leo, undisputed “king” of the hot plains, was coined at a time when His Majesty of the Zodiac ruled the summer solstice, highest and hottest “point” of the sun’s orbit; and who will care for pitiable Aquarius having no more water to shed from his jars, once he has arrived at the vernal equinox — but, after all, who has considered poor Pisces, lying “high and dry” since the times of Christ, the opener of the Age of Pisces? His title “Fish,” i.e., Greek Ichthys, is officially explained as being the first letters of “Iēsous Chreistos Theou Yios Sotēr” — Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior.

48. Without going into details, we think it possible that it was this very change from “constellations” to “signs” and, more generally, the enthronement of that astronomical language which alone is recognized as “scientific” by contemporary historians, i.e., the terminology of “positional astronomy,” which interrupted Homeric tradition; the Greeks quoted Homer all day long, they interpreted him, they broke their heads about the significance of details: his terminology had died long ago.

49. RLA 3, pp. 81f. cf. Bezold in Boll’s Antike Beobachtung farbiger Sterne (1916), pp. 102-25 (table, p. 138); A. Jeremias, HAOG (1929), pp. 200ff.

50. J. A. Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum (1711), vol. 2, p. 16 (Emek hamelech).

51. H. B. Alexander, North American Mythology (1910), p. 117.

52. Das Doppelte Geschlecht. Ethnologische Studien zur Bisexualitaet in Mythos und Ritus (1955).

53. Franz Kampers, Alexander der Grosse (1901), p. 93f.

The derivation of the name Sarapis from Enki-Ea’s name šar apsī, as proposed by C. F. Lehmann-Haupt (see also A. Jeremias in Roscher s.v. Oannes, 3.590) makes sense; the more so as it does not exclude the connection of Sarapis with Apis, since Apis has the title “the repetition of Ptah.” Accidentally, a rather revealing shred of evidence fell into our hands, contained in Budge’s translation of the Ethiopic Alexander Romance (London 1896, p. 9): “When Nectanebus, king of Egypt and father of Alexander, had escaped to Macedonia, “the men of Egypt asked their god to tell them what had befallen their king.” That is what the Ethiopian text says, and Budge adds: “In Meusel’s text the god who is being asked is called ‘Hephaestus the head of the race of the gods,’ and in Mueller’s he is said to dwell in the Serapeum.”

The common denominator of Ea-sǎr apsi, Ptah-Hephaistos, “he who is south of his wall”, “lord of the triakontaeteris,” is and remains the planet Saturn. Admittedly, we knew this before, but we wish to stress the point that those despised “late” traditions of the Romance represent useful “preservationtions”; i.e., if the Romance replaces Utnapishtim of the confluence of the rivers with Sarapis we can trust that there was a valid equation written down somewhere and known to the several redactors — all of them closely related to some “Wagner” and hostile toward any potential “Faust.”

54. It is remarkable that the Tuamotuan “Hiro is said to be Procyon” (M. W. Makemson, The Morning Star Rises [1941], p. 270) Hiro (Maori: Whiro), the master-thief, is an unmistakable Mercurian character.

55. H. Otten, in Gilgamesh et sa légende (1958), p. 140.

56. A careful investigator has to be aware of the numerous traps along his way as, for example, the naughty custom of exchanging Scorpius and Cancer (Cicero for instance calls both constellations nepa) which seems to be on account of the similarity between the scorpion and the land crab (Geocarcinus ruricula).

57. “Pukku and mikku” (see below, p. 441) are lost “at the crying of a little girl” (C. J. Gadd, “Epic of Gilgamesh,” RA 30, p. 132): this sounds slightly improbable. It is laughter, if anything, that wrecks the old, and introduces the new age of the world. Maui lost his immortality because his companions laughed when he passed the “house of death” of the Great-Night-Hina.

58. Cf. the thorough investigation by A. R. Anderson, Alexander’s Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations (1932). An early version of the story comes from a much-traveled Franciscan, Ricoldo da Montecroce.

59. W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), p. 57; cf. R. W. Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia (1924), vol. 2, p. 152 (Austral Islands, Samoa).