Unsucky Gilgamesh 6. Book 3 (cont'd.): An Extinct Species of Ancient Freedom
A later taboo exterminated it.
New here? If you’re coming in late, this post won’t make much sense. This list of the series will catch you up.
I want to linger on one more detail from Book III that I didn’t mention last time. It happens after Gilgamesh tells Enkidu his plan to invade the virgin Cedar Forest, sacred to the god Enlil and forbidden to humans (the “Garden of Eden, Backwards” epiphany I added to the last post), and kill the divinely-appointed guardian of that forest, the monster Humbaba. Before he and Enkidu leave the city to do that, Gilgamesh does a weird little thing so minor to the story that it’s easy to overlook. But seen from the perspective of today’s depressingly dehumanizing hourly diet of “Holy War Atrocity Stories”—and it gives this humanist who has known, respected, and loved many kind and admirable Jews, Christians, and Muslims no pleasure to say this—it’s an action we sorely need to revive.
Blink and you miss it
So: we left Gilgamesh justifying his decision to commit, in Enkidu’s view, a sacrilege by arguing that, on the contrary, his act was heroic. In lines that Achilles would echo in the Iliad a thousand years later, Gilgamesh articulates the classic heroic answer to the classic existential question, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”
We are not gods, we cannot ascend
to heaven. No, we are mortal men.
Only the gods live forever. Our days
are few in number, and whatever we achieve
is a puff of wind. Why be afraid then,
since sooner or later death must come?
And since immortality is impossible, what’s the next best thing in life? An immortal name. In other words, that thing we call “fame.”
I will make a lasting name for myself,
I will stamp my fame on men’s minds forever.
The Greeks would call this pure hubris – another great man thinking he’s a bit too great, and setting himself up for a tragic lesson thereby. As it turns out, the people of Uruk seem to see things this way too. First Enkidu, in tears, and then the city elders Gilgamesh summoned to also hear the announcement, ask Gilgamesh the same pointed question:
How can any man, even you,
dare to enter the Cedar Forest?
Who among men or gods could defeat [Humbaba]?
Everybody is counseling Gilgamesh to live his life restrained by traditional religious piety – Humbaba is Enlil’s guardian, thus holy; don’t defy the gods. They advise prudence instead of passion, humility instead of hubris.
Moreover, none of them believes Gilgamesh can achieve the goal he’s set for himself. They all “know” that no human can take on a god. Not even the 66%-divine King.
And when the elders finish their pleas to respect their awed religious certainties, what is the King’s response?
He laughs at them.
And he doesn’t seem to feel the need to dignify his reasons for laughing with an explanation. He just says turns to Enkidu, says “Let’s go,” and walks away.
This just might be the first recorded example of free-thinking Secular Humanism in the history of our species.
Continued below, but:
This is the the newest installment of the “Unsucky English Lectures on Gilgamesh.”
Part 1, “On Gilgamesh, and Dangerous Questions,” is here.
Part 2, “Book 1: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job,” is here.
Part 3, "Book 1 (cont’d.): Adam and Eve, Backwards,” is here.
Part 4, “Book 2: The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards,” is here.
Part 5, “Book 3: The Garden of Eden, Backwards” is here.
Trust me, this oldest-recorded-story-on-earth is fascinating, fun, and a relevant missed opportunity in the history of religion. Subscribe now, while we’re still leaving the station.
Why the Sumero-Babylonians could think more freely
Laughing away religious certitude was easier in Gilgamesh’s world than it has been since the Judeo-Christian-Islamic revolution for at least one obvious reason.
Think about it: Humbaba was considered “sacred” by the god Enlil, but “evil” by the sun-god Shamash and the goddess Ninsun (who is also Gilgamesh’ mother). Given this basic fact, religious dogmatism and absolute certainty about questions of truth and falsity, good and evil, right and wrong seem far less likely in polytheistic religions. Since the gods disagreed among themselves, the people living in this religious world would have not just more freedom to decide which god they agreed with - it seems they’d almost be obliged to decide, just to reduce the cognitive dissonance. Which suggests, quite simply, that they had more freedom to think and to criticize their gods.
Religions with only one god, though? Suddenly, what was normal in polytheism is very, very dangerous. Especially when the priests serving (or being served by?) that god claim, moreover, to possess that god’s divinely-revealed, divinely-authored texts.
I’m not denying that rabbis, theologians, priests and imams have endlessly disputed these Abrahamic texts too, of course. I’m just saying that there’s still a difference between a religious text acknowledged to be the work of humans, like Gilgamesh, and one attributed to the godhead itself, that seems to make an essential difference in how a culture relates to it. The former is free to think and at least side with one god’s take against another’s, and perhaps even laugh at them all like Gilgamesh seemed to do; the latter, though? There’s no “taking sides” when there’s only one side given, and a huge price to pay for laughing at it.
You won’t be surprised to learn that I prefer the Sumero-Babylonian option.1
Whoever the first priest in history was to claim one day that “these are the One God’s very words,” or “God wrote this book,” was, wittingly or not - and I lean toward “wittingly” - a political genius. Look at the power that gives members of priestly classes from that day to this. In my childhood, people were more comfortable disputing an Einstein or a Darwin than they were their humble neighborhood preacher. Have things changed since?
It’s mind-boggling, really, in a culture that talks about Freedom so much. It’s even more mind-boggling to realize that the polytheistic cultures of the ancient world, like the Sumero-Babylonian one of Gilgamesh, probably had more of that freedom to laugh at gods than we do.
And again, given the foundational beliefs of so many Abraham-founded atrocities in the last 100 years alone, it’s more than mind-boggling. It’s tragic.
We need more of that laughter.2
My adopted China’s non-theistic culture is fascinating in this regard. Almost nobody here asks, “Do you believe in God?” They’re just not wired that way. And when I finish with Gilgamesh, I can’t wait to give you a tour of precisely how and when that happened, 3,000 years ago—ironically, at about the same time that King David was conquering Jerusalem for ancient Israel and Judah.
Am I wrong? In all sincerity and good faith, hit the comment button and challenge me. Show me what I’m missing.