Gilgamesh

Enkidu and Gilgamesh. Characters out of the earliest
Mesopotamian creation story cycle called the Enuma Elish.

Gilgamesh (meaning "the old man is now a young man") is perhaps the greatest hero in ancient Near Eastern literature. The story of this hero is based on a legendary king of the same name who ruled the Mesopotamian city of Uruk sometime between 2700 and 2600 b.c.e.

The name of Gilgamesh appears on the famous Sumerian King List, which dates to the late third millennium b.c.e. Later kings viewed Gilgamesh with great respect; some considered him as their personal god. As of yet, no inscriptions have been found that can be attributed to him.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the heroic tale of this legendary king. It is a compilation of various preexisting stories, some of which circulated as early as the Ur III dynasty in Sumer (c. 2100–2000 b.c.e.). There are two versions of this epic, the first of which is the Old Babylonian version.


This version dates to the second millennium b.c.e. and lacks the prologue and the famous flood story. The second is the standard version, which was discovered in Nineveh at the royal library of the seventh-century b.c.e. king Ashurbanipal of Assyria.

Tradition states that a master scribe and incantation priest by the name of Sin-leqe-unnini was the author. This version has been found in a variety of areas ranging from Palestine and Syria to modern-day Turkey, in addition to Mesopotamia. There is also evidence that it was included in school writing exercises.

Cylinder seals and statues depict a powerful hero grappling with wild animals, which scholars refer to as the "Gilgamesh figure", though there is no written evidence to connect Gilgamesh with the hero as depicted.

Some examples of this picture occur at times before the historical Gilgamesh ruled the city of Uruk. It is possible that this figure was connected with Gilgamesh at some point in Mesopotamian history. It is also possible that this heroic figure was connected with other Sumerian deities in extreme antiquity.

As the epic opens, Gilgamesh is described as a tyrant. He forces the male citizens to complete his building projects while taking the young women for himself to satisfy his sexual desires. So oppressive is the reign of Gilgamesh that the people of the city cry out to the gods to give them relief.

In response the gods create Enkidu, a being who is part man, part animal to challenge Gilgamesh. After engaging in battle and finding themselves to be near equals, the two become fast friends and adventuring heroes.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu slaying the bull of heaven

On their first adventure together they slay a giant named Humbaba (Huwawa), who is the guardian of a great cedar forest. After returning to Uruk, Gilgamesh is approached by the goddess Ishtar, who wants the hero to become her lover. He refuses her advances, which infuriates the goddess.

She asks An, the father of the gods, to send the monstrous Bull of Heaven to destroy the heroes. After the monster kills hundreds of young men from the city, Enkidu seizes it by the tail, while Gilgamesh plunges a sword into its neck, killing it.

After the Bull of Heaven is dead, Enkidu has a dream in which the council of the gods meets to decide which of the heroes should die for the killing of Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. They eventually decide on Enkidu, who dies after suffering an illness that lasts for seven days.


Grief stricken, Gilgamesh reflects on his own mortality and decides to search for the secret of eternal life. Gilgamesh hears that a man named Utnapishtim was granted eternal life by the gods. Utnapishtim had survived a great flood that destroyed humanity, after which he was granted eternal life by the gods.

After Gilgamesh finds this man, Utnapishtim tells him that he cannot have eternal life in the same way. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of a certain plant that has the ability to make the old young again, and Gilgamesh leaves to find this plant.

After discovering it, Gilgamesh decides to bathe in a pool after his long journey. While he is bathing, a snake comes along and devours the plant, which is an etiological myth explaining why snakes shed their skins.

The hero returns home to his city of Uruk sadder but wiser. He realizes that the only way a person can achieve immortality is by accomplishing great works that will outlive him in future generations. He looks around his city and sees the mighty walls he has built and is satisfied.

If fame is a measure of immortality, then one might argue that Gilgamesh actually achieved it. This outlook is similar to the heroic outlook found in the Homeric epics and in the Greek mythology and pantheon.

There is a 12th tablet, though it contains stories that do not quite fit with the rest of the epic. In this tablet Enkidu is still alive. Gilgamesh accidentally drops two items down a hole, which leads to the underworld.

Enkidu goes to fetch the items but discovers that he cannot return to the land of the living. The Epic of Gilgamesh is famous for its inclusion of the flood story, which resembles the one in Genesis of the Jewish scriptures.

The Old Babylonian version, however, did not contain the flood, suggesting that it was not originally associated with Gilgamesh. The flood story existed in several forms in Mesopotamia including an Akkadian work entitled The Atrahasis Epic.

Fertile Crescent

Fertile Crescent

The Fertile Crescent describes an area of land roughly occupied by modern Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. North of the Arabian Desert and west of the Zagros Mountains, this area is irrigated by several rivers, most notably the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq and Syria, and the Nile in Egypt.

The two major river basins are connected by the Levant, a stretch of fertile land along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, to form a green crescent-like shape. Once among the most fertile agricultural lands on Earth, the crescent remains visible from space today.

Normally, the ebb and flow of plant and animal populations encouraged people to move around, following them. The Nile, however, experienced fairly predictable annual floods, and the Tigris and Euphrates regularly overflowed and irrigated the surrounding land, now called Mesopotamia.


Aided by the first domesticated animals, people found that they could settle in fixed communities, eating the harvested produce of one year’s floods while waiting for the next year’s crop to grow.

They helped this process along with irrigation ditches, encouraging the production of wheat and barley, which they supplemented with figs and dates. Cows, meanwhile, demanded an increasing quantity of domesticated grass, in order to provide enough meat and milk for a rapidly growing human population.

The First Cities

By around 7000 to 5000 b.c.e. the settled human population had grown large enough to support the first permanent settlements. In ancient Egypt the Nile was revered as part of the primeval sea, which gave way to a primeval hill, on which humankind built some of the first cities, such as Memphis (c. 3500 b.c.e.).

Mesopotamian origin myths went one step further, treating Eridu (settled around 5400 b.c.e.) as the world’s first city. In fact, the oldest continually-inhabited cities are not along the major river valleys at all, but in the Levant, where Damascus, Syria, and Jericho, Israel, boast histories of as much as 9,000 years.

Eridu, one of the first cities in fertile crescent

Initially small, these cities grew in both population and number until the Fertile Crescent was dotted with hundreds or even thousands, containing a few million people between them.

A diverse array of crops and other agricultural goods promoted communication and trade among these cities and thus the first economies, but population pressures, both within the cities and among neighboring nomads, led to an increased demand for territory and security and thus to the earliest forms of organized warfare.

Both trends lent themselves to increasingly complex hierarchies and political organizations among the various city-states so that by the third millennium b.c.e. cities began to band together under a common leadership, creating the first empires.


Egypt

Though Egypt probably emerged late as a civilization of city builders, it was among the first to emerge as a unified state. As early as the first documented pharaoh, Narmer, Egypt emerged as a federated imperial state, with several communities working together toward common secular and spiritual goals.

The most remarkable accomplishment of the earliest Egyptians was the great Pyramids of Giza, constructed around 2500 b.c.e. under the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty. Ten centuries and 14 dynasties later, Egypt expanded into the Levant, using chariots and archers to reach as far as the city of Mari, on the western Euphrates.

Throughout its history up to about 1000 b.c.e. Egypt remained remarkably unified. Despite the occasional foreign invasion Egypt maintained a cultural unity rarely fragmented beyond more than two kingdoms, and these were usually based on the two largest cities, Memphis and Thebes.

During brief periods of more general civil strife, smaller city-states emerged, including Saïs and Tanis, but these were often subsumed again into the larger kingdom once political control was reestablished.

Occasionally, however, even the capital of unified Egypt would change, for example when the pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti established a new power base at Heliopolis, reflecting a change in Egyptian religion from reverence of the Nile to worship of the Sun.

Mesopotamia and The Levant

In contrast to Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Levant experienced considerable fragmentation and change. Subject to continual invasions and balance-of-power struggles, these city-states tended to be more militarized and for more than a millennium much less adept than their Egyptian counterpart at building secure, stable empires.

Over time, however, they mastered the art, and the Assyrians briefly unified the entire Fertile Crescent under a single sovereign entity, in the middle of the seventh century b.c.e.

Initially, Mesopotamia was broken into tiny city-states, with each town and its surrounding land claiming all the prerogatives of a sovereign state. Collectively called Sumer, the city-states near the Tigris and Euphrates delta developed a distinctive culture, featuring literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Although Gilgamesh’s town of Uruk clearly influenced others, neither it nor any of the other city-states of Sumer established a clear military or political dominance over the others.

The first major military power in Mesopotamia was not native to the region at all but an invader: the Gutians, who had domesticated the horse and invaded over the Zagros Mountains. Although repulsed by the Sumerians, militia in the individual towns—such as the 24-man garrison of Lagash—could not overcome the next invasion, from northern Arabia.

Sargon of Akkad unified southern Mesopotamia c. 2350 b.c.e. not only by force with his 6,000-man army but also by adopting the local culture. This empire only lasted until 2100 b.c.e., however, before native Sumerian rule was restored by the third dynasty of Ur.

The first leader of this new empire, Ur-Nammu, organized neighboring city-states into administrative districts and imposed one of the world’s first codes of laws across the whole federation. His son, Shulgi, conquered a few neighboring city-states and was revered as a god, though his empire was soon dwarfed.

The problem with Sumer-Akkad was that local food supplies were unable to cope with a growing population—still less so in periods of drought and when the cult of personality failed Shulgi’s successors.

All three factors came into play when the Amorites, another North Arabian tribe, came into the fertile valley of the Euphrates River around 2000 b.c.e. and established themselves at Babylon, blocking the major trade route.

Slowly they absorbed almost all of the territory and culture of their more numerous subjects, but some Sumer-Akkadians may have moved altogether to a different collection of city-states on the northern Tigris, in the old kingdom of Assyria.

Assyria and Babylonia

Though it went through many evolutions, these migrations ultimately set the stage for the major Mesopotamian rivalry of the next 1,500 years, between Assyria and Babylonia—both of them centers of trade, culture, and learning, which became increasingly militaristic and antagonistic over time.

At first, early Babylon was the more impressive, with leaders such as Hammurabi writing their own codes of laws and increasingly advanced institutions of politics, culture, and religion.

Assyria, meanwhile, grew rich as a trading empire but fell subject to invasion by the Mittani, a mysterious people who may have introduced iron working to the region. When Assyria reemerged around 1350 b.c.e., it was no longer a trading empire but a state governed by a continual call to war.

For some 700 years Assyria steadily expanded, dominating its neighbors and unifying large areas of the Fertile Crescent, until by 671 b.c.e. the entire region was subject to the rule of a single leader, Esarhaddon, governing from the city of Nineveh on the middle Tigris.

Deeply religious and eminently pragmatic, many Assyrian leaders combined respect for their neighbors with a calculated ruthlessness. Although they allowed many conquered peoples to retain their political institutions, Assyrian bas-reliefs suggest that their leaders favored a policy of large-scale devastation and deportation for recalcitrant populations, and later dynasties built centers of culture at home from the spoils of rival neighbors.

Despite suffering from one or two major expeditions, Assyrian hegemony worked relatively well for Phoenicia, a collection of semifederated maritime trading states in the northern Levant that provided tribute from islands in the Mediterranean.

The Israelite lands were less compliant, however, and required a judicious mix of deportations, depredations, and diplomacy to remain a subject people. Babylon proved more recalcitrant by the early seventh century b.c.e., revolting three times in 15 years, before Great King Sennacherib completely destroyed it in 689 b.c.e.

Though Esarhaddon ordered the city rebuilt and repopulated, Assyria never fully controlled its neighbor to the south, and late Babylon retrieved the upper hand at long last near the end of the seventh century b.c.e., establishing a smaller Mesopotamian empire that endured for about 70 years, before the Fertile Crescent was unified again under the rule of Cyrus II of Persia.

Ancient Libraries

Ancient Libraries

The preconditions for a society to have a library are a writing script, a level of literacy, schools that foster literary skills, an educated and resourceful educated class, an interest in reading, and a publishing industry.

These conditions favored societies in the Near East and Greece in ancient times, though by the beginning of the Common Era libraries were not unknown in imperial China. The most successful early libraries offered the greatest public accessibility.

The seeds of libraries are found in the archives of ancient monarchies and governments. As soon as writing developed it was used by rulers for administration and record keeping. The tablets of Ebla (near Aleppo, Syria) provide an early example.


Here excavators found approximately 2,000 clay tablets dating back to 2300 b.c.e., recording information about food, clothing, and raw materials, apparently used as a palace archives. A similar cache was found at Ras Shamra, Syria, reflecting the 13th-century b.c.e. city Ugarit.

Here the writings are of a somewhat more intellectual nature: diplomatic correspondence, laws, history, a little poetry and incantations, and even a Sumerian-Ugaritic dictionary. These early collections were storage places for administrative information.

Pleasure reading and general reader access were not high priorities. The palace repository of Ashurbanipal (c. 650 b.c.e.) in Nineveh provides more of an ancient parallel for our topic. The collection included 1,500 titles in cuneiform texts.

The finding of the Epic of Gilgamesh suggests that the readers here were not merely interested in governing more efficiently, though the vast majority of texts are resources for Ashurbanipal’s palace bureaucrats.

Private and Specialized

In the ancient Greek world there is a long history of literacy, books, and education. However, libraries were at first decidedly private and specialized. In the fourth century b.c.e.

Aristotle’s personal collection of books was famous, and his Peripatetic school continued in his footsteps. Also, scholars recently discovered a catalog of books that indicates what an ancient library should offer: Homer, Hesiod, the tragedies, even cookbooks.

The prevailing attitude, though, was that book collections were for eccentric intellectuals. The foundation of a publicly used library goes back to the followers of Aristotle who migrated to Alexandria when Aristotle’s student, Alexander the Great, died.

Perhaps they persuaded the Diadochi monarchs, the Ptolemies, to establish a library like Aristotle’s but to make it available to all as a public resource. Or perhaps the Ptolemies, being Hellenized, simply wanted to subsidize Greek scholarship in Egypt. Thus, the library soon was associated with a circle of Greek thinkers called the "Mouseion" (the gathering place of the Muse inspired).

Demetrios Phaleron (345–283 b.c.e.) and a string of other Homeric scholars were Alexandria’s first chief librarians. The first critical edition of the Homeric epics was produced, as well as the first Jewish Bible in Greek.

Other library savants probably included Callimachus, Plotinus, and Philo the Jew. It is also likely that religious figures such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the Gnostics, and proponents of Neoplatonism were patrons in later centuries.

Alexandria’s holdings were vast, consisting of at least 500,000 rolls (scrolls), or the equivalent of 100,000 books. The complex had 10 buildings, connected by colonnades and adjoining areas for reading and discussion.

The library survived until the days of the Muslim caliphate. One of the main rivals for Alexandria was Pergamum, a beautiful city in Asia Minor. Around the year 200 b.c.e. King Eumenes II or Attalus I founded a library to compete with Ptolemy’s.

The Egyptians were so threatened that they banned the export of papyrus, a raw material for book production, which only stimulated the production of parchment as a substitute. The library eventually contained around 200,000 scrolls. Other ancient libraries were also found in such Mediterranean areas as Rhodes, Cos, Pella, and Antioch.

The Roman Empire boasted a library institution that linked Greek traditions to the modern world. When Aemilius Paullus defeated Perseus of Macedon in 168 b.c.e., he ransacked the royal library and brought back its books.

He wanted to educate his sons in Greek culture, just like the Alexandrians. As Rome’s thirst for Greek learning increased, so did its desire for Greek tutors, books, and libraries. Evidence for first-century c.e. Roman libraries is abundant.

Cicero and Plutarch speak much about the procurement of books, the accessibility of books through lending and copying policies, the storage and organization of books, and the reading of books.

From the satires of Trimalchio, Seneca, and Lucian, we learn that rich Romans would use their libraries as a mask for their stupidity. They would make a display of their wealth and "high culture" by founding "public libraries".

In the time of Augustus Caesar the state started to take a role in making books available to the public. Emperors started to provide library benefits. Julius Caesar made the first plan of a library, though he did not live to see its implementation.

There is evidence for libraries erected in honor of Emperors Vespasian,  Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Caracalla, and Diocletian. By one count there were more than 28 libraries in Rome alone. Constantine the Great pillaged books from Rome in order to start in Constantinople a collection of 7,000 books. New Rome eventually had 120,000 books.

Roman libraries offered more amenities than their Hellenistic forebears. Romans provided reading rooms and easy access to the stacks of books. Ancient library planners advised that the structure should face east to catch the sun, should have green marble floors to reduce strain on the eyes, and be decorated with gilded ceilings to increase good light.

The still-standing library of Celsus in Ephesus shows that the facade would have busts of famous authors, and the central niche of the reading rooms might be graced with a statue of the library’s benefactor. Rules for lending and hours of service have been found inscribed in stone: "No book shall be taken out, for we have sworn ... Open from dawn to midday".

Three other libraries are worth noting. Origen’s third-century c.e. library in Caesarea was used by Jerome and Eusebius. Edessa and Nisibis were intellectual centers of Syriac culture and church, and by 485 c.e.

Nisibis had an extensive collection of Greek scientific and philosophy books that later made their way into the libraries of the Abbasid Muslims. Justinian I’s sixth-century c.e. library in Constantinople was a resource for his famous Code of Justinian.

The decline of libraries has sometimes been associated with the establishment of Christianity and its alleged disdain for the classics and Hellenistic culture. There are stories of anti-intellectual religious mobs burning down libraries, but there are also examples of Christian support for learning (such as the Cappadocians, Basil the Great, and Jerome).

In fact, the transmission of classical writings to the Renaissance was due to monastic libraries of the Middle Ages. Probably it is more accurate to say that the worst enemies of libraries were the forces of nature: the worm and fire. And unfortunately, the decline of Rome led to a decline in the economy and in education.

Babylon, Later Periods

Babylon, Later Periods

Shortly after Murshili I, king of the Hittites, sacked Babylon in 1595 b.c.e., political intrigue in the Hittite court compelled him to return to Hatti. Two contenders filled the sudden power vacuum in southern Mesopotamia. In the southern marshlands was a kingdom later known as the First Sealand dynasty.

Its kings adopted names that suggest a proclivity to revive the ancient culture of Sumer. In the north were the Kassites, a tribal group originating from the Zagros Mountains. Already known from the time of Hammurabi, their dynasty lasted an unprecedented 576 years.

By c. 1475 b.c.e. the Kassites defeated the Seal and dynasty and ruled over all of Babylonia (southern Mesopotamia), which they called “Karduniash.”


The remarkable stability of Kassite rule consolidated the region’s identity as a single territorial state (rather than individual city-states), a unity that persisted even after Kassite times. Although foreigners in origin, the Kassites assimilated well into the local culture, adopting native Babylonian customs, language, and religion.

Several scholars have dated the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish to the Kassite period. This epic elevates Marduk, the patron deity of Babylon, to the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon, thus reflecting the political primacy of the city of Babylon.

Under the Kassites, Babylonia became an international power. During c. 1500–1200 b.c.e. the rulers whom pharaoh regarded as equals were addressed as Great Kings and included the leaders of Babylonia, Hatti, Mittani, Assyria, Alashiya (Cyprus), and Arzawa (in southwest Anatolia).

Their courts kept in contact by direct messenger service, using the Babylonian dialect as the lingua franca. During the reign of the Kassite king Kurigalzu I, so much gold was being imported from Egypt that, for the only time in Babylonian history, gold replaced silver as the standard for transactions. In turn, Babylonia was sought after for its trade in lapis lazuli and fine horses.

Assyria achieved its independence with the decline of Mitanni, and a succession of particularly capable kings ruled Assyria in the 14th and 13th centuries b.c.e.. Understandably, Babylon began to express concerns about the growing power of this near neighbor.

The Kassite king implored the pharaoh not to recognize Assyrian independence and renewed alliances with the Hittites against this common enemy. Nonetheless, in less than a century the Assyrian monarch Tukulti-Ninurta I conquered Babylon and deposed King Kashtiliash IV. A series of puppet kings was appointed in Babylon, until local rebellion returned control to the Kassites.

Eventually, however, the Elamites raided Babylonia and plundered such national treasures as Naram-Sin’s Victory Stela, Hammurabi’s Law Code, and even Marduk’s cult statue from Babylon. In c. 1155 b.c.e., the Elamites deposed King Enlil-nadin-ahi, hence terminating the long-lasting Kassite dynasty.

The following period is noteworthy as the only time in Babylonian history when native dynasties ruled the region. Situated in the south, the city of Isin perhaps evaded Elamite devastation in northern Babylonia.

A second Isin dynasty (1157–1026 b.c.e.) was quick to ascend Babylon’s throne. The most famous of its rulers was Nebuchadnezzar I (r. 1124–03 b.c.e.), who was celebrated as a national hero for avenging Elam’s raid on Babylon and for recovering Marduk’s cult statue.

When the Babylonian Marduk-nadin-ahhe raided Ekallatum, the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I retaliated by attacking Babylon and burning its royal palaces. Animosity between Assyria and Babylonia, however, was temporarily halted by the rise of a common threat: the Aramaeans.

These were a nomadic Semitic people in northern Syria, who ravaged Mesopotamia during times of famine, eventually contributing to the demise of the second Isin dynasty. Some scholars think that the civil upheavals narrated in the Epic of Erra describe conditions resulting from Aramaean invasions.

Northwest Babylonia was the area most debilitated by the Aramaeans, and perhaps it was natural that native resurgence should now find its strength from the south.

In any case the Second Sealand dynasty, 1026–1005 b.c.e., followed by the Kassite Bazi dynasty (1004–985 b.c.e.) and even an Elamite dynasty (984–979 b.c.e.). The few written records of 979–814 b.c.e. seem to indicate good relations between Babylonia and Assyria, which were ratified by treaty agreements.

During 814–811 b.c.e., however, the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad raided Babylonia, deported two Babylonian rulers, and reduced the region to a state of anarchy. When Assyria declined after his reign, the Chaldeans readily filled the power vacuum in Babylonia.

These were a tribal people in southern Babylonia, who were more sedentary than the Aramaeans and had well assimilated into Babylonian culture. Under the leadership of Eriba-Marduk from the Bit-Yakin tribe, the Chaldeans seized Babylon from the Assyrians.

The ascension of Nabonassar (747–734 b.c.e.) marks the point when the Babylonian Chronicle and the Ptolemaic canon begin their systematic account of Babylonian history. It is questionable whether this monarch himself was Chaldean, as he appeared in conflicts with both Aramaeans and Chaldeans.

According to Hellenistic tradition, the Nabonassar Era was the time when astronomy became highly developed and the name Chaldean became synonymous with the avocation of astronomer. Nabonassar received strong military support from the Assyrian Tiglath-pileser III, and Babylonia may actually have come under vassalage to Assyria during this time.

The growing power of the Neo-Assyrian empire resulted in a polarization of Babylonian opinion: Cities in northern Babylonia, closer to the Assyrian border, tended to be pro-Assyrian. By contrast, the Chaldeans and other southern tribes tended to be anti-Assyrian.

The reign of Tiglath-pileser saw a change in Assyrian policy toward Babylonia. With the exception of Tukulti-Ninurta I, the Assyrian monarchs had traditionally restrained their efforts to control Babylonia, in deference to the latter’s antiquity as the ancestral origin of Assyria’s own culture and religion.

In 729 b.c.e., however, Tiglath-pileser established a precedent by deposing the Babylonian king and uniting Assyria and Babylonia in a dual monarchy. Merodach-baladan II, an important sheikh from the Bit-Yakin tribe, took over Babylon after Shalmaneser V (Tiglath-pileser’s son) died.

This Chaldean had succeeded in buying an alliance with the Elamite army. He was to prove a recurring threat to Assyria and remembered as a hero of Babylonian nationalism. It was only after 710 b.c.e. that Sargon II reasserted Assyrian supremacy and chased the Chaldeans back to the south.

The Assyrian king Sennacherib experimented with various methods of governing Babylonia. Shortly after his ascension to Babylon’s throne in 703 b.c.e., he was ousted in another coup by Merodach-baladan.

After defeating the Chaldean, Sennacherib tried to install a pro-Assyrian native on Babylon’s throne. When this failed, the Assyrian king entrusted the control of Babylonia to his son, Ashur-nadin-shumi.

Unfortunately, the crown prince was kidnapped by the Elamites, and a certain Nergal-ushezib replaced him. This Elamite stooge was, in turn, replaced by Mushezib-Marduk, a ruler of the Bit-Dakkuri tribe. In 689 b.c.e. Sennacherib razed Babylon, plundered its temples, and removed Marduk’s cult statue to Assyria.

Esarhaddon (680–669 b.c.e.) preferred a strategy of conciliation. He attained a measure of peace with the Babylonians by rebuilding Babylon and undoing his father’s damage.

At his death Marduk’s statue was returned to Babylon, and the empire was divided between two sons: Ashurbanipal in Assyria and Shamash-shuma-ukin in Babylonia. Civil war, however, soon broke out between the two kingdoms. By 648 b.c.e. the Assyrians were once again in control of Babylon.

Moreover, numerous tablets and writing boards were bought or confiscated from Babylonian scholars to stock Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh. Among the texts were literary masterpieces such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Babylonian creation epic (Enuma Elish).

Homeric Epics

Odyssey and Calypso

The epics of the Greek writer Homer—the Iliad and the Odyssey—are the earliest and the best known of classics of Greek literature. Both are long epic poems, and several scholars have argued that different people probably wrote the two, with some academics arguing against even the existence of Homer. Certainly, all that is known about Homer is from tradition and evidence gleaned from the epics.

The cities of Argos, Athens, Chios, Colophon, Rhodes, Salamis, and Izmir (Smyrna) all claim that Homer was born in their city. Homer was probably a Greek from Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), as his writings used the Ionic and the Aeolic dialects of that region, so the claims of Chios and Izmir are the most plausible.

Many centuries later there was a clan at Chios known as the Homeridae who claimed to be descendants of Homer and, as wandering minstrels, kept alive some of the traditions associated with their famous ancestor. Homer was born the son of Maeon; he lived around 850 b.c.e.


Many people thought the Iliad and the Odyssey had been written in the eighth century b.c.e., with a consensus that the Iliad is earlier than the Odyssey, the former possibly composed in 750 b.c.e., and the latter about 25 years later. This was the period when many Greeks were moving to Asia Minor, and there was an increasing interest in the traditions of contact with the region.

Some have pointed to references in the sixth book of the Odyssey to refer clearly to the establishment of a Greek colony. The term Homeric age refers to the period about which Homer wrote, rather than the period in which he lived.

Countless writers have translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Roman writer Lucius Livius Andronicus, from Taranto in southern Italy, translated the Odyssey into Latin verse in the third century b.c.e. The most well-known translation is that of E. V. Rieu, in the Penguin Classics edition, first published in 1950.

Although there have been many more translations, that by Richmond Lattimore in 1951 is regarded as the best. He set out to try to capture the atmosphere of the original text by rendering it into verse, line by line.

Many of the same translators tried their hand at the Odyssey. Rieu’s edition, the first Penguin Classics book, was published in 1945; and Richmond Lattimore managed a translation of the Odyssey in 1965. However, the Odyssey also attracted two men who did not work on the Iliad.

William Morris, the famous designer and poet, had a translation of the Odyssey published in 1887, and T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) also translated the Odyssey into English prose. This was published under the name "T. E. Shaw", Lawrence’s adopted name, in 1932, three years before his death.

The style of both epics was dactylic hexameter with each line ranging from 12 to 17 syllables in length. With many phrases being repeated, the style was put together in such a manner that bards could learn them easily. Aristotle, a great admirer of the Homeric epics, wrote that Homer was "unequalled in diction and thought".

Iliad

The Iliad is the longer of the two poems, about a third longer than the Odyssey. It consists of 15,693 lines of poetry in dactylic hexameters and is now divided into 24 books. The Iliad, taking its name from Ilium, another name for Troy, concerns the last year of the 10-year siege of Troy, with the central figure being Achilles, the son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidones in modern-day Thessaly. The story focused on Achilles as a warrior and a person, more than on the siege.

The first book of the Iliad covers the quarrel between Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Greek army, and Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. The anger of Achilles, the leader of the Myrmidons, is directed against Agamemnon and Hector.

Chryseis, the daughter of a priest of Apollo, is captured by the Greeks and becomes a prisoner of Achilles. She ends up in the hands of Agamemnon, and Chryseis’s father visits the Greek camp to seek her release. When this does not come about, the god Apollo sends a plague into the Greek camp, and Agamemnon is forced to return her.

In the second book Odysseus has the task of motivating the Greeks, and it includes details on the Greek and the Trojan forces. Fighting begins again in the fourth book and continues in the fifth book. The sixth book introduces Hector, prince of Troy, and adversary of Achilles.

In the seventh book he fights Ajax, and in the eighth book the gods, some of whom are helping the Greeks, and others supporting the Trojans, withdraw from the fighting. In the ninth book Agamemnon tries, and fails, to get Achilles to return to the fight, and the 10th book involves Diomedes and Odysseus on a mission to spy on the Trojan positions at night.

The 11th book shows the Trojans scoring a small victory when Paris manages to wound Diomedes, and Achilles decides to use his favorite, Patroclus, in the campaign. The 12th book marks the Trojans driving the Greeks back to their camp, with Poseidon coming to the aid of the Greeks in the 13th book, and Hera helping Poseidon in the 14th book.

At this point Zeus, the king of the gods, stops Poseidon from interfering, and in the 16th book, Patroclus, worried about a possible Greek defeat, borrows the armor of Achilles and leads the Greeks against the Trojans. The Trojans retreat, but Hector manages to kill Patroclus.

The 17th book has the two armies fighting over the body of Patroclus, and the next book covers the grief of Achilles as he hears about the death of Patroclus. In the 19th book Achilles decides to join the fighting again, if only to avenge the death of his friend, and in the 20th book Achilles goes into the thick of the fighting, encountering Hector in the 21st book.

In the next book the death of Patroclus is avenged when Achilles kills Hector and then ties the body to his chariot and drags it back to the Greek camp. The penultimate book describes the funeral games for Patroclus, and the final book involves Achilles agreeing, in the end, to hand back Hector’s body to his father, King Priam of Troy.


Odyssey

The Odyssey is more of a romance than a heroic tragedy. It concerns the attempts that Odysseus (or Ulysses, in Latin) makes to return to his home on the island of Ithaca and to his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus.

Although the term odyssey describes, in English, a long journey, less than half the text is actually concerned with the travels of Odysseus. The Odyssey runs to 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter. The first book begins with Odysseus already on his way home from Troy, anxious to get back to Ithaca and see his son.

The second book describes the suitors who want to marry Penelope. They all maintain that her husband is dead and threaten Telemachus, who sets sail for Pylos. In the fourth book King Menelaus tells the boy that Odysseus was stranded in Egypt on his way back from Troy after the war.

In the ninth book Odysseus visits the land of the Lotus Eaters and, in perhaps the second-most famous incident in the book, ends up on the island controlled by the Cyclops, who have only one eye. Odysseus and his men hide in the cave of one of the Cyclops, but he eats two of the Greek sailors when they try to escape.

Eventually Odysseus and the rest of the sailors blind the Cyclops and escape, hanging on the underside of his sheep. In the 11th book Odysseus tries to make his peace with Poseidon, the god of the sea, who had supported the Trojans in the war.

The 12th book of the Odyssey covers the most famous incident, when Odysseus sails his ship past the land of the Sirens, women whose beautiful songs encourage sailors to sail too close to land so that their ships are dashed on the rocks.

Odysseus has his men fill their ears with beeswax and has himself tied to the mast of the ship so that he alone can hear their singing but can do nothing about it. The next book has Odysseus trying to reach Ithaca, arriving there bedraggled and alone. In the remaining books Telemachus returns home, escaping an ambush laid by the suitors of Penelope.

He manages to meet up with his father, and with the promised help of two gods, Zeus and Athena, they decide to attack the suitors at the end of the 16th book. By the 19th book Odysseus has met his wife but does not reveal his identity, although he is recognized by Eurycleia, a maid who had nursed the young Odysseus.

At the start of the 21st book Penelope offers to marry any man who can string the bow of Odysseus and fire it through 12 ax heads. The suitors try, one by one, and fail, and Odysseus, still in disguise, asks to try as well.

Penelope says that if Odysseus, dressed as a poor man, does so, she will not marry him but will reward him. He eventually does try, and succeeds, and Telemachus arrives on the scene.

In the 22nd book Odysseus, Telemachus, and others chase out the suitors, killing some of them. Odysseus finally announces to his wife who he really is, tells of his adventures, and they are reunited. The final book relates what happens when King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War. Instead of being welcomed by his wife Clytemnestra, she murders him.

Critical Discussion

Some scholars have pointed to similarities with the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. Elements of the Odyssey were possibly adapted to form some of the Arabian stories concerning the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor and One Thousand and One Nights.

The epics have been used by scholars to understand much about the life of the Greeks of the period and about methods of fighting. Homer’s epics have inspired many people. One of those was Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.e.) who traced his ancestry, through his mother, to Achilles.

He read the Iliad and the Odyssey when he was young, although he favored the former. He must have remembered this when he arrived in Asia Minor and made a sacrifice at the tomb of Protesilaus who was killed in the Trojan War and who was the first Greek warrior to set foot on Asian soil.

There have been a number of novels based on the stories in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Greek playwright Euripides wrote Cyclops based on the travels of Odysseus.

Geoffrey Chaucer set his poem Troilus and Creside at Homer’s Troy, and William Shakespeare used it for his play Troilus and Cressida. George E. Baker’s Paris of Troy and Richard Powell’s When the Gods Would Destroy all feature most of the characters from the Iliad.

Nikos Kazantzakis, in his The Odyssey, A Modern Sequel, continues the story of Odysseus after his return to Ithaca, and Odysseus (as Ulysses) has been important in the work of Dante and James Joyce.