Chapter 19

3. Thus, in the traditions of every ancient nation, there is a vast and misty tract of time, expressed, if at all, in figures of appalling magnitude--hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of years--between the unpierceable gloom of an eternal past and the broad daylight of remembered, recorded history. There, all is shadowy, gigantic, superhuman. There, gods move, dim yet visible, shrouded in a golden cloud of mystery and awe; there, by their side, loom other shapes, as dim but more familiar, human yet more than human--the Heroes, Fathers of races, founders of nations, the companions, the beloved of gods and goddesses, nay, their own children, mortal themselves, yet doing deeds of daring and might such as only the immortals could inspire and favor, the connecting link between these and ordinary humanity--as that gloaming, uncertain, shifting, but not altogether unreal streak of time is the borderland between Heaven and Earth, the very hot-bed of myth, fiction and romance. For of their favorite heroes, people began to tell the same stories as of their gods, in modified forms, transferred to their own surroundings and familiar scenes. To take one of the most common transformations: if the Sun-god waged war against the demons of darkness and destroyed them in heaven (see p. 171), the hero hunted wild beasts and monsters on earth, of course always victoriously. This one theme could be varied by the national poets in a thousand ways and woven into a thousand different stories, which come with full right under the head of "myths." Thus arose a number of so-called HEROIC MYTHS, which, by dint of being repeated, settled into a certain defined traditional shape, like the well-known fairy-tales of our nurseries, which are the same everywhere and told in every country with scarcely any changes. As soon as the art of writing came into general use, these favorite and time-honored stories, which the mass of the people probably still received as literal truth, were taken down, and, as the work naturally devolved on priests and clerks, i.e., men of education and more or less literary skill, often themselves poets, they were worked over in the process, connected, and remodelled into a continuous whole. The separate myths, or adventures of one or more particular heroes, formerly recited severally, somewhat after the manner of the old songs and ballads, frequently became so many chapters or books in a long, well-ordered poem, in which they were introduced and distributed, often with consummate art, and told with great poetical beauty. Such poems, of which several have come down to us, are called EPIC POEMS, or simply EPICS. The entire mass of fragmentary materials out of which they are composed in the course of time, blending almost inextricably historical reality with mythical fiction, is the NATIONAL EPOS of a race, its greatest intellectual treasure, from which all its late poetry and much of its political and religious feeling draws its food ever after. A race that has no national epos is one devoid of great memories, incapable of high culture and political development, and no such has taken a place among the leading races of the world. All those that have occupied such a place at any period of the world's history, have had their Mythic and Heroic Ages, brimful of wonders and fanciful creations.

4. From these remarks it will be clear that the preceding two or three chapters have been treating of what may properly be called the Religious and Cosmogonic Myths of the Shumiro-Accads and the Babylonians. The present chapter will be devoted to their Heroic Myths or Mythic Epos, as embodied in an Epic which has been in great part preserved, and which is the oldest known in the world, dating certainly from 2000 years B.C., and probably more.

5. Of this poem the few fragments we have of Berosus contain no indication. They only tell of a great deluge which took place under the last of that fabulous line of ten kings which is said to have begun 259,000 years after the apparition of the divine Man-Fish, Oannes, and to have reigned in the aggregate a period of 432,000 years. The description has always excited great interest from its extraordinary resemblance to that given by the Bible. Berosus tells how XISUTHROS, the last of the ten fabulous kings, had a dream in which the deity announced to him that on a certain day all men should perish in a deluge of waters, and ordered him to take all the sacred writings and bury them at Sippar, the City of the Sun, then to build a ship, provide it with ample stores of food and drink and enter it with his family and his dearest friends, also animals, both birds and quadrupeds of every kind. Xisuthros did as he had been bidden. When the flood began to abate, on the third day after the rain had ceased to fall, he sent out some birds, to see whether they would find any land, but the birds, having found neither food nor place to rest upon, returned to the ship. A few days later, Xisuthros once more sent the birds out; but they again came back to him, this time with muddy feet. On being sent out a third time, they did not return at all. Xisuthros then knew that the land was uncovered; made an opening in the roof of the ship and saw that it was stranded on the top of a mountain. He came out of the ship with his wife, daughter and pilot, built an altar and sacrificed to the gods, after which he disappeared together with these. When his companions came out to seek him they did not see him, but a voice from heaven informed them that he had been translated among the gods to live forever, as a reward for his piety and righteousness. The voice went on to command the survivors to return to Babylonia, unearth the sacred writings and make them known to men. They obeyed and, moreover, built many cities and restored Babylon.

6. However interesting this account, it was received at second-hand and therefore felt to need confirmation and ampler development. Besides which, as it stood, it lacked all indication that could throw light on the important question which of the two traditions--that reproduced by Berosus or the Biblical one--was to be considered as the oldest. Here again it was George Smith who had the good fortune to discover the original narrative (in 1872), while engaged in sifting and sorting the tablet-fragments at the British Museum. This is how it happened:[BC]--"Smith found one-half of a whitish-yellow clay tablet, which, to all appearance, had been divided on each face into three columns. In the third column of the obverse or front side he read the words: 'On the mount Nizir the ship stood still. Then I took a dove and let her fly. The dove flew hither and thither, but finding no resting-place, returned to the ship.' Smith at once knew that he had discovered a fragment of the cuneiform narrative of the Deluge. With indefatigable perseverance he set to work to search the thousands of Assyrian tablet-fragments heaped up in the British Museum, for more pieces. His efforts were crowned with success. He did not indeed find a piece completing the half of the tablet first discovered, but he found instead fragments of two more copies of the narrative, which completed the text in the most felicitous manner and supplied several very important variations of it. One of these duplicates, which has been pieced out of sixteen little bits (see illustration on p. 262), bore the usual inscription at the bottom: 'The property of Asshurbanipal, King of hosts, King of the land of Asshur,' and contained the information that the Deluge-narrative was the eleventh tablet of a series, several fragments of which, Smith had already come across. With infinite pains he put all these fragments together and found that the story of the Deluge was only an incident in a great Heroic Epic, a poem written in twelve books, making in all about three thousand lines, which celebrated the deeds of an ancient king of Erech."

7. Each book or chapter naturally occupied a separate tablet. All are by no means equally well preserved. Some parts, indeed, are missing, while several are so mutilated as to cause serious gaps and breaks in the narrative, and the first tablet has not yet been found at all. Yet, with all these drawbacks it is quite possible to build up a very intelligible outline of the whole story, while the eleventh tablet, owing to various fortunate additions that came to light from time to time, has been restored almost completely.

8. The epic carries us back to the time when Erech was the capital of Shumir, and when the land was under the dominion of the Elamite conquerors, not passive or content, but striving manfully for deliverance. We may imagine the struggle to have been shared and headed by the native kings, whose memory would be gratefully treasured by later generations, and whose exploits would naturally become the theme of household tradition and poets' recitations. So much for the bare historical groundwork of the poem. It is easily to be distinguished from the rich by-play of fiction and wonderful adventure gradually woven into it from the ample fund of national myths and legends, which have gathered around the name of one hero-king, GISDHUBAR or IZDUBAR,[BD] said to be a native of the ancient city of MARAD and a direct descendant of the last antediluvian king HÂSISADRA, the same whom Berosus calls Xisuthros.

9. It is unfortunate that the first tablet and the top part of the second are missing, for thus we lose the opening of the poem, which would probably give us valuable historical indications. What there is of the second tablet shows the city of Erech groaning under the tyranny of the Elamite conquerors. Erech had been governed by the divine Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess Ishtar. He had met an untimely and tragic death, and been succeeded by Ishtar, who had not been able, however, to make a stand against the foreign invaders, or, as the text picturesquely expresses it, "to hold up her head against the foe." Izdubar, as yet known to fame only as a powerful and indefatigable huntsman, then dwelt at Erech, where he had a singular dream. It seemed to him that the stars of heaven fell down and struck him on the back in their fall, while over him stood a terrible being, with fierce, threatening countenance and claws like a lion's, the sight of whom paralyzed him with fear.

10. Deeply impressed with this dream, which appeared to him to portend strange things, Izdubar sent forth to all the most famous seers and wise men, promising the most princely rewards to whoever would interpret it for him: he should be ennobled with his family; he should take the high seat of honor at the royal feasts; he should be clothed in jewels and gold; he should have seven beautiful wives and enjoy every kind of distinction. But there was none found of wisdom equal to the task of reading the vision. At length he heard of a wonderful sage, named ÊABÂNI, far-famed for "his wisdom in all things and his knowledge of all that is either visible or concealed," but who dwelt apart from mankind, in a distant wilderness, in a cave, amidst the beasts of the forest.

"With the gazelles he ate his food at night, with the beasts of the field he associated in the daytime, with the living things of the waters his heart rejoiced."

This strange being is always represented on the Babylonian cylinders as a Man-Bull, with horns on his head and a bull's feet and tail. He was not easily accessible, nor to be persuaded to come to Erech, even though the Sun-god, Shamash, himself "opened his lips and spoke to him from heaven," making great promises on Izdubar's behalf:--

"They shall clothe thee in royal robes, they shall make thee great; and Izdubar shall become thy friend, and he shall place thee in a luxurious seat at his left hand; the kings of the earth shall kiss thy feet; he shall enrich thee and make the men of Erech keep silence before thee."

The hermit was proof against ambition and refused to leave his wilderness. Then a follower of Izdubar, ZAIDU, the huntsman, was sent to bring him; but he returned alone and reported that, when he had approached the seer's cave, he had been seized with fear and had not entered it, but had crawled back, climbing the steep bank on his hands and feet.

11. At last Izdubar bethought him to send out Ishtar's handmaidens, SHAMHATU ("Grace") and HARIMTU ("Persuasion"), and they started for the wilderness under the escort of Zaidu. Shamhatu was the first to approach the hermit, but he heeded her little; he turned to her companion, and sat down at her feet; and when Harimtu ("Persuasion") spoke, bending her face towards him, he listened and was attentive. And she said to him:

"Famous art thou, Êabâni, even like a god; why then associate with the wild things of the desert? Thy place is in the midst of Erech, the great city, in the temple, the seat of Anu and Ishtar, in the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers amidst the leaders as a bull." "She spoke to him, and before her words the wisdom of his heart fled and vanished."

He answered:

"I will go to Erech, to the temple, the seat of Anu and Ishtar, to the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers amidst the leaders as a bull. I will meet him and see his might. But I shall bring to Erech a lion--let Izdubar destroy him if he can. He is bred in the wilderness and of great strength."

So Zaidu and the two women went back to Erech, and Êabâni went with them, leading his lion. The chiefs of the city received him with great honors and gave a splendid entertainment in sign of rejoicing.

12. It is evidently on this occasion that Izdubar conquers the seer's esteem by fighting and killing the lion, after which the hero and the sage enter into a solemn covenant of friendship. But the third tablet, which contains this part of the story, is so much mutilated as to leave much of the substance to conjecture, while all the details, and the interpretation of the dream which is probably given, are lost. The same is unfortunately the case with the fourth and fifth tablets, from which we can only gather that Izdubar and Êabâni, who have become inseparable, start on an expedition against the Elamite tyrant, KHUMBABA, who holds his court in a gloomy forest of cedars and cypresses, enter his palace, fall upon him unawares and kill him, leaving his body to be torn and devoured by the birds of prey, after which exploit Izdubar, as his friend had predicted to him, is proclaimed king in Erech. The sixth tablet is far better preserved, and gives us one of the most interesting incidents almost complete.

13. After Izdubar's victory, his glory and power were great, and the goddess Ishtar looked on him with favor and wished for his love.

"Izdubar," she said, "be my husband and I will be thy wife: pledge thy troth to me. Thou shalt drive a chariot of gold and precious stones, thy days shall be marked with conquests; kings, princes and lords shall be subject to thee and kiss thy feet; they shall bring thee tribute from mountain and valley, thy herds and flocks shall multiply doubly, thy mules shall be fleet, and thy oxen strong under the yoke. Thou shalt have no rival."

But Izdubar, in his pride, rejected the love of the goddess; he insulted her and taunted her with having loved Dumuzi and others before him. Great was the wrath of Ishtar; she ascended to heaven and stood before her father Anu:

"My father, Izdubar has insulted me. Izdubar scorns my beauty and spurns my love."

She demanded satisfaction, and Anu, at her request, created a monstrous bull, which he sent against the city of Erech. But Izdubar and his friend went out to fight the bull, and killed him. Êabâni took hold of his tail and horns, and Izdubar gave him his deathblow. They drew the heart out of his body and offered it to Shamash. Then Ishtar ascended the wall of the city, and standing there cursed Izdubar. She gathered her handmaidens around her and they raised loud lamentations over the death of the divine bull. But Izdubar called together his people and bade them lift up the body and carry it to the altar of Shamash and lay it before the god. Then they washed their hands in the Euphrates and returned to the city, where they made a feast of rejoicing and revelled deep into the night, while in the streets a proclamation to the people of Erech was called out, which began with the triumphant words:

"Who is skilled among leaders? Who is great among men? Izdubar is skilled among leaders; Izdubar is great among men."

14. But the vengeance of the offended goddess was not to be so easily defeated. It now fell on the hero in a more direct and personal way. Ishtar's mother, the goddess Anatu, smote Êabâni with sudden death and Izdubar with a dire disease, a sort of leprosy, it would appear. Mourning for his friend, deprived of strength and tortured with intolerable pains, he saw visions and dreams which oppressed and terrified him, and there was now no wise, familiar voice to soothe and counsel him. At length he decided to consult his ancestor, Hâsisadra, who dwelt far away, "at the mouth of the rivers," and was immortal, and to ask of him how he might find healing and strength. He started on his way alone and came to a strange country, where he met gigantic, monstrous beings, half men, half scorpions: their feet were below the earth, while their heads touched the gates of heaven; they were the warders of the sun and kept their watch over its rising and setting. They said one to another: "Who is this that comes to us with the mark of the divine wrath on his body?" Izdubar made his person and errand known to them; then they gave him directions how to reach the land of the blessed at the mouth of the rivers, but warned him that the way was long and full of hardships. He set out again and crossed a vast tract of country, where there was nothing but sand, not one cultivated field; and he walked on and on, never looking behind him, until he came to a beautiful grove by the seaside, where the trees bore fruits of emerald and other precious stones; this grove was guarded by two beautiful maidens, SIDURI and SABITU, but they looked with mistrust on the stranger with the mark of the gods on his body, and closed their dwelling against him.

15. And now Izdubar stood by the shore of the Waters of Death, which are wide and deep, and separate the land of the living from that of the blessed and immortal dead. Here he encountered the ferryman URUBÊL; to him he opened his heart and spoke of the friend whom he had loved and lost, and Urubêl took him into his ship. For one month and fifteen days they sailed on the Waters of Death, until they reached that distant land by the mouth of the rivers, where Izdubar at length met his renowned ancestor face to face, and, even while he prayed for his advice and assistance, a very natural feeling of curiosity prompted him to ask "how he came to be translated alive into the assembly of the gods." Hâsisadra, with great complaisance, answered his descendant's question and gave him a full account of the Deluge and his own share in that event, after which he informed him in what way he could be freed from the curse laid on him by the gods. Then turning to the ferryman:

"Urubêl, the man whom thou hast brought hither, behold, disease has covered his body, sickness has destroyed the strength of his limbs. Take him with thee, Urubêl, and purify him in the waters, that his disease may be changed into beauty, that he may throw off his sickness and the waters carry it away, that health may cover his skin, and the hair of his head be restored and descend in flowing locks down to his garment, that he may go his way and return to his own country."

16. When all had been done according to Hâsisadra's instruction, Izdubar, restored to health and vigor, took leave of his ancestor, and entering the ship once more was carried back to the shore of the living by the friendly Urubêl, who accompanied him all the way to Erech. But as they approached the city tears flowed down the hero's face and his heart was heavy within him for his lost friend, and he once more raised his voice in lamentation for him:

"Thou takest no part in the noble feast; to the assembly they call thee not; thou liftest not the bow from the ground; what is hit by the bow is not for thee; thy hand grasps not the club and strikes not the prey, nor stretches thy foeman dead on the earth. The wife thou lovest thou kissest not; the wife thou hatest thou strikest not. The child thou lovest thou kissest not; the child thou hatest thou strikest not. The might of the earth has swallowed thee. O Darkness, Darkness, Mother Darkness! thou enfoldest him like a mantle; like a deep well thou enclosest him!"

Thus Izdubar mourned for his friend, and went into the temple of Bel, and ceased not from lamenting and crying to the gods, till Êa mercifully inclined to his prayer and sent his son Meridug to bring Êabâni's spirit out of the dark world of shades into the land of the blessed, there to live forever among the heroes of old, reclining on luxurious couches and drinking the pure water of eternal springs. The poem ends with a vivid description of a warrior's funeral:

"I see him who has been slain in battle. His father and mother hold his head; his wife weeps over him; his friends stand around; his prey lies on the ground uncovered and unheeded. The vanquished captives follow; the food provided in the tents is consumed."

17. The incident of the Deluge, which has been merely mentioned above, not to interrupt the narrative by its disproportionate length, (the eleventh tablet being the best preserved of all), is too important not to be given in full.[BE]