Gilgamesh

Gilgamesz Enkidu i Szamhat

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Faisel Laibi Sahi „Enkidu and Shamhat”, ink on paper, 2004

Scena z mitu na skraju prehistorii.
Udomowienie dzikusa Enkidu przez Szamhat,
kapłankę bogini Isztar.

…she stripped off her robe and lay there naked,
with her legs apart, touching herself.
Enkidu saw her and warily approached.
He sniffed the air. He gazed at her body.
He drew close, Shamhat touched him on the thigh,
touched his penis, and put him inside her.
She used her love-arts, she took his breath
with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him
what a woman is. For seven days
he stayed erect and made love with her,
until he had had enough 1)↓. At last
he stood up and walked towards the waterhole
to rejoin his animals. But the gazelles
saw him and scattered, the antelope and deer
bounded away. He tried to catch up,
but his body was exhausted, his life-force was spent,
his knees trembled, he could no longer run
like an animal, as he had before.
He turned back to Shamhat, and as he walked
he knew that his mind had somehow grown larger,
he knew things now that an animal can’t know.

Gilgamesh (by Stephen Mitchell) polecam tę wersję.

Gilgamesz to jest najstarszy znany tekst literacki. zapisany był na glinianych tabliczkach pismem klinowym. znaleziono go w Niniwie w XIX w. Poza tym, że odczytano z niego starszą od biblijnej wersję potopu, opisana jest w Gilgameszu wyprawa po ROŚLINĘ NIEŚMIERTELNOŚCI, w inny wymiar, w ZAŚWIATY 2)↓
 Ciekawszy wątek to udomowienie Enkidu, dzikiej strony Gligamesza… Mit można czytać na różne sposoby. Dla przykładu i kontekstu, w Biblii Ewa daje Adamowi jabłko, które jest symbolem „upadku” (grzechu pierworodnego… Lucyfer jako wąż, pokusa boskości, chęć wiedzy i nieposłuszeństwo). W Gligameszu dla odmiany Szamhat, kapłanka bogini Isztar, podaje mu KWIAT (podobno w świątyniach Isztar było jak w Koryncie :-)
 Szamhat Enkidu oddaje siebie, sztuką miłości go udomawia; dzikusa, który żył dotąd w puszczy z gazelami… uczłowiecza go zarazem, lecz jest to obraz ambiwalentny: Enkidu coś traci, przestaje należeć do gatunków zwierząt, ale doznaje czegoś innego, rozszerzenia umysłu? świadomości? Stephen Mitchell ujął to: poczuł był on że „his mind had somehow grown larger”.
 W szerszym kontekście (perma kulturowym :-) ta mityczna opowieść, przedstawia czasy wielkiej przemiany na terenach Żyznego Półksiężyca, czasy rewolucji neolitycznej, przejścia od paleolitycznej kultury zbierackiej, koczowniczo-nomadycznej, szamańskiej, do kultury osiadłej, z hierarchią społeczną i kastami rządzących. Wtedy narodziło się społeczeństwo (które teraz chodzi do kościołów i do wyborów :-) Stało się to dzięki nadwyżce żywności, wynalezieniu radła i orki pociągowej… Na przeoranej pługiem ziemi wyrosły wtedy miasta. Jednym z nich było Uruk, stolica Gilgamesza sprzed pięciu, sześciu, siedmiu tysięcy lat.

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1. Literally, “She took off her robe, she exposed her vagina, and he took in her voluptuousness. She didn’t hold back, she took his vital force. She spread out her robe and let him lie upon her, she stirred up his lust, the work of a woman. With passion he embraced and caressed her, for six days and seven nights Enkidu remained erect, he made love with her until he had had enough of her delights.”
2. z okazji zbliżającego się święta Zmarłych -.-

Gilgamesh

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She stripped off her robe and lay there naked,
with her legs apart, touching herself.
Enkidu saw her and warily approached.
He sniffed the air. He gazed at her body.
He drew close, Shamhat touched him on the thigh,
touched his penis, and put him inside her.
She used her love-arts, she took his breath
with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him
what a woman is. For seven days
he stayed erect and made love with her,
until he had had enough↓. At last
he stood up and walked towards the waterhole
to rejoin his animals. But the gazelles
saw him and scattered, the antelope and deer
bounded away. He tried to catch up,
but his body was exhausted, his life-force was spent,
his knees trembled, he could no longer run
like an animal, as he had before.
He turned back to Shamhat, and as he walked
he knew that his mind had somehow grown larger,
he knew things now that an animal can’t know.

Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell

Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell

The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke may have been the first reader discerning enough to recognize its true literary stature. “Gilgamesh is stupendous!” he wrote at the end of 1916. “I … consider it to be among the greatest things that can happen to a person.” “I have immersed myself in [it], and in these truly gigantic fragments I have experienced measures and forms that belong with the supreme works that the conjuring Word has ever produced.” In Rilke’s consciousness, Gilgamesh, like a magnificent Aladdin’s palace that has instantly materialized out of nowhere, makes its first appearance as a masterpiece of world literature.
 The story of its discovery and decipherment is itself as fabulous as a tale from The Thousand and One Nights. A young English traveller named Austen Henry Layard, who was passing through the Middle East on his way to Ceylon, heard that there were antiquities buried in the mounds of what is now the city of Mosul, halted his journey, and began excavations in 1844. These mounds turned out to contain the ruined palaces of Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria, including what was left of the library of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE). “In amazement” Layard and his assistant Hormuzd Rassam “found room after room lined with carved stone bas-reliefs of demons and deities, scenes of battle, royal hunts and ceremonies; doorways flanked by enormous winged bulls and lions; and, inside some of the chambers, tens of thousands of clay tablets inscribed with the curious, and then undeciphered, cuneiform (‘wedge-shaped’) script.” Over twenty-five thousand of these tablets were shipped back to the British Museum.

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When cuneiform was officially deciphered in 1857, scholars discovered that the tablets were written in Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language cognate with Hebrew and Arabic. Fifteen years went by before anyone noticed the tablets on which Gilgamesh was inscribed. Then, in 1872, a young British Museum curator named George Smith realized that one of the fragments told the story of a Babylonian Noah, who survived a great flood sent by the gods. “On looking down the third column,” Smith wrote, “my eye caught the statement that the ship rested on the mountains of Nizir, followed by the account of the sending forth of the dove, and its finding no resting-place and returning. I saw at once that I had here discovered a portion at least of the Chaldean account of the Deluge.” To a Victorian this was a spectacular discovery, because it seemed to be independent corroboration of the historicity of the biblical Flood (Victorians believed that the Genesis story was much older than it is). When Smith saw these lines, according to a later account, he said, “‘I am the first man to read that after more than two thousand years of oblivion!’ Setting the tablet on the table,” the account continues, “he jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself.” We aren’t told if he took off just his coat or if he continued to strip down further. I like to imagine him in his euphoria going all the way and running stark naked, like Enkidu, among the astonished black-clad Victorian scholars.
from Foreword by Stephen Mitchell