United States or United Arab Emirates ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Gilgamesh was rated, with reservations, as a civilized planet though not on a level with Odin or Isis or Baldur or Marduk or Aton or any of the other worlds which had maintained the culture of the Terran Federation uninterruptedly. Perhaps Gilgamesh deserved more credit; its people had undergone two centuries of darkness and pulled themselves out of it by their bootstraps.
But there is no doubt that the heroic personage upon the other face is represented in the familiar attitude of the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh struggling with lions, which formed so favourite a subject upon early Sumerian and Babylonian seals.
But with this proposition that the prostitutes were priestesses attached to the Ishtar cult and who look part in ceremonies intended to symbolize fertility, we must for the present rest content. Gilgamesh, secure in his victory, proceeds to offer the horns of the divine bull to his patron Lugal-Marada, the 'king' of Marad, and who appears to be identical with Shamash himself.
Ishtar mounts the wall of walled Uruk. In violent rage she pronounces a curse: "Cursed be Gilgamesh, who has enraged me, Who has killed the divine bull." Eabani adds insult to injury by challenging the goddess. Woe to thee! I will subdue thee, I will do to thee as I have done to him. The mythological motives that prompted the introduction of Ishtar into this tablet now become apparent.
In the Gilgamesh Epic Shuruppak is the only Antediluvian city referred to, while in the Hebrew accounts no city at all is mentioned in connexion with Noah. The city of Xisuthros, too, is not recorded, but as his father came from Larankha or Larak, we may regard that city as his in the Greek Version.
When the Bigglersporters emerged from the meeting, they found that their own space-yacht had been commandeered and sent off to Amaterasu and Beowulf for assistance, that the regiment of local infantry they had enlisted from the King of Tradetown had been taken over by the Rivington authorities, and that the Gilgamesh freighter they had chartered to transport them to Gram would now take them to Marduk.
The name of the hero of the story was for a long time a puzzle to scholars. Written invariably in ideographic fashion, the provisional reading Izdubar was the only safe recourse until a few years ago, when Pinches discovered in a lexicographical tablet the equation Izdubar = Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh triumphs as does Marduk, but when once the summer solstice, which represents the sun's triumph, is past, the decline of the sun's strength begins to set in. This is indicated by the subsequent course of the narrative. The scene of rejoicing at Gilgamesh's triumph is changed to one of sadness. Eabani is snatched away from Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh puts his question to Eabani: Tell me, my companion, tell me, my companion, The nature of the land which thou hast experienced, oh! tell me. Eabani replies: I cannot tell thee, my friend, I cannot tell thee! He seems to feel that Gilgamesh could not endure the description. The life after death, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter, is not pictured by the Babylonians as joyous.
But though returning in restored health, he is not proof against death. Parnapishtim, at the suggestion of his wife, reveals the 'secret of life' to Gilgamesh just before the latter's departure. The ship is brought nearer to the shore, and Parnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of a plant that wounds as a thistle, but which possesses wonderful power.
Word Of The Day