Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gq7q9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T17:20:18.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gilgamesh in the Arabian Nights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Stephanie Dalley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is difficult to lose a good story. Many of the best folk tales transcend the boundaries of language and nationality, and the Gilgamesh Epic, attested in Human, Hittite, Elamite and Akkadian cuneiform, is no exception. The latest Akkadian tablets to be inscribed with the story come from the site of Uruk of the late Babylonian period, some time after the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C. and perhaps as late as the Seleurid period, after the reign of Alexander the Great. The story had been popular for some two thousand years. Despite this popularity in so many countries and for such a very long period of time, the story of Gilgamesh was supposed to have died more or less with the death of cuneiform writing, although some residual themes were recognised in various versions of the Alexander Romance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 1991 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 von Weiher, E., Spätbabylonische Texte aus Uruk, iii (Berlin, 1988).Google Scholar

2 This paper has grown out of a lecture delivered to the Royal Asiatic Society in December 1989. It is part of an extensive study that includes investigation of themes from the Odyssey, the Alexander Romance and from tales of Sindbad the Sailor, as well as the Jewish background to the tale of Buluqiya. Many colleagues have read and criticized various drafts, and their generous help has led to many improvements.

3 Tigay rightly called attention to Kramer, S. N., JAOS 64, 1944, p. 8Google Scholar n. 2, who thought the work of P. Jensen, Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltlitemtur, had been much too harshly condemned.

4 Tigay, J., Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia, 1985) pp. 39–46.Google Scholar

5 See Wensinck, Encyclopedia of Islam s.v. “Al-Khadhir”; Norris, H. T., Cambridge History of Arabic Literature i, ch. 19, p. 375. It is not mentioned in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie.Google Scholar

6 Littmann, E., “Alf Layla wa-Layla”, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn., i (Leiden, 1979).Google Scholar

7 Attridge, H. W. and Oden, R., De Dea Syria (Chico, Calif. 1976).Google Scholar

8 See Schürer, E., The History of the Jewish people in the Age of Jesus Christ, iii/i (Edinburgh, revised ed. 1986 pp. 28–30.Google Scholar

9 A detailed account of connections between Greek literature and themes in the Arabian Nights is given by von Grunebaum, G. E., Medieval Islam (Chicago, 2nd ed. 1953), ch. 9.Google Scholar

10 Lichtheim, M., Ancient Egyptian Literature, i (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 211–15Google Scholar, gives an up-to-date translation English. I am grateful to Friedhelm Hoffmann for pointing this out to me.

11 Ungnad, A., Gilgamesch-Epos und Odyssee, Kulturfragen 4/5 (Breslau, 1923), p. 31.Google Scholar

12 See Parpola, S. “Letters from Assyrian scholars” 2, AOAT 5/2, pp. xxii ff, although the echo is very faint.Google Scholar

13 Gurney, O. R., Anatolian Studies 6, 1956, pp. 145ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 For translation of names in ancient Mesopotamia, a clear example is Esarhaddon's queen Naqi'a “pure” (Aramaic), also known as Zakûtu “pure” (Akkadian).

15 Mardrus, J. C., The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, translated by Mathers, P. (London, 1947) from translations published in French in 1899–1904.Google Scholar

16 Burton, R. F., A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, iv, 1897, pp. 251–74.Google Scholar

17 Littmann, E., op. cit. p. 360Google Scholar; Gerhardt, M. I., The Art of Storytelling, A Literary Study of the 1001 Nights (Leiden, 1963), pp. 93–104Google Scholar. However, Elissé;eff, N., Thèmes et motifs ies mille et une nuits, Essai de Classification (Beyrouth, 1949), p. 62Google Scholar, does not entirely dismiss the claim.

18 Khawam, R., Les Mille et une Nuits, i (Paris 1986), pp. 19–24.Google Scholar

19 I am most grateful to Professor A. F. L. Beeston for translating the story from majlis 28 for me; his translation will be given verbatim in the final version of this study.

20 See Falkenstein, A., in Ebeling, E. and Meissner, B. et al. , Reallexikon der Assyriologie, s.v. Gilgameš.Google Scholar

21 See Limet, H., L'anthroponymie sumérienne (Paris, 1968), p. 98.Google Scholar

22 The suggestion that the name is a form of Hilqi-Yau, Josiah's High Priest (Horovitz, J., ZDMG 55, 1901, p. 522 n. 2)Google Scholar involves an unparalleled shift from H to B. The names of Josiah's sons are known: Johanan, Jehoiakim (also called Eliakim), Zedekiah, and Shallum who became king under the throne name Jehoahaz.

23 Alternatively one might seek for phonological changes among other languages, particularly Persian or Arabic.

24 See Borger, R., “Gott Marduk und Gott-König Sulgi als Propheten”, Bibliotheca orientalis 28, 1971. pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

25 I. Friedländer's extensive study, Die Chadhirlegende und der Alexanderroman (Berlin and Leipzig, 1913)Google Scholar is summarised in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn., 1978, s.v. al-Khadhir by A. J. Wensinck, and E. Littmann loc. cit. also accepts the Babylonian prototypes for the Water of Life and for Khidhr. Ugaritic material has become available gradually since the 1930s, and may be examined for possible connections since the second element of the demi-god name ktr-w-hss resembles Akkadian haīfs and the first resembles Arabic Khidhr/;Khadhir.

26 In taking this statement at face value, one implicitly rejects the interpretation that it can be attributed to Hellenistic euhemerism.

27 “Renew” seems to be the earliest attested meaning of the word; in later periods “successful” develops from it; see von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch s.v. kašāru. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary's division of the verb into three separate roots is not well founded, and is rightly ignored by von Soden, op. cit., Nachträge.

28 E.g. Eddy, S. K., The King is Dead (Nebraska, 1961), p. 112Google Scholar. For the original study see Meissner, B., Alexander und Gilgamos (Leipzig, 1894).Google Scholar

29 See Budge, E. A. Wallis, The History of Alexander the Great, being the Syriac version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, (Cambridge, 1889) p. 168.Google Scholar

30 Themes that connect versions of the Alexander Romance with the tale of Buluqiya, yet which have no connection with the Gilgamesh Epic will be discussed in our forthcoming study.

31 That prologue has been known only since 1975: Wiseman, D. J., “A Gilgamesh Epic fragment from Nimrud”, Iraq 37, 1975, pp. 157–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Empirical Models, pp. 29–52.Google Scholar

33 E.g. Vermes, G. The Dead Sea Scrolls (London, 1977), p. 210.Google Scholar

34 Black, M., The Book of Enoch, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

35 Milik, J. T., The Books of Enoch. Aramaic fragments of Qumran, pp.311 and 313Google Scholar, 4QEnGiantsb and 4QEnGiantsc.

36 Henning, W. B., “Ein manichäisches Henochbuch”, SPAW 1934, pp. 1–11Google Scholar; “The Book of the Giants”, BSOAS XI, 1943 pp. 52–74.Google Scholar

37 The wide variety of spellings for Humbaba in Akkadian are given in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie by C. Wilcke, s.v. Huwawa.

38 In one instance, the name is complete; in the other, Milik restored the first letter G. The final sibilant is different in the two occurrences; for a possible parallel cf. two different sibilants in the Aramaic spelling of Sennacherib's name; see Tallqvist, K., Assyrian Personal Names (Helsingfors, 1914), p. 196.Google Scholar

39 Opificius, R., Das altbabylonische Terrakottarelief (Berlin, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, no. 485; redrawn as Abb. 1 in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, iii, p. 374.Google Scholar

40 Mosshammer, A. A., Georgius Syncellus, Ecloga Chronographica (Leipzig, 1984), pp. 11f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 “Soghdische Miszellen”, BSOAS VIII, 1935–1937, P. 583Google Scholar; ZDMG 90, 1936, p. 4.Google Scholar

42 Borger, R., “Die Beschwörungsserie bīt mēseri und die Himmelfahrt Henochs”, JNES 33, 1974.Google Scholar

43 VanderKam, J. C., Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic tradition, CBQ Monograph Series 16, 1984, pp. 116f.Google Scholar

44 See Palacios, M. Asin, La Escatologia musulmana en la Divina Comedia (Madrid, 1919)Google Scholar with the important criticisms of Silverstein, T., “Dante and the Legend of the Mi'raj”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 11, 1952, pp. 89–110, 187–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Himmelfarb, M., Tours of Hell. An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia, 1983), esp. p. 67 and p. 169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Galtier, E., Mémoires de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale 27, 1912Google Scholar.