HOW TO THINK ABOUT YOUR INEVITABLE DEATH.
GILGAMESH THE KING, HOW TO BE TWO-THIRDS DIVINE, AND HOPE IN GOD’S GOODNESS…
AKKADIAN BOMB TRACK.
Ancient humanifesto meets mortal combat in this Akkadian bomb track. Ha!
Fear and love, swordplay and melee, the biggest questions about what is a human, what does civilization cost, what are we here to do anyways, and the thin line between life and death—
all in 12 cuneiform tablets, etched in stone by “the one who sees everything”
… which sounds way more compelling than Carl.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is
regarded as the oldest literature in the world.
the second religious text only after the Egyptian Pyramid Texts.
is all about the exploits of Gilgamesh the King of Uruk around 2100 BCE and his exploits with the wild-man-turned-warrior-companion Enkidu.
Let’s take this in a few reflections and ask some important questions about our own hero’s journey.
TWO-THIRDS DIVINE.
The Epic of Gilgamesh begins with the gods creating Gilgamesh kind of like Frankenstein. They stitch together an extra-strong, super-sized man who will rule over Akkad. This is really close to the ancient conception of divinity, because early on humans understood the gods as humans except bigger.
Most ancient mythology begins with a prototypical, archetypal human. For instance, Adam is the first human but represents all humanity and more specifically, Israel. Gilgamesh is a proto-man who represents the might and power of the Akkadians, which over time gets extended to every group who adopts the myth.
And so, much like Atrahasis or Adam, but he keeps the superhuman size of divine ones.
But here’s the important bit.
Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine.
This is the first thing you are told about the King in Tablet 1:
“Two-thirds of him is God, one-third is human.”
Gilgamesh Tablet 1.2.1
or again in Tablet 3, Gilgamesh having realized his own struggle with mortality, says this to his companion Enkidu:
“Who, my friend, can scale the heavens?
Only the gods live forever under the son.
As for humankind, numbered are their days.
Whatever they achieve is like the wind.”
Gilgamesh 3.4.5-8
Those of us familiar with the Bible may hear echoes of the teacher in who shows us that whatever we do or build or invest in is vanity, a wind, a myst that disappears with us in death.
Or consider these words from the Psalter:
בְּטֶ֤רֶם ׀ הָ֘רִ֤ים יֻלָּ֗דוּ וַתְּח֣וֹלֵֽל אֶ֣רֶץ וְתֵבֵ֑ל וּֽמֵעוֹלָ֥ם עַד־ע֝וֹלָ֗ם אַתָּ֥ה אֵֽל׃
Before the mountains came into being,
before You brought forth the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity You are God.
תָּשֵׁ֣ב אֱ֭נוֹשׁ עַד־דַּכָּ֑א וַ֝תֹּ֗אמֶר שׁ֣וּבוּ בְנֵֽי־אָדָֽם׃
You return man to dust;
You decreed, “Return you mortals!”
כִּ֤י אֶ֪לֶף שָׁנִ֡ים בְּֽעֵינֶ֗יךָ כְּי֣וֹם אֶ֭תְמוֹל כִּ֣י יַֽעֲבֹ֑ר וְאַשְׁמוּרָ֥ה בַלָּֽיְלָה׃
For in Your sight a thousand years
are like yesterday that has passed
like a watch of the night.
Psalm 90.2-4
He has the physical appearance of the gods, and he has the sentience or moral reasoning ability of the gods. But he is mortal— while the gods live forever.
Sound familiar friend? Ha!
Now, this is the central question that hangs around every proto-human story from the ancient Near East: Why do we die and can I do anything about it?
In the Adam and Eve story, a dragon tricks them into eating forbidden fruit and the punishment is mortality. They trade the knowledge of moral good and evil for the ability to live forever. But don’t worry the dragon loses its legs and shazam!: snakes. There’s some dark and light etymology players.
In the Gilgamesh epic, the great King is created looking like the gods and thinking like the gods. But there is no assumption of living forever or any idea of a fall from eternal life.
He simply find himself where you and I find ourselves. Bearing the image of God, able to think and reason and dream and conceive of good and evil far beyond other animals, and knowing that death is inevitable. This is the question we all come to eventually:
What is the best way to be two-thirds divine?
Here are just two thoughts.
1. NUMBER YOUR DAYS FOR BETTER DAYS.
Psalm 90.12 comes to the conclusion that it is the reality of limited days that causes us to really live them well. We count our days and realize the number is very small and the years are very short.
לִמְנ֣וֹת יָ֭מֵינוּ כֵּ֣ן הוֹדַ֑ע וְ֝נָבִ֗א לְבַ֣ב חׇכְמָֽה׃
Teach us to count our days rightly
that we may obtain a wise heart.
Psalm 90.12
In a recent interview, George Clooney tole Marc Meron that he is learning “this ride we are all on—whatever it is— it is really short. We con’t have that long.” I love this insight but I loved even more what he went onto say. Clooney is working less, spending more time with family and close friends, and investing his entire being into his children.
You have that option everyday: to remember you don’t have that long and so to live each day prizing people over profit, relationships over status, and building a legacy of kindness and virtue.
2. ENTRUST THIS AGE AND THE AGE TO COME TO THE DIVINE.
Our human mortality is always viewed in great contrast to the gods. There are a few stories about humans some how crossing over and becoming immortal at first. People like Utnapishtim or Hercules get to dwell among the gods instead of heading to the netherworld because of great feats.
Over time the possible divinity of humanity becomes the provision of God’s goodness. Think about it. As humanity reasons about God and names God in better and better ways, we become more and more convinced that there is a hereafter and if God is good, then God can be trusted with the afterlife.
As the teacher in Ecclesiastes says, “God has set eternity in our hearts.”
This is true of every single religious system that believes in a loving, personal God. This is true of you too, I’d bet. In some way you know life should go on past your mortal life. Lean into that sense, kindle it into hope, and it may become the fire of faith over time.
In my Christian tradition, the entire project of God’s interaction with humanity is about life under God in this Age and in Olam Haba, the Age to Come.
For Jesus and the sages that were his contemporary, a renewal of all things was not only possible, it was what God was fundamentally doing in the world. God was bringing about a new kingdom, new heavens, new earth and we could learn to participate in our divine selves now.
Imagine that.
Could you come to have a divine understanding or forgiveness, justice, and love but also time, space, and one age of the House of the World bumping into the next?
We all live in a universe of many houses, many doors, and many mysterious corridors…and god is the Master of the Universe. And so trust that God knows where your soul comes from, where it is going, and how it needs to be growing.