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

Before I begin, I want to make three general points about the study of history and how civilizations develop.

Three Lenses for Studying History

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 way to think about it is that mythology is a shared reality, and every civilization has one. For example, today our mythology would be science and history. We think they are objective, but they're actually mythologies—a shared reality. Every civilization has its own mythology, and that's what makes the culture unique. To better understand Mesopotamia, we will compare and contrast its mythology with that of the Egyptians.

The second point is an idea called the dialectic, proposed by the German philosopher Frederick Hegel in the 19th century. He believed that history is driven by opposing ideas. Whenever you have one mythology or one idea, there must always arise another opposing idea that challenges it. That's what drives history, which is always moving towards a synthesis of ideas. For example, 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 diversity and differentiation. The idea here is that we humans have some fundamental natures about us. For example, we're all religious in some aspect. Another fundamental instinct is that we strive to be different, and that's why diversity is the iron law of society. For example, in a family, all the siblings will be different. In a classroom, the students will be different. You could be a student in one classroom, then go to another and figure out the students there are similar to you, so you will change as a person to differentiate yourself from other people. This is 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 that societies or cultures fall into a spectrum, and they're usually defined by the elite. This is another way of saying that 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.

Geography is Destiny: Egypt vs. 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. To the west is the Sahara Desert, to the north is the Mediterranean Sea, to the east is the Red Sea, and to the south are the cataracts, which make 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, and Jordan). Because of its natural boundaries, Egypt didn't really feel threatened by external enemies.

It also has the Nile River, which is the foundation of its civilization. The Nile was very generous; it flooded predictably every season, and so it made agriculture very productive in Egypt. This allowed them to sustain a very large population, which could then be used to create monuments like the pyramids. 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, and to the east, the Zagros Mountains. The thing about Anatolia is it itself is a very prosperous place, so it would eventually become home to certain empires, like the Hittites, who would always threaten Mesopotamia. The people of Arabia and the Zagros Mountains are nomads, and as we know, nomads are a very aggressive people, so they would constantly launch raids against Mesopotamia, which threatened its safety.

Mesopotamia, throughout its history, has always been at war with its neighbors. The other thing about Mesopotamia is that 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. 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, so they had to develop irrigation in order to tame the rivers.

The geography of these two cultures is very different, and therefore, their history is very different. For most of its history, Egypt was unified as an empire and was very stable. But Mesopotamia was always in flux.

A Brief History of Mesopotamian Civilizations

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 the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians?

The very first civilization was the Sumerians. 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, and South Mesopotamia became the Babylonian Empire. They all saw themselves as heirs to the Sumerian civilization. So even though they're different civilizations, they share a common mythology, which I will discuss later.

Let's talk 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, which we can see 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 Anatolia were forced to spread out. They went to Europe, they went to Egypt, they went to Mesopotamia, and when they did that, they spread agriculture. The mythology of agriculture is the mother goddess, which meant that they were mainly peaceful, egalitarian people who were very artistic. This was a very peaceful, stable world.

But then you have the 5.9-kiloyear event. This is about 6,000 years ago, 4,000 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 was the founding of a place called Uruk. Uruk is interesting because it is considered the first city in the world, and this is the beginning of what we call civilization—the modern idea of civilization. It had about 40,000 people, and this is what we consider 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, mathematics, astronomy, writing (cuneiform), the legal system, 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 were similar to Uruk—basically colonies scattered throughout Mesopotamia. These were city-states that at first were part of the Uruk civilization but eventually became prosperous and wealthy themselves, so they broke away. 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, and they have conflicts in order to resolve territorial or trade disputes, but they're not trying to wipe each other out.

The Mystery of the Sumerians

One of the great mysteries is where the Sumerians come from. We have this problem because when we discovered cuneiform and 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.

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. There are other people who believe the Sumerians came from the Zagros Mountains. There are other people who believe they came from Arabia. And then there's another group of people who believe the Sumerians are people who came from the Indus Valley. The Indus Valley was a very advanced civilization; it was very large, with 5 million people, and it covered three major areas: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Northwest India. It was larger than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. So people believe that the Indus Valley sent a colony to Mesopotamia which founded Uruk, and it makes sense because it's actually pretty easy to get from the Indus Valley to Uruk because of the Arabian Sea.

But then there's another theory, which I think makes the most sense: Sumerian is a creole language. It was invented by a melting pot of cultures and languages, very similar to the Manchu we speak today. Manchu 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. We call that language today Manchu.

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 the 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.

From Uruk, you're able to access the Indus Valley, the Arabian Desert, and you're able to go north to Anatolia and the Zagros Mountains. And 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 experience different cultures.

That's what explains why Uruk was able to prosper so fast: it was a center of the world. To get anywhere, you had 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 also be a multicultural and multilingual community. These traders from Arabia, Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains, and let's not forget about the Eurasian steppes—they also traded with these people. People from the Indus Valley—it makes sense for them to come together in a trading community and develop their own language and their own culture, which then spreads.

Also, because this is a melting pot, 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, a legal system, mathematics, and astronomy. That's why Sumerian became the cradle of civilization: because it was the meeting place of the world's cultures and ideas. And because of the very instability of the environment—meaning they had 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 could afford to be passive and fatalistic, to let the gods decide. But because this is an immigrant community, they had to focus on struggle and achievement, which is very much like America today.

Mythology as a Mirror: Comparing Creation Stories

Now, I want to compare Egyptian mythology with Mesopotamian mythology to show how the geographic and cultural differences translate into the mythology—the shared reality of the people.

Egypt: The Benevolent Gods

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.

Egyptians believed the first god was Ra, the sun god. He comes to our world and creates life, including humans. As such, we worship him. But eventually, we start to become misguided and worship a false god. Ra becomes angry and kills many of us, but after he does, he has tremendous regret and 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, the pyramids, and writing. Now, he has a brother named Set, who is very jealous of the fact that Osiris is worshiped by the people, so he plots to usurp the throne. He builds a sarcophagus, a tomb, and presents it to Osiris, saying, "My great king, this sarcophagus is the most beautiful and comfortable in the world. You will love lying in here." Osiris is intrigued and tries it. As soon as Osiris gets into the sarcophagus, 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. Osiris then becomes the god of the underworld. After Osiris is reassembled, he impregnates Isis, and they have a son named Horus. Horus eventually grows up and is 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. In one, they both turn into hippopotamuses and 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 as a hippopotamus, take a spear and kill him." Isis agrees, but when she tries to kill Set, she is paralyzed with fear and 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.

Mesopotamia: The Violent Gods of the Enuma Elish

The Mesopotamians have a different myth of creation called the Enuma Elish ("From On High"). This is the story:

There are two first gods: Tiamat, who is saltwater, and Apsu, who is freshwater. The two great gods get together and give birth to other gods, their children. These gods then give birth to other gods. Eventually, Apsu gets annoyed with his children because they are loud and he can't sleep. So he resolves to kill all his children and bring peace to the world. Tiamat finds out about Apsu's diabolical plan and warns her children. The gods get together and they kill Apsu.

Tiamat is enraged by the death of her consort and resolves to raise a great army and destroy her children. The gods get together and elect Marduk, who is the son of a god (so he's a third-generation god), to lead them in battle against Tiamat. You have these two massive armies converging, 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, which dizzies her, and 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 another half to create the continents. He creates the moon and the stars; he creates the entire universe from the body of Tiamat. After that, the gods all decide to rest, 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.

In Mesopotamia, they believe in something called creative destruction, which is to say, in order to create something new, you must destroy the old.

These two different mythologies reflect the shared reality of their different geographies and histories.

The Mesopotamian Answer to the Pyramids: The Epic of Gilgamesh

Both Egypt and Mesopotamia were in a struggle to prove their mythologies were the best. This was a time when all these civilizations were trading with each other, but there was also a lot of migration going on. People had a choice; if you're not happy here, you can always move somewhere else. There wasn't an idea of nation or culture or race; people had autonomy. So you needed to constantly prove that your civilization was the best to attract people, which provided the labor to drive your civilization.

The Egyptians created the pyramids to show the people around them, "We are favored by the gods because only the gods could inspire us to build the pyramids." Now the people in Mesopotamia had a problem: how do you compete against the pyramids? At first, they tried. They created things called 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 the Epic of Gilgamesh. Today, we celebrate the Epic of Gilgamesh as the first work of world literature.

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

There was a king of Uruk, the first city, named Gilgamesh. He's a demigod, a giant, and very brave. The problem is, even though he's built this great city of Uruk with high walls, prosperous land, and an advanced civilization, he gets bored very quickly. He starts to bully the people around him. He sees a young man, challenges him to a fight, and beats him up. He's a bully. He also rapes all the young women in Uruk, and 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 with whom he can share adventures. The two become the best of friends. They go on these adventures together, and these adventures are tremendous challenges. For example, they challenge gods to battle, and at first, they're afraid, but through their friendship and bravery, they are able to triumph.

There's a goddess named Ishtar, and she falls in love with Gilgamesh because he's so heroic. But Gilgamesh rebuffs Ishtar because he knows that Ishtar wants to turn him into her sex slave. He doesn't want that; he wants his freedom and to prove he's a great hero. Ishtar feels rejected and ashamed, so she sends the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk. Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight the Bull of Heaven and kill this great beast. The gods are now 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. So he hears about this immortal man, a man who has lived forever and will live forever, and he decides to seek him out. On his journey, he has to overcome many hurdles, and along the way, 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 insists on continuing 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 them, so the gods resolved to kill them. But this one man was favored by one god, so he was told about this plot. He built a boat and put a lot of animals in it 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, so to compensate, they promised never to destroy humanity again and also granted this man immortality. But this was 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.

And 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 and fails, but 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, not in the victory. The point is in the exploration, 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.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was written because it is in a dialectic with the pyramids. The epic 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." And that's the story of Gilgamesh.

Mythology as a Record of Social Evolution

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 (the first story). Then the gods are created and inhabit the world (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 one 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. And then finally, you have the battle between Tiamat and Marduk, which shows the battle between the old society and the new society—the urban and the agricultural. The agricultural society is egalitarian and peaceful; the urban is patriarchal.

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. So even though we are letting go of the old, 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? The dragon (lóng). The problem is, the river floods, and if it floods too much, you destroy civilization. So it's chaotic. That's why it's important to have a patriarchy or an urban elite, because they can command us to create irrigation and 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. 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, and for that, you need a bureaucracy to manage everyday affairs. This can be interpreted 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 a monument, which will create inequality, corruption, and waste in society, leading to massive suffering during times of drought.