Civilization #19: Gilgamesh and Mesopotamia's Quest for Immortality

Three General Points About History

We are doing Mesopotamia. This is the Bronze Age. Before I begin, I want to make three general points about the study of history and how civilizations develop.

The first point is this: every culture has a mythology. Mythology is the collective worldview of the people that lets them understand the reality around them. Another idea that we can say is mythology is a shared reality, and every civilization has mythology. For example, today our mythology would be science and history. We think they're objective, but they're actually mythologies. They're a shared reality. Every civilization would have its own mythology, and that's what makes the culture unique.

That's the first point. What we will do to better understand Mesopotamia is to compare and contrast its mythology with that of the Egyptians.

The second point is there's an idea called the dialectic. This was an idea proposed by the German philosopher named Friedrich Hegel in the 19th century. He believes that history is driven by opposing ideas. Whenever you have one mythology or one idea, there always must arise another opposing idea that challenges it. That's what drives history, and history is always moving towards a synthesis of ideas.

The example would be there's capitalism, and the opposing idea would be communism. The synthesis of the idea would be socialism. What's really important to understand is that ideas can be living things that change over time.

The third idea I want to introduce is the idea of diversity and differentiation. The idea here is we humans have some fundamental natures about us. For example, we're all religious in some aspect. Another fundamental instinct about us: we strive to be different. That's why diversity is the iron law of society.

The example is in a family, all the siblings will be different. In a classroom, the students will be different. You could be a student in a classroom, and then you go to another classroom and you figure out the students there are similar to you, so you will change as a person to differentiate yourself from other people.

That's also another principle of history. Societies strive to be different from each other. They strive for diversity and differentiation. We cannot make generalizations about societies. The only thing that we can say is societies or cultures fall into a spectrum, and they're usually defined by the elite.

This is another way of saying I'm going to make very broad generalizations about these societies and civilizations. They're useful for our purposes, but I want you to be aware that these are simplifications. These are generalizations.

The Geography of Egypt and Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a very different culture and civilization than Egypt because of its geography. If you look at the geography of Egypt, it has natural boundaries. For example, to the west is the Sahara Desert. To the north is the Mediterranean Sea. To the east is the Red Sea. Then to the south are the cataracts, so it makes it hard to travel up the Nile from the south.

There are really only two access points into Egypt which can be easily defended: the south and also from the Levant, which is basically Israel, Syria, Jordan. Because of its natural boundaries, Egypt doesn't really feel threatened by external enemies.

Also, it has the Nile River, which is the foundation of its civilization. Remember, we talked about how the Nile was very generous. It flooded predictably every season, and so it made agriculture very productive in Egypt, which allowed them to sustain a very large population, which then can be used to create monuments like the pyramid. For most of its history, Egypt was stable and prosperous.

Mesopotamia is completely different. First of all, Mesopotamia, which is in what we call Iraq today, has no natural boundaries. Mesopotamia is Greek for the land between two rivers. These two rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigris. To the west of Mesopotamia would be Arabia and the Levant. To the north would be Anatolia. To the east are the Zagros Mountains.

The thing about Anatolia is it itself is a very prosperous place, so it will become eventually home to certain empires like the Hittites, who will always threaten Mesopotamia. Anatolia is a threat to Mesopotamia. The people of Arabia and the Zagros Mountains are nomads. As we know, nomads are a very aggressive people, and so they will constantly launch raids against Mesopotamia, which threatens its safety.

Mesopotamia, throughout its history, has always been at war with its neighbors. The other thing about Mesopotamia is even though it's fertile, it's part of something called the Fertile Crescent, which extends from Mesopotamia into the Levant. The Euphrates and Tigris don't really cooperate. They're very chaotic. They change course all the time, and so the only way to tame the Euphrates and the Tigris is through irrigation.

If you farm too close to the riverbank, you're going to get flooded. They had to develop irrigation in order to tame the Euphrates and the Tigris.

The geography of these two cultures is very different, and therefore the history is very different. For most of its history, Egypt was unified as an empire. It was very stable, but Mesopotamia was always in flux. The first great civilization of Mesopotamia was the Sumerians. They were eventually conquered by the Akkadians, and then you have the Assyrians and the Babylonians. These four civilizations are what we call Mesopotamia.

What Is the Relationship Between These Four Civilizations?

What is the relationship between these four civilizations: the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians?

The very first civilization was the Sumerians, and then they were eventually united by the Akkadians. Sumeria was not really an empire. It was a culture and a civilization that was divided into city-states like the Greeks before the conquest of the Macedonians. The Akkadians under Sargon of Akkad, or Sargon the Great, united the city-states and gave us the idea of Sumerian civilization.

After the Akkadian Empire fell, North Mesopotamia became the Assyrian Empire. South Mesopotamia became the Babylonian Empire. They all saw themselves as heirs to the Sumerian civilization. Even though they're different civilizations, they share a common mythology.

How Mesopotamia Developed

I'm gonna talk very briefly about how Mesopotamia developed. Remember that in the beginning agriculture first appeared in two places: Anatolia and the Levant. Then there was something called the 8.2-kiloyear event, and we can see this as dramatic climate change that radically changed the geography and the climate of this world.

Because of the cooling in temperature, the people in the Levant and the people in Anatolia were forced to spread out. They went to Europe. They went to Egypt. They went to Mesopotamia. When they did that, they spread agriculture. Remember, the mythology of agriculture is the mother goddess, which meant that they were mainly peaceful, egalitarian people who were very artistic. This is a very peaceful, stable world.

But then you have the 5.9-kiloyear event. This is about 6,000 years ago, 4000 BCE. Again, you saw a radical change in temperature, which again forced migration and forced the civilizations to change.

One of the major changes in Mesopotamia is the founding of a place called Uruk. Uruk is interesting because it is considered the first city of the world. This is the beginning of what we call civilization, the modern idea of civilization. It has about 40,000 people. This is what we considered the beginning of the Sumerian civilization.

The Sumerian civilization is considered the cradle of civilization. It is the beginning of the foundations of modern civilization. They gave us irrigation technology. They gave us mathematics. They gave us astronomy. They gave us writing, cuneiform writing. They gave us the legal system. They gave us hierarchy and religion. There was an explosion of innovation with the founding of Uruk.

Uruk eventually would become a huge city, which compelled the people to migrate and found cities that are similar to Uruk. They're basically colonies, and they're scattered throughout Mesopotamia. These are city-states that at first were part of the Uruk civilization, but eventually they became prosperous and wealthy themselves, and so they broke away from Uruk.

This led to tension and conflict and maybe sometimes even outright warfare. But please remember, during this time the idea of massive warfare that we would see during the Greek and Roman periods is still pretty absent. There's conflict. It's short-term. They have conflicts in order to resolve territorial disputes or trade disputes, but they're not trying to wipe each other out.

Where Did the Sumerians Come From?

One of the great mysteries is where the Sumerians come from. We have this problem because when we discovered cuneiform and we translated the Sumerian language, we discovered the spoken language is very different from the surrounding regions, who spoke something called a Semitic language. The languages spoken in the area are part of a Semitic language group, but Sumerian is not part of that group. There are not enough similarities.

Also, there is no other language like Sumerian in the world. It's what is called a language isolate. It is unique. This has puzzled scholars for decades, and quite honestly, no one knows why this is the case. No one knows.

There are different theories. One theory is the Sumerian people are people who came from Anatolia and settled in the Euphrates because it was good for agriculture. That's one theory, but there are other theories. There are other people who believe the Sumerians came from the Zagros Mountains. There are other people who believe they came from Arabia and settled.

Then there's another group of people who believe the Sumerians are people who came from the Indus Valley. All you need to know is the Indus Valley is a very advanced civilization. It's very large, 5 million people, and it covers three major areas: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northwest India. It is larger than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. People believe that the Indus Valley sent a colony to Mesopotamia which founded Uruk. It makes sense because it's actually pretty easy to get from the Indus Valley to Uruk because of the Arabian Sea. These are the different theories.

But then there's another theory which I think makes the most sense, which is this: Sumerian is a creole language. It was invented by a melting pot of cultures and languages. It's very similar to the language we speak today. It didn't exist, but because you had so many different cultures coming to the palace, they had to create their own language in order to communicate with each other.

Why do I think this idea makes the most sense? Again, just to be absolutely clear, no one knows, and we'll probably never know the answer. But I believe this theory, that Sumerian is a creole language, makes the most sense because of this: why was Uruk able to develop into the first city? What makes it special? The answer is this: it is at the center of the world.

Let me explain. From Uruk, you're able to access the Indus Valley. You're able to access the Arabian Desert. You're able to go north to Anatolia and the Zagros Mountains. These civilizations, we know, traded with each other because it's the Bronze Age. To make bronze, you need to create an alloy between tin and copper. But also, what's important to understand is we humans have been trading with each other since the beginning because we like to explore and we like to experience different cultures.

That's what explains why Uruk was able to prosper so fast, because it's a center of the world. To get anywhere, you have to go through Uruk. But if that's the case, if it's a trading center of the world, it makes sense for it to be also a multicultural and multilingual community of people. People up here in the steppes also trade with these people. These traders from Arabia, Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains, people from the Indus Valley—it makes sense for them to come together in a trading community and develop their own language, their own culture, which spreads.

Also, because this is a melting pot, it's really an immigrant culture. They're able to bring the most advanced ideas from all around the world and combine them together, which creates new inventions like writing, like a legal system, like mathematics, like astronomy. That's why Sumerian became the cradle of civilization, because it was the meeting place of the world's cultures and ideas.

Because of the very instability of the environment, meaning they have to tame the Tigris and Euphrates, and because they were always threatened by outside enemies, they had to develop a new culture and new mythology based on struggle. The Egyptians can afford to be passive and fatalistic, let the gods decide. But because this is an immigrant community, they have to focus on struggle and achievement, which is very much like America today.

Again, this is my theory of the Sumerian people, where they came from and why they are who they are.

Egyptian and Mesopotamian Mythology

Next, what I want to do is I want to compare Egyptian mythology with Mesopotamian mythology to show how the geographic and cultural difference translates into the mythology, the shared reality of the people. Let's look at Egypt first.

Again, Egypt is a very ancient civilization, and their mythology is extremely complex. They have different versions of the same stories, but I'm going to give you the generalization which will be useful for our purposes.

The Egyptian Myth of Creation

Egypt believed the first god was Ra. There are other gods who they believe to be the first god, like Atum and Amun, but let's just say the first god is Ra, who is the sun god. He comes to our world, and he creates life. He basically gives life to everything, including humans. As such, we worship him.

But eventually we start to become misguided, and we start to worship another god, a false god. Ra becomes angry and kills many of us, but after he kills many of us, he has tremendous regret, and he decides his time is up. He should give his throne to someone else.

This other god becomes Osiris. Osiris is a great god because he gives people civilization, which includes cities, which includes the pyramids, which includes writing. It's Osiris who gives us civilization.

Now, he has a brother named Set, and Set is very jealous of the fact that Osiris is worshiped by the people, so he plots to usurp the throne from Osiris. What he does is this: he builds a sarcophagus, a tomb. He presents it to Osiris and says, “Osiris, my great king, this sarcophagus is the most beautiful and comfortable sarcophagus in the world. You will love lying in here.”

Osiris is like, “Oh, that's interesting. Let me try.” Osiris gets into the sarcophagus, and Set closes it forever. Then he kills Osiris and dismembers his body. Osiris has a wife, Isis, and when she hears about the death of her husband, she looks for his body and assembles it together, but she can't find the head. Then Osiris becomes the god of the underworld.

After Osiris is reassembled, he impregnates Isis. They have a son named Horus. Horus eventually grows up, and he's angered by the fact that his uncle Set has usurped his throne. The two are going to battle, and the gods who judge all tell them they have to challenge each other to a duel.

They have a series of duels. One duel is they both turn into hippopotamuses, and they try to stay in the river for the longest time possible. Horus sees this as an opportunity to kill Set. He tells his mother, Isis, “While Set is distracted, while he's a hippopotamus, take a spear and kill him.” Isis agrees, but when she tries to kill Set, she is paralyzed with fear, and she fails.

Horus, in anger, beheads his mother. He doesn't kill her, but she loses her head. That's how angry he is. Isis and Horus continue their challenge. Eventually Set decides to poison Horus, but before he can do so, Horus first poisons him. Then Horus becomes king, and he gives Egypt the institution of kingship. Every pharaoh is a direct descendant of Horus or another reincarnation of Horus. That is the Egyptian myth of creation.

The Enuma Elish

Now the Mesopotamians have a different myth of creation called the Enuma Elish, “from up high.” This is the story of the Enuma Elish.

There are two gods. The first god is Tiamat, who is basically salt water. Then you have Apsu, who is fresh water. The two great gods get together. They give birth to other gods, their children. These gods then give birth to other gods.

Eventually Apsu gets annoyed with his children because the children are loud, and he can't sleep. He resolves to kill all his children and bring peace to the world. Tiamat finds out about Apsu's diabolical plan. She warns her children. The gods get together, and they kill Apsu.

Tiamat is enraged by the death of her consort, and she resolves to raise a great army and destroy her children. The gods get together, and they elect Marduk, who is the son of a god. He's basically a third-generation god. They elect Marduk to lead them in battle against Tiamat.

You have these two massive armies converging against each other, and then Tiamat turns into a huge water serpent and challenges Marduk to a duel. They fight. Marduk unleashes whirlwinds into the mouth of Tiamat, and that sort of dizzies her. Then Marduk strikes her down.

After he kills her, he uses her body to create the world. He uses half of her body to create the sky, and he uses another half of the body to create the continents. He creates the moons, and he creates the stars. He creates the entire universe basically from the body of Tiamat.

After that, the gods all decide to rest in peace, but they need people to take care of them. They need people to watch the land, to farm and till the land, so they create humans as their slaves. That's how the Enuma Elish ends. Each city has its own god, and the humans in that city must revere and take care of that god, to be their slave for all eternity.

Three Major Differences

As you can see, right away there are massive differences between Egyptian mythology and Mesopotamian mythology.

The first major difference is the gods are benevolent. The gods give us everything. We just sit back. The gods will give us life. They will give us civilization. They will give us kingship. They will give us pyramids. All we have to do is respect and revere and worship the gods. We humans don't need to participate in the order of things.

But in the Enuma Elish, we find out that gods are extremely violent, and they demand our servitude. They're our masters. We must constantly work to please the gods. That's one major difference.

The second major difference is, as you can see from the Egyptian mythology, the main virtue that wins out is cleverness, deception, trickery. You can say this is because for the longest time Egypt was an empire. What mattered was not the ability to go to war, but the ability to manipulate internal politics, what we call palace intrigue.

This is no different from China, because remember, in China we have something called The Art of War by Sun Tzu. That is a manual on palace intrigue, how to trick other people. It's not a manual on how to go to war.

But here the value that is most prominent in Mesopotamia is bravery or strength, not cleverness. There's no trickery going on. It's just pure power, pure bravery.

The third major difference is in Egypt they believe the gods are helping each other. They build on top of each other's legacies. That's what progress is. That's what improvement is. But in Mesopotamia they believe in something called creative destruction, which is to say in order to create something new, you must destroy the old. Tiamat represents the old. Therefore she must be destroyed, and from the old you can build a new civilization. But you must first destroy the old, and conflict is a source of creativity.

Again, they have these two different mythologies because they're reflecting the shared reality of the different geographies and history.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Both Egypt and Mesopotamia are in a struggle to prove their mythologies are the best. The reason why is remember that this is a time when all these civilizations are trading with each other. But also what's important to understand is there's a lot of migration going on. People have a choice. If you're not happy here, you can always move somewhere else. There isn't any idea of nation or culture or race. People have autonomy.

You need to constantly prove that your civilization is the best to attract people, which provides the labor to drive your civilization. The Egyptians created something called the pyramids to show the people around them, “We are favored by the gods because it's only the gods who could inspire us to build the pyramids.”

Now the people in Mesopotamia have a problem, because how do you compete against the pyramids? At first they tried. They created things called the ziggurats, which are temples to house the gods. But then they did something that was completely different and which made them immortal, just as the pyramids made the Egyptians immortal. They created something called the Epic of Gilgamesh. Today we celebrate the Epic of Gilgamesh as the first work of world literature.

Let me first explain the plot of the Epic of Gilgamesh and show you how it reflects Mesopotamian culture and values, and then explain the meaning of it.

There was a king of Uruk, the first city. He's the king of the first city, and he's a demigod. He's huge. He's a giant, and he's very brave. The problem is even though he's built this great city, Uruk—high walls, prosperous land, advanced civilization—he gets bored very quickly. He starts to bully the people around him. He sees young men. He challenges them to a fight, and he beats them up. He's a bully. He also rapes all the young women in Uruk. This drives their parents to pray to the gods for relief.

The gods decide to create an equal to Gilgamesh, and his name is Enkidu. Enkidu is made of clay. The two fight, and even though Gilgamesh defeats Enkidu in battle, Gilgamesh is happy because he thinks he's found a good friend, someone his equal who he can share adventures with. The two become great friends, the best of friends. They go on these adventures together, and these adventures are tremendous challenges. For example, they challenge gods to battle. At first they're afraid, but through their friendship and through their bravery, they're able to triumph in the end.

There's a goddess named Ishtar, and she falls in love with Gilgamesh because he's so heroic. But Gilgamesh rebuffs Ishtar because Gilgamesh basically knows that Ishtar wants to turn him into her sex slave. He doesn't want that. He wants his freedom. He wants to prove he's a great hero. Ishtar feels rejected, feels ashamed, so she sends something called the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight the Bull of Heaven, and they kill this great bull. The gods now are really pissed off at Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and they decide that Enkidu must die. They inflict a disease on Enkidu which kills him.

At this point Gilgamesh is heartbroken. He's lost his best friend. At the same time, he knows death is waiting for him. He has all these accomplishments. He's a great king. He's built this great city, but eventually he must die. He does not want to die. He fears death. He hears about this immortal man, this man who has lived forever and who will live forever, and he decides to seek him out.

On his journey, he has to overcome many hurdles. Along the journey, everyone implores him:

Gilgamesh, give up this vain project. Immortality is for the gods. We are humans. We must die. That's what makes us different from the gods. Enjoy your life. Drink. Be merry.

But Gilgamesh refuses to turn back, and he insists on continuing on his journey. Eventually he finds this immortal man, who explains to him he was made immortal because he survived the great flood.

The gods created humans, but the humans became too loud for the gods, so the gods resolved to kill them. But this man, this one man, was favored by one god, so he was told about this plot, and he built a boat and put a lot of animals in the boat in order to escape. This is the basis of the story of Noah's flood in the Bible.

After the flood receded, this man came down and built an altar to worship the gods. The gods felt regret for what they did. To compensate, they promised never to do this again, to never destroy humanity again. Also, they grant this man immortality. But this is just a one-off. The gods will never do this again.

The man tells Gilgamesh the search for immortality is pointless. Just go home. But Gilgamesh refuses to give up, so the man challenges Gilgamesh to not sleep for six nights and seven days. Gilgamesh tries, but he can't do it. It's all futile.

Then he goes home. But the moment he goes home, he has an epiphany. He sees the great walls of Uruk. He sees the people happy in Uruk, and he realizes this is what immortality is. Immortality is not living forever. Immortality is to be remembered by the people who love you.

The irony of all this is he goes on this search for immortality. He fails, but because he goes on this search, because he goes on this quest, he becomes immortal, because his story, his struggle, is remembered and celebrated by the people in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

This is a reflection of the values of Mesopotamia. The point is in the achievement. The point is not in the victory. The point is in the exploration. The point is in the struggle. That's why the Mesopotamians were so innovative, but that's also why they went to war with each other all the time.

This is the beginning of the idea of literature, where memories can be shaped in such a way that they become so beautiful that they become implanted in the minds of others for centuries, which will inspire them to greater heights of achievement. Now we have the beginning of literature, and that is the legacy of Mesopotamia. The legacy of the Egyptians was a testament to the tremendous creativity of humans, the humans in Egypt. But the Epic of Gilgamesh is also a testament to the tremendous creativity of that civilization.

If you think about it, the Epic of Gilgamesh was written because it is in a dialectic with the pyramids. The Epic of Gilgamesh is also saying to the pyramids:

Immortality is an illusion. Eventually these pyramids will collapse. For the pharaoh to seek immortality is a delusion. What matters is for the pharaoh to look after the well-being of his people here and now, because that's why he will be loved and remembered for eternity. He will die if his people die, but if your people live on because of your contributions, then you'll be remembered forever. You'll become immortal.

That's the story of Gilgamesh.

Mythology and Social Evolution

I will make a final point about these stories. Within these stories we can see the evolution of societies over time. Let's go back to the story of the Enuma Elish. Remember, Tiamat and Apsu create the world. That's the first story. Then the gods are created, and they inhabit the world. That's the second story. Then Tiamat and Marduk go to war, and from the victory of this war, Marduk creates the universe.

Basically we're seeing three different mythologies embedded within this mythology, which gives us the idea of social change and evolution in Mesopotamia at this time. The first story is Tiamat. Who's Tiamat? She's the mother goddess. She's the one who gives life. This shows Mesopotamia as an agricultural society.

Then you have the emergence of the gods, which the urban people would celebrate. Then finally you have the battle between Tiamat and Marduk. This shows the battle between the old society and the new society, the urban and the agricultural. The agricultural is egalitarian. It is peaceful. The urban is patriarchal.

How do we explain, or how do you justify, the transition from an equal society to a patriarchy? The answer is embedded in the mythology. Tiamat represents chaos. Marduk represents order. Even though we are letting go of the old, we're destroying the old, it's to create a more peaceful and orderly world.

Remember, Tiamat is the water serpent, and for the longest time we believed the water serpent represented life and divinity. Why? Because if you think about it, the water serpent looks like the river, and the river is the basis of all civilization. This is true for most civilizations. In China, what do we call the water serpent? What do we call the water serpent in China? Lóng.

The problem is the river floods, and if it floods too much, you destroy civilization. It's chaotic. That's why it's important to have a patriarchy or an urban elite, because they can help us, command us to create irrigation, to build walls which will tame the river and the water serpent. Within this mythology we are seeing the evolution of society from an egalitarian one to a patriarchy.

Also, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, we are witnessing the transition from a society based on a great king to one that is more organized around a bureaucracy. Remember, the story starts with the king going on all these adventures. The story ends with the king coming back and recognizing what matters is the well-being of his people. For that, you need a bureaucracy to manage everyday affairs.

You can interpret this as representing the beginning of a bureaucratic elite which will help the king order the world in a way that brings more stability and prosperity to the people. But first the king must recognize his own hubris. He must become humble.

The great fear of the Mesopotamians is their king will become like the pharaoh, who will channel all resources to building this monument, which will create inequality, corruption and waste in society, which will lead to massive suffering during times of drought.

Irrigation and Innovation

Mesopotamian irrigation was very advanced because the Tigris and Euphrates were very uncooperative. They would change course all the time, so they had to develop very, very advanced irrigation systems that would change over time.

The thing about Sumeria is because it's trading, and because there are different city-states, it becomes a hotbed of innovation. If one city-state creates a really good irrigation system, another city-state could just copy it really easily.

The Indus Valley Comparison

The Indus Valley civilization, if we just use the analysis we did—basically geography is destiny—you would think the Indus Valley civilization is very much like the Egyptian civilization, where you have a monarchy, you have centralized authority, where they build these great monuments.

The irony is when you look at the Indus Valley civilization, and it's a huge, huge civilization, they have very advanced technology. They have these big cities that are very well-designed. They have plumbing. They have sanitation. They even have air conditioning, these towers that sort of trap hot air. People live for a very long time. I think over half of the population will live past 55, which is an incredible, incredible achievement.

But what is startling about the civilization, the Indus Valley civilization, is it's peaceful and it's egalitarian. It's a complete mystery as to why they're so different from Egypt and Mesopotamia, because again Egypt is a centralized empire. Mesopotamia is always at war. We will look at the Indus Valley civilization and try to resolve the paradox as to why it is advanced, prosperous, but at the same time peaceful and egalitarian.