"German archeologists believe that they have found the tomb of the oldest named hero in human history -- Gilgamesh of Uruk.
Uruk is a now-buried city on the Euphrates River that eventually gave Iraq its name. The tomb is found in the centre of the town, and it looks very similar to that described in the 4,500-year-old "Epic of Gilgamesh", says Jorge Fassbinder of the Bavarian Department of Historical Monuments."
By the way, yesterday an Iranian friend pointed out to us during lunch together that the Euphrates river was originally known in old times as the Phrates River. Eu must have originated as a mistake in transcription of the word "El" which simply means "The".
The interesting little notice about a great discovery, quoted at the top, is from last week's newspaper. It reminded me again of my interest in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Adam and Eve story in the Bible.
Gilgamesh was a hero of a Sumero-Babylonian epic that tells of man's vain search for immortality, which was guarded by the jealous gods. Most of the text that we have came from the library of King Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, who lived in the 7th century before Christ, but there are older fragments that reveal the story was in Babylon at a much earlier date. It was known at least two thousand years before Christ, which makes it at least four thousand years old, and the news article says it is 4,500 years.
Gilgamesh was fearful of death. He journeyed in search of Uta-Napishtim, who was the Babylonian prototype of Noah: the flood hero who carried progenitors of all creatures through the Deluge in his ark. He was the only man to become immortal. Gilgamesh wanted to learn his secret. After many adventures, Gilgamesh found the patriarch Noah who showed him a magic "rose" of eternal life.
Gilgamesh took the rose plant, but it was stolen from him by a serpent. The story says that is why the snake became the only immortal creature, capable of shedding its skin and therefore seeming to become periodically reborn, yet without any stay or journey through the land of death.
On his journey, Gilgamesh met the Goddess, disguised as an innkeeper. She was known as Siduri Sabitu, the Wine-Bearer, and was the dispenser of the Wine of Immortality to the gods. She was later adopted by Sufi philosophers as the Goddess Saki, who poured for each man the cup of "reality revealed." In Greek she was known as Oenothea, "Wine-goddess."
This goddess revealed reality to Gilgamesh by advising him to abandon the search for immortality, because the cruel gods decreed that all human beings must die. She advised Gilgamesh to return home, and to take pleasure in the good things of life while he could: to bathe and dress himself, eat and drink, play with his children, make love to his wife, and "make every day a festival." It sounds like the Stoics' teaching of "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."
You may remember that Troy was discovered by the German amateur archeologist Heinrich Schleimann, who studied the Illiad and believed it. Everyone before him thought it a mythical story and a mythical city, but it has proven to be largely based on fact. (I still want to post more about the Odyssey.) It appears that the same thing may have happened again. The Epic has correctly led to the tomb of Gilgamesh.
I find the story of Gilgamesh interesting and I think I may be able to unravel some of it. It seems to consist of a mixture of true religion, history and myth. The Muslim Koran and also Baha'i Writings speak of Noah as one of the Manifestations of God.
Baha'u'llah wrote of Noah: "For instance, consider that among the Prophets was Noah. When He was invested with the robe of Prophethood, and was moved by the Spirit of God to arise and proclaim His cause, whoever believed in Him and acknowledge His Faith, was endowed with the grace of a new life. Of him it could be truly said that he was reborn and revived, inasmuch as previous to his belief in God and his acceptance of His Manifestation, he had set his affections on the things of the world, such as attachment to earthly goods, to wife, children, food, drink, and the like, so much so that in the day-time and in the night season his one concern had been to amass riches and procure for himself the means of enjoyment and pleasure. Aside from these things, before his partaking of the reviving waters of faith, he had been so wedded to the traditions of his forefathers, and so passionately devoted to the observance of their customs and laws, that he would have preferred to suffer death rather than violate one letter of those superstitious forms and manners current amongst his people." The Book of Certitude pp. 154-155.
Earlier in the same book is more information about Noah. The Qur'an 11:38 also tell his story, as does the Torah. According to Baha'u'llah, Noah "prayerfully exhorted His people and summoned them to the haven of security and peace. None, however, heeded His call. Each day they inflicted on His blessed person such pain and suffering that no one believed He could survive. How frequently they denied Him, how malevolently they hinted their suspicion against Him!'" ....He several times promised victory to His companions and fixed the hour thereof. But when the hour struck, the divine promise was not fulfilled. This caused a few among the small number of His followers to turn away from Him, and to this testify the records of the best-known books...." The Torah tells how he took a number of the animals, two by two, into the ark he built, and how he, his wife and family and the animals stayed safe through a dreadful flood of torrents of rain that poured for forty days and forty nights and drowned all the rest of the people, including some of his own sons, who had also forsaken Him. Finally things cleared up so that Noah, and his family and the animals could return to land and build a new civilization. The old one had been completely wiped away.
There may really have been a flood. There have been many floods, as the marks in the earth show. The "ark" was the refuge He built that would have sheltered His people, but they didn't enter it, and I think the destruction of the society must have taken place through the collapse of their civilization through the mass corruption of life that existed then. As to whether there was a boat, a flood, a dove, and a raven, and whether the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, I can't say. There seems to have been a widespread flood, but perhaps not as widespread as the story would indicate, according to some archeologists. Furthermore, they have not located the ark, although some people say it is still stuck on the side of a mountain in the Middle East. This may be a modern myth. I don't know what is true and what is symbolic regarding the ark and flood.
It makes sense that a hero like Gilgamesh sought Noah out to learn about "eternal life". Eternal life has to do with how you live in this world to advance the development you will need in order to truly live in the life to come after death. A baby develops the faculties it needs for this world while it is still in the world of the matrix where they were quite useless. When it is born here they are what it needs in this world. In the same way here we develop the inner qualities needed by us in the next. This has never changed and would have been the same at the time of Noah. As you see above, most of His followers were not able to be faithful and turned away from him, until in the end only "forty or seventy-two of his followers remained."
Gilgamesh accepted the "magic rose of eternal life"-- which seems to be love (for God and his teachings), from Noah. This would mean that he accepted the Teachings of Noah and began to live by them. On his way home he encountered the old goddess religion (in the person of the Goddess disguised as an innkeeper." )She was probably a follower of the old religion. The innkeeper must have convinced him to return to the beliefs of his forefathers. The magic rose of eternal life was stolen from him by a serpent. (the Great Goddess, herself was always identified with the ageless serpent), and this is the second indication that Gilgamesh returned to the religion of his forefathers and left the teachings of Noah. The first is when Gilgamesh was advised by the innkeeper to return to exactly the way of life that Baha'u'llah (quoted above) described as those of the people at the time of Noah: "previous to his belief in God and his acceptance of His Manifestation, he had set his affections on the things of the world, such as attachment to earthly goods, to wife, children, food, drink, and the like, so much so that in the day-time and in the night season his one concern had been to amass riches and procure for himself the means of enjoyment and pleasure."
The serpent and goddess worship were all over the known world and lasted a very long time. It was involved with orgiastic celebrations and what we would call degenerate behaviour, and permeated much religious thought.
Much Gnostic literature praised the serpent of Eden for bringing the "light" or knowledge to humanity, against the will of a tyrannical God who wanted to keep humans ignorant. This view of the Biblical Eden myth dated back to Sumero-Babylonian sources the same as the Epic of Gilgamesh. They said that man was made by the Earth Mother out of mud and placed in the garden "to dress it and to keep it" (Genesis 2:15) for the gods, because the gods were too lazy to do their own farming and wanted slaves to plant and harvest and give them offerings. The gods agreed that their slaves should never learn the godlike secret of immortality, lest they get above themselves and be ruined for work. Therefore, as the Epic of Gilgamesh reports, the gods gave death to humanity, and "Life they kept in their own hands."
In one of the interwoven Genesis stories, God was not one but many, called the elohim or "gods-and-goddesses." The God of Eden remarked to his divine colleagues, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil"; therefore he must be ejected from the garden at once, lest he "take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever". (Genesis 3:22). You may remember that I told you the Bible is filled with history, poetry, mythology, Revelation and so on. My source goes on to say that "The present form of the biblical story is obviously a much-revised version of the original tales of the Great Mother and her serpent. Babylonian icons showed the Goddess attended by her snake, offering man the food of immortality. It is really astonishing how intricately these old beliefs are entwined with so many others all over the then known world. "Immortality was the special province of the skin-shedding Serpent and the blood-bestowing Goddess from earliest times." Serpents were supposed to understand how to restore life to the dead, according to the myths of Crete...."
I suspect that one of the reasons the serpent is seen as evil in Christianity and in Genesis is because it was a remnant of the old religion that still resonated with the people. Of course, the idea of the serpent renewing its life when it shed its skin is extremely old, too, and was involved with the old religion.
What do you think of my interpretation?
Mary
