GILGAMOS
Aelian
c. 200 CE
There is only one surviving Greek mention of Gilgamesh, in Aelian's On Animals (Book 12, Chapter 24), a late encyclopedia of all things animal compiled by Claudius Aelianus (c. 175 - c. 235 CE), a Roman writer who composed in Greek. This brief myth of the rescue of the infant Gilgamesh (here known by the name Gilgamos) bears no clear relationship with the Epic of Gilgamesh as known today. Modern scholars have suggested that Aelian has either confused Gilgamesh with Etana, the Mesopotamian hero who rode an eagle to heaven (despite the obvious differences in the stories), or is reporting a variant not represented in any surviving text.
After the presentation Aelian's text, I will briefly discuss the only other surviving non-Mesopotamian references to Gilgamesh in ancient literature.
AELIAN, ON ANIMALS 12.24:
Translation from the Latin edition © 2011 Jason Colavito.
(I have omitted some irrelevant material before and after the myth.)
After the presentation Aelian's text, I will briefly discuss the only other surviving non-Mesopotamian references to Gilgamesh in ancient literature.
AELIAN, ON ANIMALS 12.24:
Translation from the Latin edition © 2011 Jason Colavito.
(I have omitted some irrelevant material before and after the myth.)
[…] When Euechorsos was king of the Babylonians, the Chaldeans* predicted that a grandson would be born to his daughter, and he would deprive his grandfather of his kingdom. Fearing this thing, and if I may utter something of a joke, he acted as Acrisius toward his daughter; for he ordered the strictest of watches kept over her. But yet the daughter (for fate had outsmarted the Babylonian king) gave birth to the child, having become pregnant by some uncertain man. But out of fear of the king, the guards threw the infant headlong from the citadel where the daughter was imprisoned. In truth, an eagle, seeing the falling infant with its very sharp eyes, before he could be dashed against the ground, flying under received him on his back, and transporting him to some garden put him down with the utmost care. Moreover, he who cared for the garden, when he saw the beautiful little boy, loved him, and reared him; and he, called Gilgamos, was the king of the Babylonians. […]
* The Chaldeans functioned as court astrologers and prophets.
* The Chaldeans functioned as court astrologers and prophets.
For our purposes, it is an interesting piece of proof that Gilgamesh was known ot the Greeks and Romans in some form, and likely had been for a long time. Interestingly, the myth seems to parallel in general the story of Jason and Pelias and much more specifically, as Aelian himself notes, the myth of Perseus and Acrisius. For comparison, here is the myth of Perseus' divine birth:
APOLLODORUS, THE LIBRARY 2.4.1
Trans. Sir James George Frazer (1921)
When Acrisius inquired of the oracle how he should get male children, the god said that his daughter would give birth to a son who would kill him. Fearing that, Acrisius built a brazen chamber under ground and there guarded Danae. However, she was seduced, as some say, by Proetus, whence arose the quarrel between them; but some say that Zeus had intercourse with her in the shape of a stream of gold which poured through the roof into Danae's lap. When Acrisius afterwards learned that she had got a child Perseus, he would not believe that she had been seduced by Zeus, and putting his daughter with the child in a chest, he cast it into the sea. The chest was washed ashore on Seriphus, and Dictys* took up the boy and reared him.
* A fisherman: cf. to the groundskeeper above.
Jeffrey H. Tigay suggested that the story derives from a Greco-Roman interpretation of the birth of Sargon contaminated with that of Perseus on the strength of the similarity between the gardener in Aelian and the irrigator in the poem below. Here is the legend of Sargon, as given in Assyrian and Babylonian Literature (1901):
SARGON, the powerful king, King of Agade, am I.
My mother was of low degree, my father I did not know.
The brother of my father dwelt in the mountain.
My city was Azupirani, situate on the bank of the Euphrates.
(My) humble mother conceived me; in secret she brought me forth.
She placed me in a basket-boat of rushes; with pitch she closed my door.
She gave me over to the river which did not (rise) over me.
The river bore me along; to Akki, the irrigator, it carried me.
Akki, the irrigator in the * * * brought me to land.
Akki, the irrigator, reared me as his own son.
Akki, the irrigator, appointed me his gardener.
While I was gardener, Ishtar looked on me with love [and] * * *
* * * four years I ruled the kingdom.
[Remnants of five lines too badly mutilated for translation.]
(Trans. Robert Francis Harper)
Trans. Sir James George Frazer (1921)
When Acrisius inquired of the oracle how he should get male children, the god said that his daughter would give birth to a son who would kill him. Fearing that, Acrisius built a brazen chamber under ground and there guarded Danae. However, she was seduced, as some say, by Proetus, whence arose the quarrel between them; but some say that Zeus had intercourse with her in the shape of a stream of gold which poured through the roof into Danae's lap. When Acrisius afterwards learned that she had got a child Perseus, he would not believe that she had been seduced by Zeus, and putting his daughter with the child in a chest, he cast it into the sea. The chest was washed ashore on Seriphus, and Dictys* took up the boy and reared him.
* A fisherman: cf. to the groundskeeper above.
Jeffrey H. Tigay suggested that the story derives from a Greco-Roman interpretation of the birth of Sargon contaminated with that of Perseus on the strength of the similarity between the gardener in Aelian and the irrigator in the poem below. Here is the legend of Sargon, as given in Assyrian and Babylonian Literature (1901):
SARGON, the powerful king, King of Agade, am I.
My mother was of low degree, my father I did not know.
The brother of my father dwelt in the mountain.
My city was Azupirani, situate on the bank of the Euphrates.
(My) humble mother conceived me; in secret she brought me forth.
She placed me in a basket-boat of rushes; with pitch she closed my door.
She gave me over to the river which did not (rise) over me.
The river bore me along; to Akki, the irrigator, it carried me.
Akki, the irrigator in the * * * brought me to land.
Akki, the irrigator, reared me as his own son.
Akki, the irrigator, appointed me his gardener.
While I was gardener, Ishtar looked on me with love [and] * * *
* * * four years I ruled the kingdom.
[Remnants of five lines too badly mutilated for translation.]
(Trans. Robert Francis Harper)
OTHER REFERENCES
Gilgamesh also appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the highly fragmentary Book of the Giants, where it seems that the ancient Jewish authors considered him one of the wicked race of giants (the Giants of Genesis and the Book of Enoch), off spring of (divine) angels and mortal women (cf. Gilgamesh as two-thirds man, one-third god in the Epic), who terrorized the earth in the years before the Flood. In 4Q531 Frag. 1 the name of Gilgamesh appears, and it may be he who explains that he is a powerful giant but cannot overcome the host of heaven. "The wild man they call me," he said. Then, in 4Q530, Gilgamesh is mentioned again in some connection with dream visions of the deaths of earth's kings. (Again, cf. to the prophetic dreams of Gilgamesh in the Epic.)
In the Manichaen version of the Book of the Giants, the giant Humbaba also appears as Hōbābīš (Hobabish), who steals the wife of another giant and participates in the mass killing of the giants, one killing the other--much as the earth-born men, the Spartoi, turn on one another and kill each other in the stories of Jason and Cadmus.
Finally, Theodore Bar Konai (Theodor bar Qoni) writes of Gilgamesh (as Gligmos or Gmigmos) in his scholia to Genesis c. 600 CE as the last of a group of ten kings, contemporaneous with Abraham.
All of this is much more important to a study of the transmission of Mesopotamian mythology to Judaism and Christianity than it is to the study of Near East myth in Greece, but it does speak to the widespread diffusion of Near Eastern mythology.
Gilgamesh also appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the highly fragmentary Book of the Giants, where it seems that the ancient Jewish authors considered him one of the wicked race of giants (the Giants of Genesis and the Book of Enoch), off spring of (divine) angels and mortal women (cf. Gilgamesh as two-thirds man, one-third god in the Epic), who terrorized the earth in the years before the Flood. In 4Q531 Frag. 1 the name of Gilgamesh appears, and it may be he who explains that he is a powerful giant but cannot overcome the host of heaven. "The wild man they call me," he said. Then, in 4Q530, Gilgamesh is mentioned again in some connection with dream visions of the deaths of earth's kings. (Again, cf. to the prophetic dreams of Gilgamesh in the Epic.)
In the Manichaen version of the Book of the Giants, the giant Humbaba also appears as Hōbābīš (Hobabish), who steals the wife of another giant and participates in the mass killing of the giants, one killing the other--much as the earth-born men, the Spartoi, turn on one another and kill each other in the stories of Jason and Cadmus.
Finally, Theodore Bar Konai (Theodor bar Qoni) writes of Gilgamesh (as Gligmos or Gmigmos) in his scholia to Genesis c. 600 CE as the last of a group of ten kings, contemporaneous with Abraham.
All of this is much more important to a study of the transmission of Mesopotamian mythology to Judaism and Christianity than it is to the study of Near East myth in Greece, but it does speak to the widespread diffusion of Near Eastern mythology.