Our Mesopotamian Moment (Part I)

I wrote the following essay for Jonathan Pageau’s website “Symbolic World” a while back, but never heard back from them after I submitted it. As it is kind of peculiar to that milieu, I’m not sure where else to submit it to. (I highly recommend Pageau’s work, by the by. ) So, I thought I would give you the pleasure of seeing it for the first time. It’s long and so I have broken it up into two parts. The second part will drop in a few days. Enjoy. -Darrick

In the past several years, images redolent of the Satanic, some resembling ancient Near Eastern Deities, have become more visible in public life. One prominent example is this statue of a woman, placed atop a New York State Court House several years ago, which resembles a horned deity:

It is noteworthy that it was statue of a woman, meant to displace statues of male figures related to the history of law, such as Moses, Justinian and Confucius, which adorned the court house (such figures also flank the building of the Supreme Court of the United States). The artist who created the statue was quite explicit about her intentions, saying that it was an homage to women’s empowerment and support for abortion and to former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg. She claimed that the horns symbolized “sovereignty” and “autonomy.”¹

            As Jonathan Pageau and other have chronicled, the imagery of our modern public life seems more and more saturated with the Satanic, from modern rock stars dressing up like Satan to corporations sponsoring artwork that resembles them. The themes of autonomy and empowerment that they appear intended to convey also appear as inversions of natural or divine order.

            I believe there is another aspect to this reemergence of Satanic imagery in our public life. There are historical reasons why such imagery is becoming more prominent at this moment. Some of these are familiar to the followers of the Symbolic World, but I propose that the prevalence of this imagery is intimately related not only to the increasing chaotic events of the past five years and more--the COVID pandemic, the election of Donald Trump, Brexit and a host of others--but to much older patterns of social change.

In what follows, I want to suggest that two ancient Mesopotamian epics can help us understand our current historical moment and the symbols that accompany it: the Epic of Gilgamesh, the account of the first King of Uruk, and the Babylonian creation story, Enuma Eliš. Having taught these early pieces of literature for many years, I believe that by reflecting upon their symbolism, we can get a better grasp of the historical moment we are now living through in the Western world.

Revolutions in the Ancient Near East

            First, some historical context is in order. Both poems are the product of some of the great changes in human history: the Agricultural and Urban Revolutions. Both poems date from the second millennium B.C., though Gilgamesh is the much older of the two. Theirs was an unstable world, both in nature, with the flooding of the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and in the constant warfare and succession of kingdoms in the region throughout antiquity. The ruler of the first cities in the Near East developed the first specialized occupations—the first “experts,” which included not only priests but also astrologers and other “scientific” experts. These aided rulers who sought to tame the chaos unleashed by all of these changes; as societies divided into classes, rulers made use of the lower orders to build city walls, canals, irrigation systems, armies, and ziggurats.²

            The need to complete such great projects naturally led to greater social and political organization, driven by the often harsh environment. As one historian put it, “the common environment suited tyranny, or, at least, strong states exercising minute control over subjects’ lives.”³ Struggles over land and rule led to the strengthening of kings and nobility, but also of priesthoods, as rulers sought the favor of the gods to buttress more ambitious undertakings.

Kings in Mesopotamia, unlike ancient Egypt, were not gods, though they appealed to the gods in their law codes; these, like Hammurabi’s Code, were partially symbolic attempts to make the royal will permanent and effective, to establish their rule. The context for this was warfare but also the need to maintain order in their kingdoms. As one Sumerian king of the third millennium BC explained in his tablet of laws, they were ordained “‘in accordance with the word of Enlil’,” the king of the gods, to ensure that “‘children support the father and the children, . . . abolish enmity and rebellion, cast out weeping and lamentation, . . . bring righteousness and truth and give well-being’.”⁴

            It is also worth mentioning the cosmology that is presumed in these texts. Though ancient Mesopotamian texts often divide the world into heaven, earth and the netherworld, more often such literature refers to a binary division of the world, “above and below,” heaven and earth.⁵ Also, both the Epic of Gilgamesh but also Enuma Eliš were profoundly shaped by the natural environment and their struggle with it. Some stories about the gods portray them as having built mountains, rivers or other features of the natural landscape but also having built walls or canals to restrain the forces of nature.⁶ The early kings of Sumer built such constructions as well, and there is almost a sense they are imitating, if not competing with the gods, or to appear that way to their subjects, in ancient texts like Gilgamesh. In fact, a king of Uruk named Gilgamesh, who appears in a list of kings around 2700 BC, is thought responsible for building some of its earliest structures, such as walls and gardens.⁷

In the following interpretation of these epics, I want to argue that they display the symbolism of “above and below” that reflects both the cosmology of Near Eastern peoples but also the great upheavals of the first and second millennium BC.

Epics of Mastery

Gilgamesh is, as far as anyone can tell, the world’s first piece of “literature,” meaning it was likely composed (orally) for the pleasure of a listening audience (and  written down only much later), rather than for religious or accounting purposes, as most early writing was. It recalls the exploits of Gilgamesh, the founding king of Uruk, who goes on adventures with his friend, Enkidu. Together, they go to the forest to slay the monster Humbaba, and after Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh goes on a quest to find the secret of eternal life from Utnapishtim, the lone survivor of the great flood. In the end, Gilgamesh cannot stave off death, as only “two-thirds of him was divine, and one third mortal.”⁸

The Enuma Elish, on the other hand, is thought to be a ritual text, likely recited as part of the New Year’s ceremony in Babylon, where the king would have his mandate to rule renewed by the gods and receive the submission of his nobles. More ritual than narrative, it describes how Marduk, the god of Babylon, ascended to the throne of the gods and destroyed Tiamat, the water goddess who led a revolt against the other gods.

            In his tale, Gilgamesh is portrayed as force of nature striving to be greater than nature: “a goring wild bull” and a “raging flood-wave which can destroy a stone wall.” But he was also the man who “found out all things…experienced all things” and “gained complete wisdom.”⁹ His displays of strength alienate the men of his kingdom (“Gilgamesh will not leave any son alone for his father”) and his sexual escapades threatened the stability of the kingdom (“Gilgamesh will not leave young girls [alone]”). The people cry out to the gods, and Aruru, the great mother goddess, creates out of clay a companion to equal Gilgamesh, Enkidu.¹⁰

After first struggling with each other and finding they cannot defeat one another, Enkidu and Gilgamesh become best friends and seek glory by defeating Humbaba, the guardian of the forest. The goddess Ishtar, admiring his exploits, tries to make Gilgamesh her lover, but he rejects her. She tries to punish him by summoning “The Bull of Heaven,” but Gilgamesh slays the beast with Enkidu’s help. The gods punish the duo for this hubris by sending a sickness which causes the death of Enkidu. Grief at Enkidu’s death spurs Gilgamesh to seek out Utnapishtim, and the secret of eternal life, that is, to gain power over death, though he ultimately fails.

A sense of the randomness and danger of natural forces permeates Gilgamesh. The Flood story (which was not originally part of the tale) gives one the sense that these forces are almost too much for the gods themselves. This story was shared by the ancient Israelites, which you can see in the Book of Genesis, whose flood story is often compared with that of Gilgamesh. But the gods of Gilgamesh seem weaker by comparison. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods physically remove the pillars holding up the vault of the heavens, and they cower in fear before the flood they’ve unleashed, so terrible is it: “even the gods were afraid of the flood-weapon…the gods cowered, like dogs crouched by an outside wall.”¹¹

After the flood has destroyed all human life, only one man, Utnapishtim and, his wife, remain. Though no reason is given for the flood, Gilgamesh contains hints at why the gods caused it. After the flood is unleashed, one of the gods accuses the others of acting rashly: “O how could you fail to consult, and impose the flood? / Punish the sinner for his sin, punish the criminal for his crime…/ Instead of imposing a flood, let a lion come up and diminish the people.”¹²

These verses intimate a motive for the flood. A Babylonian version of the story, named Atrahasis, makes the motivation more explicit: “let there be one third of the people / Among the people, the woman who gives birth yet does / Not give birth [successfully]; / Let there be the păssitu-demon among the people, / To snatch the baby from its’ mother’s lap…and thus control childbirth.”¹³ The consensus among scholars on these verses is that the gods, having made mankind, forgot to give him a lifespan, and thus needed to cull the population. In other words, it is about population control.

In some ways, the whole arc of the Gilgamesh story is about control: the gods try to control both nature and Gilgamesh, while Gilgamesh, part man and part god, wishes to ascend to the level of deity—that is, to be immortal—but cannot. When the gods create Enkidu to control Gilgamesh, he sees him in a dream before they meet. Significantly, he dreams of him as a falling star: “there were stars in the sky for me. / And something like a sky-bolt of Anu kept falling upon me!” Gilgamesh’s quest is for that which is “higher”: enduring fame, immortality. When he refuses Ishtar’s advances, he taunts her with the list of her dead lovers: “which of your lovers lasted forever? Which of your masterful paramours went to heaven?”¹⁴ Gilgamesh is clearly a figure who wanted to “rise” in station, even though he was the most powerful of kings.

Which is why Gilgamesh wanted to perform great deeds which would be remembered. He wants to “exterminate from the land Something Evil” and tells Enkidu they “shall have established [their] fame” when they slay Humbaba. Humbaba, guardian of the Pine Forest, is a figure of liminality, representing the power of nature and death: “Humbaba, whose shout is the flood weapon, / Whose utterance is Fire and whose breath is Death.” (It is notable that Humbaba is a figure whose representation on amulets and in divination texts from the Babylonian period are associated with rebellion and revolution in the state.)¹⁵ Perhaps Gilgamesh, having caused havoc in his kingdom, was seeking to prove he could quell such chaos by killing Humbaba.       

More directly, Gilgamesh tries to exert control over death itself when Enkidu, who is his double, dies. Gilgamesh does this most obviously by seeking out Utnapishtim and attempting to learn the secret of immortality (and failing, of course). But he also does this symbolically: after Enkidu’s death, he creates a statue of him made of gold and lapis lazuli. The gods of Mesopotamia were thought to be physically present in statues of them adorned with special clothing and jewelry, and so Gilgamesh’s act is not merely the memorializing of his friend, but an attempt to make him present like the gods he himself wants to imitate.¹⁶

But the gods manage (barely) to control Gilgamesh, first by creating Enkidu and then by causing his death as punishment for the slaying of Humbaba and the “Bull of Heaven.” This does not mean the gods are in complete control, however. Far from it. They unleash the flood to control the population, but it clearly destroys more of mankind than they intended. There is dissension among the gods over the flood; both Ishtar and Ninurta accurse Elil, the warrior and counsellor of the gods, of having failed to “consult before imposing the flood, / and consigned my people to destruction.”¹⁷ Utnapishtim’s survival is a surprise to them, only ratified after the fact by the intervention of Ea, the god of fresh water, wisdom and civilization, who revealed the coming of the Flood in a dream and convinced the gods to make him immortal afterwards.¹⁸

With the Enuma Eliš, the story is somewhat similar, but with a different outcome. Unlike Gilgamesh, the main figure in the poem is Marduk, the god of Babylon. In it, before the creation of the heavens and earth, Tiamat and Apsu, two water gods, give birth to the “great gods” who are their heirs, along with lesser gods. But when the great gods become noisy and prevent Apsu and the lesser gods from sleeping, Apsu plans to kill them. When Apsu informs her of this, Tiamat is outraged, but her sons catch wind of this and slay Apsu before he can act. Ea, one of their leaders, builds a temple out of Apsu’s body, in which he lives with his consort, Damkina, and in whom Marduk is born.¹⁹

The lesser gods then stir up Tiamat against the great gods, and she creates an army of monsters and dragons, twelve in all, leading them in battle against Ea and his accomplices. She also gives one of these lesser gods (who are her offspring) command over armies. Quingu (who is also her lover) she sets on a throne and gives to him the “Tablet of Destinies.” This cuneiform tablet was a symbol of supreme power, signifying an unalterable law, on which the fates of the universe are written.²⁰ (In another story, it is also an instrument of power: the god Anzu uses it to deflect arrows fired at him.²¹) The supreme god of the Sumerian pantheon, Enlil, was supposed to have ruled by the power of the Tablet of Destinies, and this symbol possessed an enduring significance in Near Eastern culture. There exists a tablet in which the Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib appeals to the god Assur to use the Tablet of Destinies to secure his reign, and it is thought to be the precursor to such symbols as the Book of Fate in the Book of Jubilees.²²

Tiamat’s bestowal of the Tablet of Destinies upon Qingu was presumably an act of usurpation,²³ one which spurred the terrified older gods to elect Marduk to combat her, effectively granting “sovereignty over the whole universe” and the right to “fix fate instead of you.”²⁴ The poem shows Maruk as a god capable of manipulating the chaotic forces of nature against Tiamat: after encircling her, he “marshaled the four winds” to trap her, and when Tiamat opened her mouth, he “forced in the imhullu-wind so that she could not open her mouth.” Her body distended by his “flood-weapon,” he then shot her with an arrow and split her in two.²⁵

Marduk then slays Quingu in battle, taking the Tablet of Destinies and sealing it “with (his own seal and pressed it to his chest.”²⁶ From there, he creates order out of chaos, literally: in a gruesome act of creation, he cuts Tiamat in half and makes the heavens from her body parts: “Half of her he put up to roof the sky: / Drew a bolt across and made a guard hold it. / Her waters he arranged so that they could not escape.” Using her head, he made the “Tigris and Euphrates from her eyes,” with her tail he “fixed the cosmic bond,” and “with half of her made a roof; he fixed the earth.”²⁷

He then takes the Tablet of Destinies and makes temples for the other gods, and after hearing their praises, creates mankind from the blood of Qingu so that they can serve the gods: “the work of the gods shall be imposed (on him), / And so they shall be at rest.” Finally, he then says “let me change the ways of the gods miraculously, / So they are gathered as one yet divided in two…The Annunaki, all of them, above and below.”²⁸ The purpose of this division is not stated, but given the revolt of the lesser gods, it makes sense to see it as a measure against further rebellion among the gods.

The poem ends with the gods swearing obedience to Marduk and singing his praises for having defeated Tiamat and restored order among the gods. Marduk has “restored all the damaged gods as if they were his own creation,” and he “shall invent an incantation, that the gods may be at peace. / Even if they should rise up in anger, he shall turn them back.”²⁹ Marduk is praised as the prince of the gods who has quelled disorder among the gods, but also as the god who controls the threatening forces of nature and brings abundance to his realm. He is also given the names of all the other gods, to emphasize his dominion over them all: “with fifty epithets the great gods / Called his fifty names, making his way supreme.”³⁰

Finally, the poem praises Marduk as the “canal-controller of heaven and earth” who “brings abundance of rain over the broad / earth, makes vegetation grow profusely.” Marduk is “AGILMA, the lofty, who tore out flood-waves / and controlled snows. / And built the earth above the water, established / the height.”³¹ Just as he Marduk skillfully uses the body parts of the defeated gods as resources to build the universe, and human beings as as source of labor, so he utilizes and tames natural forces to put them at the service of the gods.

1. Zelda Caldwell, “How the ‘Satanic’ New York City Courthouse Statue Is All About Abortion,” National Catholic Register, January 29, 2023.

2. Martin Jones, “Into a Warming World,” in in The Oxford Illustrated History of the World, ed. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019), pp. 79-95; Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, “The Farmers’ Empires: Climax and Crises in Agrarian States and Cities,” The Oxford Illustrated History of the World, pp. 114-119.

3. Fernandez-Armesto, “The Farmers’ Empires,” p. 115.

4. Ibid., pp. 116-117.

5. Benjamin R. Foster, “Mesopotamia,” in  A Handbook of Ancient Religions, ed. John R. Hinnells (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 184.

6. Foster, “Mesopotamia,” p. 182.

7. Fernandez-Armesto, “The Farmers’ Empires,” p. 119.

8. “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” Myth from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh and Others, ed. Stephanie Dalley (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009), p. 51.

9. “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” pp. 50-51.

10. Ibid., p. 52.

11. Ibid., p.113.

12. Ibid., p. 115.

13. “Atrahasis,” Myths From Mesopotamia, p. 35 (emphasis added).

14. “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” pp. 78, 57.

15. “If the intestines are like the face of Ḫumḫum (var. Ḫumbaba), it is an omen of a usurper who will rule the entire land,” cited in Sarah B. Graff, Humbaba/Huwawa, Ph.D Diss. (Institute of Fine Arts, New York U., 2012), p. 115.

16. “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” p. 93; Benjamin R. Foster, “Mesopotamia,” in A Handbook of Ancient Religions, ed. John R. Hinnells (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 181.

17. “Epic of Gilgamesh,” pp. 113, 115.

18. “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” pp. 110, 115-116; “Glossary,” Myths From Mesopotamia, p. 320; Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: an Illustrated Dictionary, eds. Jeremy Black and Anthony Green (London: the British Museum Press, 1992), p. 75.

19. “The Epic of Creation,” Myths From Mesopotamia, pp. 233-235.

20. “Tablet of Destinies,” Gods, Demons and Symbols, p. 173

21. “Anzu,” Myths From Mesopotamia, p. 214.

22. A.R. George, “Sennarcherib and the Tablet of Destinies,” Iraq, 48, 1986, Vol. 48 (1986),
pp. 133-146; “Glossary,” Myths From Mesopotamia, p.  329.

23. Karen Sonik, “The Tablet of Destinies and the Transmission of Power in Enuma Eliš,” Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbraus, 2012), pp. 387-395.

24. “The Epic of Creation,” pp. 246, 250.

25. Ibid., pp. 251-253.

26. Ibid., p. 254.

27. Ibid.,  pp. 256-258.

28. Ibid., pp. 260-262.

29. Ibid., pp. 266-267.

30. Ibid., p. 273.

31. Ibid., pp. 269-271.