The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Oldest Story in the World and the Very First Hero With A Thousand Faces

The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Oldest Story in the World and the Very First Hero With A Thousand Faces

I blame Harlan Ellison. I first learned of the epic of Gilgamesh—the oldest story in human history, and one of the most significant—when I watched a rerun of Harlan’s classic Outer Limits episode, Demon With A Glass Hand starring the talented Robert Culp as Trent around 1965, at the age of ten. At the beginning of the show, the series narrator, Vic Perrin (known as the Control Voice), intoned: “Through all the legends of ancient peoples—Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Semitic—runs the saga of the Eternal Man, the one who never dies, called by various names in various times, but historically known as Gilgamesh, the one who has never tasted death…the hero who strides through the centuries…”

Naturally, I was fascinated by this figure of the immortal hero striding through the centuries—what imaginative ten-year-old wouldn't be?—and I had to learn more. Thus began my lifelong fascination with Gilgamesh, the first hero in recorded history. My fascination with the figure of the hero and with hero worship as it has changed through the ages has remained with me my entire life.

(Demon With A Glass Hand, by the way, is well worth watching—it’s one of the finest SF stories ever produced on television, and readily available on videotape and DVD—and it was also one of the direct inspirations for the Terminator movies. Harlan sued James Cameron for plagiarism and won—the settlement was astronomical—and now at the end of The Terminator, during the end crawl of the credits, you can read the caveat, “Acknowledgement is made to the works of Harlan Ellison…” To cobble together The Terminator, Cameron also liberally pillaged Harlan’s other classic Outer Limits teleplay, Soldier, starring Michael Ansara as Quarlo, the tragic soldier from the future.)

Thanks to Harlan’s artistry and willingness to send kids like me to the encyclopedia (today unthinkable in TV writers), I was into Gilgamesh before being into Gilgamesh was cool, as the kids like to say today.

Today his name is well-known, but back then he was an obscure mythological figure, like Race Williams or Demosthenes. Now Gilgamesh is the basis of a graphic novel, several novels, numerous translations (including a definitive one, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts by A.R. George, published by Oxford University Press in 2003), and even a trendy, overpriced nightclub and restaurant in London with a Cecil B. DeMille Babylonian theme!

As a teenager, I haunted the libraries of my hometown, Wilmington, Delaware, doing research on Gilgamesh and devouring every translation I could find. As a high-school senior in 1972, I was thrilled when I came across Herbert Mason’s brilliant, highly accessible 1970 free verse translation in paperback—but imagine my astonishment when I entered Princeton in 1973 and learned that Professor John H. Marks, who was teaching my Ancient Near East class in my first semester, was the very same John H. Marks who wrote the foreword to the Mentor paperback edition of Mason’s translation!

I thought he was cooler than George Peppard (a major hero of mine at the time—see PJ, House of Cards, and The Groundstar Conspiracy, all forgotten suspense classics now.)

P.J. (1967): George Peppard as the ultra-cool private eye P.J., with the delectable Gayle Hunnicut

House of Cards (1968) : George Peppard battling the feared and powerful O.A.S., the terrorist French Secret Army, which murdered over 1.5 million innocent Arabs and Frenchmen in French Algeria when France refused to leave its imperalist colony in the early Sixties

Professor Marks became a friend of mine and mentor my freshman year, and he always welcomed me to his office when I dropped by unexpectedly. He was one of the nation’s leading authorities on the ancient Near East—the foundation of human civilization, after all—and he was incredibly generous in sharing his time, knowledge, ideas, and insights with me about the dawn of human civilization and consciousness. He was a fascinating man—he was an ordained Presbyterian minister, but he was also half-Jewish and he detested Christian fundamentalists for their naiveté, narrowness, and simple-mindedness.

I originally wrote an earlier version of the article below in January 1974 as an anthropology paper for a class in folklore given by the terrific Professor Peter Seitel, then a very young academic, who now works at the Smithsonian and is highly esteemed for his folkloric search. Prof. Seitel illuminated for me a lot of the foundations of folklore and mythology—two topics that have fascinated me from a very early age, as they have for most imaginative, creative people.

Joseph Campbell’s groundbreaking study The Hero With A Thousand Faces had recently created a sensation among young people in the early Seventies. It was also a sourcebook that all of us young storytellers devoured, as George Lucas can attest—he drew heavily on it in constructing the plot of Star Wars (and later repaid his debt to Campbell by producing the PBS series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth while the great scholar was dying of throat cancer).

Under Prof. Seitel's direction, we dissected James Bond as an archetypal hero, and Prof. Seitel imparted a very important insight—don’t get fooled by the oversimplications of Jungian narrative analysis. It’s easy to spot parallels between heroes—but remember, every culture (and era) is different. These differences are crucial, and the exact meaning and importance of each hero is determined by these cultural and historical differences, not their surface similarities. Is Sherlock Holmes the same as James Bond? Is Philip Marlowe the same as James Bond? Is the Lone Ranger the same as Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry? In the immortal words of Keith Richards, I think not.

In this fairy tale, From Russia With Love, Red Grant (Robert Shaw) is the evil giant, while Rosa Klebb (Lotte Leyna) is the wicked (lesbian) witch

There's never a bad Englishman in a James Bond story: Red Grant (Robert Shaw) is an ex-Sinn Fein (IRA) killer, an avowed enemy of the British Empire

In one of the greatest fights in screen history, the Good Knight (James Bond) defeats the Dark Knight (Red Grant)

Trapping the witch

Freudians, take note: a classic Ian Fleming attempted castration—all Bond stories are classic Freudian adventures, where the youthful hero battles a tyrannical father figure and tries to take an attractive young woman (a mother figure) away from him

Magic at work: in Goldfinger (1964), a 20th century knight (Bond) uses a form of modern wizardry known as electricity to defeat the terrifying ogre (Oddjob)

Let’s take an example. Facile parallels are often drawn between the Hebrew hero Samson in the Old Testament Book of Judges and the wildman character Enkidu in the epic of Gilgamesh. Some say that Enkidu is obviously the inspiration of Samson. (Theodore Gaster’s monumental study Myths and Legends of the Old Testament is an engrossing exploration of how Biblical stories may have been influenced by other cultures and how they’re echoed in other cultures. Incidentally, Gaster is an astonishing scholar—he writes beautifully and lucidly, and what he has to say!—and his New Golden Bough has to be read to be believed; his updated compression of Sir James George Fraser’s classic is the Bible of folklore. His study The Dead Sea Scrolls is also a must-read for Biblical scholarship.)

Sure, Enkidu and Samson have surface similarities. They’re both strongmen who live in the wild (Enkidu runs with the beasts of field, Samson slays lions).

Both are betrayed by women—Enkidu is seduced by a harlot who shaves his body, thereby civilizing him, Samson is seduced by a harlot who cuts his hair, thereby robbing him of his legendary strength. But Delilah’s seduction of Samson is a symbol of Hebrew anxiety that Jewish true believers would be seduced away from Jehovah, culturally and religiously, by pagan culture. Enkidu’s shaving has no such political significance. And where the Sumerian gods strike down Enkidu to punish him and Gilgamesh for slaying the ogre Humbaba (who is favored by the gods the same way the Greek gods favored the Cyclops in The Odyssey), Samson’s death is very different—he dies because he is captured by the Philistines, blinded horrifically, and brings down the house by shoving the pillars of the temple, thereby destroying his enemies and tormentors along with himself (in one of the most emotionally satisfying scenes in all of human storytelling).

These differences are major. Where Enkidu’s death is punishment for hubris, Samson goes out in a blaze of glory as a champion of the Lord. Samson is a heroic avenger for a monotheistic religion (the Book of Judges is full of these violent, righteous Hebrew avengers—see the stories of Eglon and Ehud, and Jael and Sistera, they’re like Mickey Spillane in sandals), and Samson’s dramatic act of self-sacrifice (he’s a kamikaze suicide bomber, let’s face it) is a lesson to the Hebrews that yes, if you stray from the Sinai storm-god Yahweh, you’re going to be ruined—the pagan harlot Delilah will rob you of your strength and the Philistines will gouge your eyes out—but in the end, the Lord will infuse you with superhuman (spiritual) strength that will enable you to overcome and destroy your enemies. (Samson’s captivity may well have been a reference to Hebrew enslavement by the Philistines, similar to the Babylonian Captivity.) That’s a hell of a difference between the two stories.

Speaking of Enkidu, noted biologist and cryptozoologist Ivan Sanderson had a fascinating theory, expressed in his book Things (Paperback Library, 1968). In his chapter on the figure of the hairy European “wildman,” the Wudewasa, he speculates that maybe Enkidu was a Neanderthal—one of the prehistoric apemen who were the contemporaries of our Cro-Magnon ancestors and who maybe (just maybe) still survive today in the obscure places of the world, known variously as the Yeti (Himalayas), Sasquatch/Bigfoot (North America), Yeren (China), Alma (the Urals), and Orang Pendek (Indonesia). He describes Enkidu as a “Wildman” like Esau, Jabob’s hairy twin brother in Genesis who had an alarming habit of playing with the beasts of the field, who accepted him as one of their own, instead of fleeing a human intruder. Many have speculated that possibly Esau was a Neanderthal survival (“there were giants in those days”). But Jacob and Esau are brothers. Are Jacob and Esau Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal, respectively (the two species living side-by-side originally and interbreeding), or are they Conradian alter egos, the type we see in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Norman Mailer’s The Deer Park? Sometimes folklore isn’t so easy to categorize—once you look at some of things these stories are saying.

Another aspect of Enkidu’s story is certainly open to interpretation. In his dying words to Gilgamesh, he blames his death on the fact had sex with the harlot. Is this implying that he died of venereal disease (similar to syphilis or AIDS)? Or did he die because the sexual act granted him consciousness and sexual knowledge? It’s been speculated that the true meaning of the story of Adam’s Fall in the Garden by partaking of the Tree of Knowledge is a parable of the fact that Neanderthal man lost his innocence at the moment that he evolved into a Cro-Magnon—he was no longer a dumb animal, but now a homo sapiens (thinking man) who was aware of himself, could speak, and understand right and wrong, and once he became self-aware, he was expelled from the Garden (the rainforest, or the African savannah of Louis Leakey). The Serpent is a symbol of sciencia, consciousness. Is the Sumerian story of Gilgamesh implying Enkidu’s sexual experience was his partaking of the Tree of Knowledge? (Animals rut; humans make love. There’s consciousness involved.) Or if we say that Enkidu was really a Neanderthal, a wildman, does he die as a punishment from the gods because he overstepped his biological boundaries and engaged in interspecies sex? Folklore isn’t always so cut-and-dried, and it’s full of ambiguities.

Recently there’s been a school of thought that argues that Gilgamesh and Enkidu enjoyed a homosexual relationship. I think this is a total fabrication.

The story is very explicit about sex—it’s made clear that Enkidu has sex with the harlot, and that Gilgamesh is traducing every pretty girl in Uruk that he can lay his hands on, preferably on their wedding nights, so why wouldn’t the story be equally explicit about sodomy between Gilgamesh and Enkidu?

(The Mesopotamians, unlike us Judeo-Christians, weren’t prudes.) It reminds me of all the schoolboy giggling about Batman and Robin.

I’ve always thought that Fredric Wertham’s hysterical assertion in Seduction of the Innocent that Batman and Robin portray an idealized homosexual relationship—they live together in a beautiful house, they have an elderly British butler, and my God, there are a lot of fresh flowers and beautiful artwork around in stately Wayne mansion!—is patently ridiculous.

Everyone knows that the comic book hero whose sexual problems we have to worry about is Superman. With his uncontrollable super-strength, who can he have sex with, without killing them involuntarily? If Lois Lane ever performs oral sex on him, he’ll clearly blow the back of her head out when he achieves orgasm—don’t tell me he has that much self-control, no guy does (“faster than a speeding bullet!”).

If he can only have sex with another Kryptonian, does that leave only Supergirl (his cousin!) and Krypto, the Superdog, as viable partners? Is the entire story of Superman therefore transparently an implicit encouragement of blatant incest and bestiality? I think this calls for a Congressional investigation. Shame about Mark Foley, by the way.

However, we can see parallels between Gilgamesh and Oedipus—both are culture heroes who embody the values of their individual cultures. Both are kings (and tyrants) who embark on journeys of self-knowledge. But where Gilgamesh finds knowledge, enlightenment, and spiritual resolution at the end of his quest, Oedipus’ quest ends in horrific self-knowledge, symbolic self-castration (when he gouges out his eyes), and a substantial career for Sigmund Freud. The tragedy of Oedipus Rex embodies the exquisite new self-consciousness and self-awareness of Hellenic civilization, Greek man’s understanding that we are a party to our own self-destruction. Where Gilgamesh seeks eternal life, Sophocles is telling us, through the tragedy of Oedipus, that we’re killing ourselves.

* * * * *

Mass murder in Mesopotamia (a.k.a. Iraq, 600,000 and growing), thanks to our own Oedipus Tyrannus, President George W. Bush

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

"The epic of Gilgamesh is, beyond doubt, the greatest literary masterpiece that has come down to us from the ancient Near East," (1) Theodor Gaster wrote. Originally composed in the third millennium, it is also the world's oldest work of literature. As John H. Marks noted, "Albert Scott remarked in the preface to his German translation of Gilgamesh that wanting to plumb its meaning is like seeking to understand the world. We do not know what ancient tellers of this poignant tale intended." (2) Of the versions of the epic that have been discovered, the Sumerian is the original, followed by the Akkadian, the Babylonian, the Assyrian, and the Hittite, and to some degree all conflict and are mutilated and incomplete. In producing Gilgamesh, the Mesopotamians were the first to ask the question that has always plagued humankind: what is the meaning of life and death? This epic contains their answers.

It begins with an account of the invasion of the city of Uruk. (3) In the next tablet, Gilgamesh appears, ruling the city as king. Since his name, meaning "seven-fold hero" or "hero par excellence," (4) is Cassite and foreign to Uruk (5), he must represent the foreign Cassite invader. Because his mother is the goddess Ninsun, he is two-thirds a god. Historically, in the Sumerian king lists, a king named Gilgamesh ruled Uruk in the First Dynasty in the third millennium. (6)

The story of Gilgamesh is an account of the humanization of an arrogant man, of how a cruel king learns to be a human being. Once king of Uruk, Gilgamesh quickly establishes himself as a tyrant, an abuser of power. When he conscripts the young men of the city to build fortifications to protect Uruk and forces the young women of the city to join him in the royal bedchamber by imposing the droit de seigneur, the people of Uruk appeal to the gods to end his oppression. Believing his tyranny stems from loneliness, the gods create a being named Enkidu, half-man, half-animal, to be his friend. A hunter spots Enkidu running wild in the steppes with the beasts of the field and reports him to Gilgamesh, saying the wild man has been destroying his traps. Gilgamesh sends a temple harlot from Uruk to seduce Enkidu in the open fields.

After she does, the animals will no longer run with him, sensing he has now changed, and the harlot takes him to a farmhouse, where she shaves and clothes him. Now he has become like a man. The story of a primitive man created from clay and seduced and civilized by a woman resembles the Hebrew story of Adam and Eve. (7) However, "...whereas in the Babylonian tale the woman is the medium leading man to the higher life, in the Biblical story, the woman is the tempter who brings misfortune to man." (8) Hence the parallels to Samson, who is destroyed by the harlot Delilah.

After the harlot brings Enkidu to Uruk, Enkidu meets Gilgamesh, who is about to enjoy his droit de seigneur with another man's bride. Outraged, Enkidu fights him. After each tests the other's mettle in combat and is surprised to discover an equal, the two heroes stop fighting and shake hands. Becoming fast friends, they grow to love one another like brothers. But restless Gilgamesh, not content with ruling as king, wants to accomplish a glorious feat that future generation will remember him for as a hero. He wants to be immortal—as a figure in an historical legend, as a character in a story (which, in terms of metafiction, he is already). When he asks Enkidu to help him slay Humbaba, an ogre who guards a sacred cedar grove, Enkidu, familiar with Humbaba, warns that the mighty giant can kill them easily.

Why are you worried about death?
Only the gods are immortal anyway,
Sighed Gilgamesh. (9)

It is significant that Gilgamesh goes to the cedar forest to slay Humbaba. "The name of the enemy is Elamitic.... If Gilgamesh, as seems certain, is a Cassite, the conflict between him and Khumbaba would represent a rivalry between Cassite and Elamite hordes for the possession of Uruk and of the surrounding district. While the Cassites do not come to the front till the eighteenth century [B.C.], there is every reason to believe that they were settled in the Euphrates Valley long before that period." (10) "So Gilgamesh's expedition, stripped of its legendary trimmings, simply commemorates the first expeditions of the inhabitants of Babylonia, who, lacking wood and stone in their own land, ascended the Euphrates valley in search of those materials which they finally found on the wooded slopes of the Amanus." (11) Like Jehovah, Humbaba himself is a storm god. "His voice was a tempest, his mouth was the mouth of the gods, his breath was a wind." (12)

Yet as a giant ogre, Humbaba is the first in a long line of fearsome, outsized antagonists in heroic literature, stretching from the Cyclops in The Odyssey, to Grendel in Beowulf, to the Giant in the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, to Oddjob in Goldfinger—even the towering Voltaire, the agent of Michael Dunn’s dwarf Dr. Miguelito Loveless, memorably played by Richard Kiel in The Wild Wild West in 1964-65.

Out of friendship, Enkidu accompanies Gilgamesh to the grove, but when Enkidu pushes the gate open, paralysis strikes his hand. With Enkidu's help, Gilgamesh slays Humbaba. But as they prepare to return to Uruk, Ishtar the love goddess, admiring Gilgamesh's might and handsome looks, offers herself to him. He spurns her, pointing out how she has wronged all her previous lovers, who were brave soldiers and great heroes (which may have been the Mesopotamian way of pointing out how love ruins fighting men).

In revenge she asks her father, Anu, king of the gods, to send the Bull of Heaven to destroy Gilgamesh and Enkidu. He does, and after the Bull of Heaven, a symbol for the storm (13), charges out of the sky and kills 200 men with two snorts, the two heroes dispatch it duly. When Enkidu rips off the Bull's thigh (or phallus, depending on the translation), and hurls it into Ishtar's face, she demands that the gods kill the two for defiance. Not only did they deliberately slay Humbaba, the divine guardian of the grove, they slew the Bull of Heaven and obscenely insulted a goddess. The gods decide it will be Enkidu who dies, since Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine.

Enkidu dies a long, lingering death (which Herbert Mason identifies as possible cancer). In his last words, he curses the harlot who seduced and civilized him.

Because of her. She made me see
Things as a man, and a man sees death in things.
That is what it is to be a man. (14)

Shamash the sun god reproaches him.

Why, O Enkidu, cursest thou the harlot-lass,
Who made thee eat food fit for divinity,
And gave thee to drink wine fit for royalty,
And clothed thee with noble garments,
And made thee have fair Gilgamesh for a comrade? (15)

When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is stricken with rage, grief—and fear. Even he, a king and two-thirds god, has a third that can die. To forestall death, he strikes out in search for the secret of immortality.

Rejecting civilization because he believes it caused Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh sets out into the wilderness in a rite of passage—a heroic quest in search of the secret of immortality. (16) Just as Homeric scholars have been able to trace the journal of Odysseus in The Odyssey using internal clues, Sumerologists have been able to trace Gilgamesh's journey. They have placed his encounter with the scorpion men at Mount Mashu (perhaps a symbol of a Cassite expedition into that region) and identified the sea he had to cross as the Arabian Sea. (17)

In the course of his journey, Gilgamesh stops at the inn of Siduri the alewife, who asks him:

Gilgamesh, whither rovest thou?
The life thou pursuest thou shall not find.
When the gods created mankind,
Death for mankind they set aside,
Life in their own hands retaining.
Thou, Gilgamesh, let full be thy belly.
Make thou merry by day and by night.
Of each day make thou a feast of rejoicing,
Day and night dance thou and play.
Let thy garments be sparkling fresh,
Thy head be washed; bathe thou in water.
Pay heed to the little one that holds on to thy hand,
Let thy spouse rejoice in thy bosom!
For this is the task of mankind! (18)

But Gilgamesh rejects this vision of hedonism, hygiene, and happy domesticity and pushes on in search of his dream. At last he finds the only living immortals, Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah, and his wife. When the god Enlil planned to drown the city of Shurrippak for disobedience, just as God wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah (19) and drowned the world in the Flood, the god Enki warned Utnapishtim and his wife, who built a great ship, thereby escaping the Deluge when the rains got out of control and inundated the world. After the waters subsided, Enki awarded Utnapishtim and his wife immortality for their righteousness. Besides symbolizing the overflow of the Euphrates, the Mesopotamian Deluge story demonstrates that Enki is a good god who aids mankind, while Enlil is a bad one who strives to destroy it. The two cults were rivals. (20)

Out of pity, Utnapishtim informs Gilgamesh he can discover the plant of rejuvenation growing on the river bed. Thanking him, Gilgamesh hurries off, and at the riverbank, he dives to the bottom, where he locates and plucks the herb. Back on the bank, he sets the magic plant down a moment while he rests, when along slithers a snake that swallows it, causing the serpent to shed its skin as it crawls away. As in the story of the Garden of Eden, a serpent bests the hero.

Heartbroken, his quest a failure, all his rigors for nothing and doomed to die, Gilgamesh trudges back to Uruk. But standing before its gates, he notices the walls, the walls his people slaved to build, and

He looked at the walls,
Awed at the heights
His people had achieved
And for a moment—just a moment—
All that lay behind him
Passed from view. (21)

"Beginning and ending with a view of 'ramparted Uruk’ the story seems to emphasize a man's work as his glory and only hope for immortality. That hope may not have satisfied Gilgamesh, but with it he is forced to be content." (22)

Three strong themes run through the epic: the joy of friendship, culture versus nature, and life versus death. The epic suggests that Gilgamesh became a tyrant because of loneliness, which is cured by the friendship of Enkidu. Without a doubt the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is one of the great male friendships of the literature of the ancient world, reminding one of Achilles and Patroclus, and David and Jonathan.

Achilles and Patroclus: Spartan love

Enkidu risks his life helping Gilgamesh slay Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. Ultimately he loses his life because of aiding his friend. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh goes temporarily mad with grief. With his final breath, Enkidu delivers a bitter pronouncement about the painful loss of a loved one. (Herbert Mason’s translation possesses incredible power.)

You'll know
When you have lost the strength to see
The way you once did. You'll be alone and wander
Looking for that life that's gone or some
Eternal life you have to find.
He drew closer to his friend's face.
My pain that is my eyes and ears
No longer see and hear the same
As yours do. Your eyes have changed.
You are crying. You never cried before.
It's not like you.
Why am I to die?
You to wander on alone?
Is that the way it is with friends? (23)

Although, while dying, Enkidu curses civilization, he realizes it has still brought him benefits. Gilgamesh rejects civilization as the cause of his friend's death and undergoes a rite of passage—in the form of a heroic quest—to renounce it. But in the end, Gilgamesh accepts civilization as an accomplishment to be proud of and his only vehicle for immortality. (24)

Like all people, Gilgamesh wants to live forever. “Death is an evil—it is harsh as any punishment, is, indeed, the supreme punishment,” Thorkild Jacobson observed. “Why must a man suffer death if he has committed no wrong? In the old, arbitrary world this question had no sting, for both good and evil were arbitrary matters. In the new world of justice it became terribly urgent." (25) This exemplifies the psychological and spiritual contrast between Neolithic culture (which Sumeria had just emerged from) and the emerging urban culture of Mesopotamia.

Gilgamesh seeks fame and immortality by slaying Humbaba and thumbing his nose at the gods. (However, he is no victim of hubris. Although he defies the gods, it is Enkidu the gods strike down; instead, misfortune and random chance are his undoing.) But by killing Humbaba, Enkidu dies, and then Gilgamesh seeks literal immortality. However, in the end, blind fate snatches triumph and eternal life from his grasp. Yet all is not lost. He has his accomplishments, the accomplishments of his people, and perhaps now he will heed Siduri's advice.

G.S. Kirk commented: "The myth exemplifies, through a single legendary figure, the various attitudes to death that humans tend to adopt: theoretical acceptance (26), utterly destroyed by one's first close acquaintance with it in someone loved; revulsion from the obscenity of physical corruption (27); the desire to surmount death in one's own private case, either by means of a lasting reputation or by the desperate fantasy that oneself could be immortal. Finally a kind of resignation—but before that, perhaps, an attempt to delay death by emulating youth. (28)"" (29)

Through the epic of Gilgamesh, Mesopotamian culture expressed its ideas concerning life. To produce it, Mesopotamia drew on its history and its cultural background. In the depiction of the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, we can see that these were warm people aware of humanist values and that they were asking questions such as, Is civilization worth it? and, What is the meaning of life and death? By studying the epic, we can come to know them; and ironically, as a result, Gilgamesh will live forever.

* * * * *

The Hero With A Thousand Faces from the Sixties

Napoleon Solo, the Indestructible Hero: the immortal hero who strides through the centuries (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., NBC-TV, 1964)

As Our Man Flint (1965), hipster James Coburn gives the U.S. military-industrial complex a piece of his mind at the outset of the Vietnam War

ENDNOTES

1. Theodor H. Gaster, The Oldest Stories in the World (New York, 1952), p. 42.

2. John H. Marks, "Afterword." Gilgamesh, translated by Herbert Mason (New York. 1972), p. 125.

3. L.W. King, Babylonian Religion and Mythology (New York, 1899), p. 149.

4. Morris Jastrow and Albert T. Clay, An Old Babylonian Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh (New Haven, 1920), p. 27.

5. Morris Jastrow, The Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians (Boston, 1898), p. 480.

6. Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (London, 1959). p. 66.

7. Jastrow, p. 476.

8. Jastrow and Clay, p. 44.

9. Mason, Gilgamesh, p. 29.

10. Jastrow, p. 480.

11. Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, p. 68.

12. Ibid., p. 68-69.

13. Jastrow, p. 486. Gaster, p. 47.

14. Mason, p. 92.

15. E.A. Speiser, "The Epic of Gilgamesh," The Ancient Near East, ed. James B. Pritchard (Princeton, N.J., 1958). P. 57.

16. G.S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures (Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1970), p. 149.

17. Jastrow. p. 489-490.

18. Speiser, p. 64.

19. Jastrow, p. 498.

20. Ibid., p. 494.

21. Mason, p. 92.

22. Marks, p. 122.

23. Mason, pp. 49-50.

24. Kirk, pp. 145-151.

25. Thorkild Jacobson, "Mesopotamia," Before Philosophy, ed. Henri and Mrs. H.A. Frankfort (Baltimore, 1946), p. 223.

26. See the quotation on p. 2 that endnote 10 refers to.

27. Gilgamesh stops mourning over Enkidu's corpse when a maggot drops out of his friend's nose.

28. A reference to the plant of rejuvenation.

29. Kirk, pp. 144-145.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gaster, Theodor H. The Oldest Stories in the World. New York: the Viking Press, 1952.

Jacobson, Thorkild. "Mesopotamia," Before Philosophy, ed. Henri and Hrs. H.A. Frankfort. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1946.

Jastrow, Morris, Jr., and Albert T. Clay. An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920.

Jastrow, Morris, Jr. The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. Boston: the Athenaeum Press, 1898.

King, L.W. Babylonian Religion and Mythology. New York: Henry Frowde, 1899.

Kirk. G.S. Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Relation to Ancient and Other Cultures. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970.

Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. London: Paul Hamlyn, 1959.

Marks, John H. "Afterword. Gilgamesh. Translated by Herbert Mason. New York: Mentor Books, 1972. (Prof. Marks’ afterword was added to the Mentor paperback edition; the original hardcover edition was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1970.)

Mason. Herbert. Gilgamesh. New York: Mentor Books, 1970.

Speiser, E.A. "The Epic of Gilgamesh." The Ancient Near East, ed. James B. Pritchard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.

THEIR SONGS IN OUR HEARTS

The enduring musical legacy of

RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN

At once, the word ‘prolific’ seems both fittingly appropriate, yet grossly inadequate in summating the masterworks of Rodgers and Hammerstein. For although both men were well established in their respective crafts by the time they collaborated on their seminal work, Oklahoma! arguably, their most stunning contributions to American theater were yet ahead of them.

It has often been said that good musical partnerships are very much like the ideal marriage. Certainly, that seems to have been the case for both Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, whose symbiotic union generated a creative flurry of muse-like activity into one of the most acute and socially aware trend-setting collaborations in the history of American musical theater – and later, of course, in films.

Throughout their creative endeavors, Hammerstein would often wax jokingly to the press of how he toiled for weeks on a lyric, only to have Rodgers sit as his piano and perfectly realize in musical notes his efforts in several days time. In point of fact, it is rumored that Rodgers wrote ‘June is Bustin’ Out All Over’ for Carousel in the time it took his wife and daughter to attend a Saturday matinee.

Rodgers always protested the insinuation that the musical portion of their songs came easily to him, citing that by the time he actually sat in front of his piano to tickle the ivories, several months of intense discussion about character design and motivation between he and Hammerstein had facilitated a good solid backdrop from which he, Rodgers, understood what was expected of the mood, tempo and pacing of the moment.

“I think the moment of creation should be a spontaneous one,” Rodgers would clarify years later in an interview, “But I have to do an awful lot of thinking for an awful lot of time before I actually do a few notes.”

Together, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein wrote a staggering nine musical shows (five; Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music now considered legendary)– a tally made even more impressive when one stops to consider that from 1943 to 1959 they produced a new hit musical on Broadway every other season and, in between, managed to pen a memorable film score for the 1945 version of State Fair, and, create a musical for television; Cinderella starring, then relative unknown, Julie Andrews. Cumulatively, these efforts earned the duo 35 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards and a pair of Pulitzers, Grammy and Emmy Awards; a formidable tally of accolades by any stretch of critical assessment.

Savvy businessmen as well as syncopated creative colleagues, from the onset Rodgers and Hammerstein were attuned to the need for complete creative control; a legacy achieved only after they became their own producers and established their own music publishing apparatus, responsible for producing their own, as well as other hit shows.

The impact that Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics had on Richard Rodgers prowess in composition cannot be overestimated. For, just as Rodgers collaborations with composer Lorenzo Hart (1895-1943) had had a particular light cadence; exemplified by a quick pleasant tempo or melodic lilt with overtones of the popular form of music of its time, so did Rodgers musical contribution to the R&H shows acquire a distinct, almost polar opposite mantel of more weighty quality under the aegis of Hammerstein’s introspective librettos.

After Hammerstein’s death from cancer in 1960, Rodgers attempts to ‘link up’ with other talents, but these associations proved less than stellar, despite such luminaries as Stephen Sondheim and Alan Jay Lerner. Simply stated; the post-Hammerstein works from Rodgers lack that spark that invigorated all their shows, and, in hindsight, attests to the importance of – call it kismet or chemistry – that unique and illusive creative zeitgeist that can truly be said to have been 50/50 between Rodgers and Hammerstein; an organic fruition, the longevity of which it is highly unlikely the American musical theater will ever see again.

Born on June 28, 1902 in New York, Richard Charles Rodgers (whose real family name of ‘Rojazinsky’ was shortened and Americanized by his father in the 1880s), began his prolific career writing variety and charity shows along side Lorenzo Hart (right) while the two were still students at Columbia University. In 1919, the team of Rodgers and Hart had their big break with ‘Any Old Place With You’ a song purchased and inserted into the 1919 Broadway musical, A Lonely Romeo.

Though popular enough, the team struggled for the next few years to find their niche, finally launching a hit single with ‘Manhattan’ which debuted in The Garrick Gaities (1925). At the height of their popularity, Rodgers and Hart were writing four shows a year – an energy and output not lost on the fledgling motion picture business, and by 1930 the two men made the move to Hollywood. Though the tenure proved superficially successful, Rodgers did not care for the constant meddling of producers and studio heads which, in later years, he would reflect upon as both stifling and crippling to his creative side.

A scant five years later, Rodgers and Hart left films for Broadway impresario Billy Rose (right) circus spectacular, Jumbo (1935) contributing that show’s most lyrical love ballads; the sublime, My Romance, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, and Little Girl Blue.

It was the beginning of an unprecedented run on Broadway for this creative team. Each show seemed to top its predecessor, and from 1936 to 1943, the music of Rodgers and Hart was heard and beloved everywhere. But in 1943 their 25 year association came to a sudden end when Lorenzo Hart became ill and tragically died, leaving Rodgers momentarily without a partner for future collaborations. The stalemate, however, did not last long.

Throughout this same tenure, Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (foreshortened to Oscar Hammerstein) had managed a minor artistic coup by revitalizing, Americanizing and re-popularizing the operetta on the Broadway stage. Affixing his rising star to already established composers in the stage-bound firmament; Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg and Vincent Youman, Hammerstein pursued and contributed to a series of hit shows including The Desert Song, New Moon and Rose-Marie, culminating with the best known and most enduring of the pre-Rodgers’ shows with Jerome Kern’s Show Boat (1927). A self professed cockeyed optimist, Hammerstein’s lyrics were all about extolling the strengths and attributes of mankind – a belief in humanity that he carried over into his partnership with Richard Rodgers.

THE PLAY IS THE THING

– the enduring stage works of Rodgers & Hammerstein

The first of many seminal works to emerge from Rodgers and Hammerstein; Oklahoma! had its Broadway debut on March 31, 1943. With its instantly recognizable score, stirring choreography by Agnes De Mille and effortless integration of music and plot, the play was an instant critical and financial success, disembarking from the conventional Broadway show format and shattering both audiences’ and the critics’ preconceived notions about what musical theater could be.

Based on Lynn Rigg’s play, Green Grows the Lilac – and original titled by R&H as Away We Go! Oklahoma! – the play’s most notable departure from then standard musical theater was its first act finale – a lavish dream sequence stemming from the lead female protagonist’s longing for clarity in her romantic choices.

In Hollywood, Oklahoma!’s overwhelming success did not go unnoticed. 20th Century-Fox studio mogul, Darryl F. Zanuck (left) had for some time been contemplating a musical remake of one of the studio’s biggest moneymakers of the 1930s; State Fair (1933). The novel by Philip Stong had translated into a winning drama for Will Rogers and then, Fox ingénue Janet Gaynor. The remake would add a lush score to the folksy ornamentation that was the film’s coup de grace.

Though Rodgers and Hammerstein had not yet been established as a team, Zanuck felt strongly about employing them to write the score for his new film. With their previous less than stellar experiences in Hollywood behind them, neither Rodgers nor Hammerstein were particularly keen on returning to film work. However, after screening the 1933 film in New York, both felt that the story and endearing characters warranted a second glance. A deal was struck whereby the duo could remain in New York while they wrote the score. Zanuck agreed.

Jeanne Crain (left), who had initially been discovered by Orson Welles while he had been in preparation on The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), had since become a Fox contract player with modest success in non-musical offerings. Zanuck cast Crain in a non-speaking role in The Gang’s All Here (1943) and then, as the lead protagonist in a poor cousin horse-racing drama to MGM’s National Velvet entitled Home in Indiana (1944).

As State Fair’s central protagonist, Margie Frake, Crain presented an initial quandary for the studio in that the actress could not sing a note. A professional singer, Louanne Hogan (left) was hired to dub in Crain’s vocals – a move that proved so successful, Crain went on to have a lucrative ‘singing’ career at Fox with Hogan dubbing virtually all of her vocals in subsequent ventures.

The rest of the cast was rounded out by a stellar compendium of popular talent. Radio crooner extraordinaire, Dick Haymes (left) was provided with the plumb role of Margie’s brother Wayne; veteran Fox contract player Dana Andrews (who actually had come to Hollywood in the early years to sing opera), was cast as Margie’s romantic interest, Pat Gilbert. The studio knew nothing of either Andrews’ ambitions or talent and hired an extra to dub his vocals instead. For his part, Andrews kept his abilities a secret from Fox, ignobly opting to provide the extra hired to dub in his vocals with a steady paycheck.

Vivian Blaine (right) – then seen as a successor to Fox’s most popular leading lady, Alice Faye – assumed the role of Emily Edwards; a big band singer who breaks Wayne’s heart. Curiously enough, the character of Emily in Stong’s novel has no last name. In the 1931 film she is named Emily Joyce; then Emily Porter in the 1962 filmic remake and finally, Emily Arden in the 1995 stage incarnation.

In writing the lyrics for the songs in State Fair, Oscar Hammerstein was briefly befuddled by his choice of love ballad for Margie. Initially, Hammerstein had desired to write a lyric about a girl suffering from Spring fever, hence her inability to be able to enjoy or even relate to the things and people she once cherished and found so amusing in her home life. The concept was solid, except that Hammerstein was quickly to discover that state fairs are held only during the autumn months.

With a bit of imagination in tow, Hammerstein revisited his initial concept with a slight alteration; the result – the Oscar-winning classic ‘It Might As Well Be Spring.’

“I wrote it all out first,” Hammerstein would muse affectionately years later, “It took me several weeks. Then I gave it to him (Rodgers) and two hours later he called me up and said, ‘I’ve got it.’ I could have thrown a brick through the phone.”

But perhaps Hammerstein’s most astonishing contribution to State Fair was ‘All I Owe I Owe Ioway’ – a breezy compendium of all that rural America is and has to offer (and transformed into a lavish full blown production number in the film), made all the more miraculous when one stops to consider that Hammerstein had been raised – and had remained – a city boy at heart. When the film was released theatrically, it proved a very popular hit. Though some critics were quick to mis-judge the score as not living up to the standards of Broadway’s Oklahoma! most were laudatory with their praise for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s contribution.

With all the folksy charm of both Broadway’s Oklahoma! and Fox’s State Fair under their creative belts, one might have expected a continuation into more of the same for their next collaborative effort. Instead, the duo turned their attentions to a dark fantasy by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar. Liliom was the story of an abusive lover who, after failing to secure happiness and security for his wife and young child, unrepentantly commits suicide. He is afforded one opportunity to return to earth and make peace, but badly ruins this chance at redemption and is exiled into purgatory instead.

Initially, Hammerstein had brought the property to Rodgers attention. He was met with less than overwhelming enthusiasm for the project which Rodgers considered oddly perverse and gruesomely tragic. His opinion of Molnar’s work was confirmed after screening the 1934 European film starring Charles Boyer. Furthermore, Rodgers was quick to remind his partner that fantasy rarely translated well to the stage. Nevertheless, Rodgers did begin the creative process by loosely suggesting to Hammerstein that the mood of the piece might be lightened with a change of locale from Budapest in the original to Maine for their version.

With a name change to Carousel, the protagonist of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s show – renamed Billie Bigalow – would not be an unredeemable reprobate, but a tragic figure who, in his desire to secure a future for his family, makes a grievous decision that inadvertently costs him his life. He time travels to earth, makes a mends for his past indiscretions and returns to heaven, knowing that his family will weather the storm without him.

In essence, Carousel is a morality tale, it’s note of optimism and hope at the end not clearly defined as the anticipated conventional ‘happy ending’ but rather instilling a premise that is both genuine and human – encapsulating the vast rawness and passionately emotional arch of Liliom while infusing a sense of the miraculous in the everyday, and even, within the tragic.

This was mainly Hammerstein’s contribution to the project – instilled by a faith that, as the librettist commented years later, “…we should all have in ourselves and one another…illuminated in these words (from the most poignant and best remembered song in the score) – when you walk through a storm, hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm is a golden sky and the sweet silver song of the Lord. Walk on through the wind. Walk on through the rain, though your dreams be tossed and blown. Walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.”

Reportedly, upon debuting Carousel on Broadway, Molnar was complimentary to Rodgers and Hammerstein, supposedly confiding to the latter that he wished he had thought of their ending as his own. Years later, Rodgers concurred with Molnar’s assessment. “Oscar never wrote more meaningful or more moving lyrics and to me, my score is more satisfying than any I’ve ever written…it affects me deeply every time I see it performed.”

Though not the overwhelming critical or financial success that Oklahoma! had been, Carousel nevertheless did respectable business. Unfortunately, it would be followed by one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most forgettable efforts; Allegro – a meandering, somewhat speculative piece with socially conscious underpinnings of the folly in big business and married to the rather convivial story of everyman, Joseph Taylor – a doctor who, upon discovering that his wife is having an affair, departs the big city for a life of humanitarian work and more meaningful romance with his nurse, Emily West. Premiering at the Majestic Theater on October 10, 1947, Allegro ran for a disappointing 315 performances – disregarded by audiences and much maligned by the critics.

If many were quick to contemplate the future of Rodgers and Hammerstein then, their snap analyses were laid to rest with the debut of the duos next iconic effort; South Pacific (1949). James Michener’s (right) frank, yet occasionally somewhat romanticized recanting of war stories in Tales of the South Pacific had first been considered box office poison by Hollywood studios, an opinion that inadvertently placed the novel on the market where theater director Joshua Logan first discovered it. Unable to shake the notion that the novel would make a great play, Logan passed it on to Rodgers and Hammerstein, both of whom found the social and political statements made by Michener in the novel in line with their moral consciousness.

Crafting themes of racial prejudice and ambiguity around the characters of an American nurse, Nellie Forbush (Mary Martin) whose love for French plantation owner, Emile DeBecque (Ezio Pinza) are brought into question after she discovers he has Polynesian children from a previous marriage, Rodgers and Hammerstein concocted their most politically charged stage work – a critique of perceived American superiority made humble by the realization that ‘people are just people – no matter where one goes.’

What made the Broadway premiere of South Pacific particularly satisfying for the duo was that it was their first independent stage venture as solo producers. Instantly heralded as another masterwork by the team, South Pacific reinstated and enforced the popular opinion that when it came to Broadway musicals – there was little to compete with the progressiveness of Rodgers and Hammerstein. For their next project, the duo would be matched by two enigmatic talents as formidable in poise, polish and stature as themselves; one a veteran actress; the other, an actor on the cusp of immortality.

AN AUDIENCE WITH THE KING

In 1946, 20th Century-Fox debuted the film, Anna and the King of Siam; a fictionalized recanting of the real life exploits of a British governess, Anna Leonowens and her dealings with the volatile King of Siam (now Thailand) while acting as tutor to his many children. The film was based loosely on Anna’s published diaries and a novel written 50 years later by Margaret Landon. Enthralled with the film was one of the stage’s most legendary leading ladies; Gertrude Lawrence (left and below).

An intercontinental sensation and luminous star of the first magnitude, whose recent glowing success in Lady in the Dark had embodied the height of chic sophistication, and, who was almost as famous for her after hours carousing and over-the-top lifestyle as she was for her stage efforts, Gertrude Lawrence was determined to play Anna on the stage. Purchasing the rights from Fox, the actress approached Rodgers and Hammerstein who immediately recognized the story’s potential as their next project; the first they would be writing exclusively for a particular star.

As the legend goes; Rodgers and Hammerstein began the project – renamed The King and I - in earnest, only to discover much to their chagrin that they knew of no actor who could play the male protagonist on par with the overpowering presence of Gertrude Lawrence. It was at this impasse that long time friend and occasional collaborator, Mary Martin came to their rescue. Martin had worked with a little know actor named Yul Brynner in Lute Song.

So the story goes, Rodgers and Hammerstein went to audition several actors for the part of the king. Brynner came out from behind a curtain, sat cross-legged before them on the edge of a stage with guitar in hand and gave his instrument a mighty whack while letting out a primitive yelp.

Instantly, he convinced the duo he was the embodiment of their fictional Siamese ruler. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s faith in Brynner was further solidified when the production’s costume designer, Irene Shariff convinced the already viral Brynner – who seemed to radiate a savage sexuality – to shave his head completely bald. The results were startling, sensual and instantly iconic.

While the first half of the play belonged primarily to Gertrude Lawrence – and her sparing with the king - the last act was undoubtedly a tour de force in support of the secondary flawed romance featuring slave girl, Tuptim’s galvanic ballet recreation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Rodgers and Hammerstein were somewhat perplexed during tryouts when they arrived for a rehearsal of the ballet, only to discover that choreographer Jerome Robbins had been trying rather awkwardly to maintain authentic Oriental dance steps. It was only after Rodgers confided in Robbins that authenticity is a commodity best left in the eyes of the beholder that Robbins agreed to toss out virtually everything that the company had rehearsed up until that point and restage the number from scratch.

After tryouts in New Haven and Boston, The King and I premiered on Broadway on March 29th, 1951. It was an immediate and overwhelming success – winning Tony Awards for Best Musical, Actress (Lawrence), Featured Actor (Brynner), Costume and Scenic Design. However, after playing Broadway for a year and 1,246 performances Gertrude Lawrence suddenly fell ill.

She finished a performance during the Wednesday matinee in September 1952 and checked herself into the hospital for what she believed was going to be a brief rest and recuperation from jaundice. Instead, doctors informed the actress that she was fatally stricken with liver cancer. That Saturday, Sept. 6, Lawrence died of her ailment. She was only 54 years old, leaving Brynner and her understudy to take The King and I on the road.