Gilgamesh, Glossary

GILGAMESH

GLOSSARY

Translation by N. K. Sanders

Permission for Open Resource Publication granted by the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA).

(http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.pdf.)

A SHORT description of the gods and of other persons and places mentioned in the Epic will be found in this Glossary. The gods were credited at different times with a variety of attributes and characteristics, sometimes contradictory; only such as are relevant to the material of the Gilgamesh Epic are given here. The small number of gods and other characters who play a more important part in the story are described in the introduction; in their case a page reference to this description is given at the end of the Glossary note. Cross-references to other entries in the Glossary are indicated by means of italics.

ADAD: Storm-, rain-, and weather-god.

ANUNNAKI: Usually gods of the underworld, judges of the dead and offspring of Anu.

ANSHAN: A district of Elam in south-west Persia; probably the source o£ supplies of wood for making bows. Gilgamesh has a ‘bow of Anshan’.

ANTUM: Wife of Anu.

ANU: Sumerian An; father of gods, and god of the firmament, the ‘great above’. In the Sumerian cosmogony there was, first of all, the primeval sea, from which was born the cosmic mountain consisting of heaven, ‘An’, and earth, ‘Ki’; they were separated by Enlil, then An carried off the heavens, and Enlil the earth. Ann later retreated more and more into the background; he had an important temple in Uruk.

APSU: The Abyss; the primeval waters under the earth; in the later mythology of the Enuma Elish, more particularly the sweet water which mingled with the bitter waters of the sea and with a third watery element, perhaps cloud, from which the first gods were engendered. The waters of Apsu were thought of as held immobile underground by the ‘spell’ of Ea in a death-like sleep.

ARURU: A goddess of creation, she created Enkidu from clay in the image of Anu.

AYA: The dawn, the bride of the Sun God Shamash.

BELIT-SHERI: Scribe and recorder of the underworld gods:

BULL of HEAVEN: A personification of drought created by Anu for Ishtar.

DILMUN: The Sumerian paradise, perhaps the Persian Gulf; sometimes described as ‘the place where the sun rises’ and ‘the Land of the Living’; the scene of a Sumerian creation myth and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Ziusudra, was taken by the gods to live for ever. See p. 39.

DUMUZI: The Sumerian form of Tammuz; a god of vegetation and fertility, and so of the underworld, also called ‘the Shepherd and ‘lord of the sheepfolds’. As the companion of Ningizzida ‘to all eternity’ he stands at the gate of heaven. In the Sumerian ‘Descent of Inanna’ he is the husband of the goddess Inanna, the Sumerian counterpart of Ishtar. According to the Sumerian King-List Gilgamesh was descended from ‘Dumuzi a shepherd’.

EA: Sumerian Enki; god of the sweet waters, also of wisdom, a patron of arts and one of the creators of mankind, towards whom he is usually well-disposed. The chief god of Eridu, where he had a temple, he lived ‘in the deep’; his ancestry is uncertain, but he was probably a child of Anu.

EANNA: The temple precinct in Uruk sacred to Anu and Ishtar.

EGALMAH: The ‘Great Palace’ in Uruk, the home of the goddess Ninsun, the mother of Gilgamesh.

ENDUSUGGA: With Nindukugga, Sumerian gods living in the underworld; parents of Enlil.

ENKIDU: Moulded by Aruru, goddess of creation, out of clay is the image and ‘of the essence of Anu’, the sky-god, and of Ninurta the war-god. The companion of Gilgamesh, he is wild or natural reran; he was later considered a patron or god of anima b and may have been the hero of another cycle. See P. 30.

ENLIL: God of earth, wind, and the universal air, ultimately spirit; the executive of Anu. In the Sumerian cosmogony he was born of the union of An heaven, and Ki earth. These he separated, and he then carried off earth as his portion. In later times he supplanted Anu as chief god. He was the patron of the city of Nippur. See p. 24.

ENMUL: See Endukugga.

ENNUGI: God of irrigation and inspector of Canals.

ENUMA ELLISH: The Semitic creation epic which describes the creation of the gods, the defeat of the powers of chaos by the young god Marduk, and the creation of man from the blood of Kingu, the defeated champion of chaos. The title is taken from the first words of the epic ‘When on high’.

ERESHKIGAL: The Queen of the underworld, a counterpart of Persephone; probably once a sky-goddess. In the Sumerian cosmogony she was carried off to the underworld after the separation of heaven and earth. See p. 27.

ETANA: Legendary king of Kish who reigned after the flood; in the epic which bears his name he was carried to heaven on the back of an eagle.

GILGAMESH: The hero of the Epic; son of the goddess Ninsun and of a priest of Kullab, fifth king of Uruk after the flood, famous as a great builder and as a judge of the dead. A cycle of epic poems has collected round his name.

HANISH: A divine herald of storm and bad weather.

HUMBABA: Also Huwawa; a guardian of the cedar forest who opposes Gilgamesh and is killed by him and Enkidu. A nature divinity, perhaps an Anatolian, Elamite, or Syrian god. See p. 32.

IGIGI: Collective name for the great gods of heaven.

IRKALLA: Another name for Ereshkigal; the Queen of the underworld.

ISHTAR: Sumerian Inanna; the goddess of love and fertility, also goddess of war, called the Queen of Heaven. She is the daughter of Anu and patroness of Uruk, where she has a temple. See p. 25.

ISHULLANA: The: gardener of Anu, once loved by Ishtar whom he rejected; he was turned by her into a mole or frog.

KI: The earth.

KULLAS:Part of Uruk.

LUGULEANDA: Third king of the post-diluvian dynasty of Uruk, a god and shepherd, and hero of a cycle of Sumerian poems; protector of Gilgamesh.

MAGAN: A land to the west of Mesopotamia, sometimes Egypt or Arabia, and sometimes the land of the dead, the underworld:

MAGILUM: Uncertain meaning, perhaps ‘the boat of the dead’.

MAMMETUM: Ancestral goddess responsible for destinies.

MAN-SCORPION: Guardian, with a similar female monster, of the mountain into which the sun descends at nightfall. Shown on sealings and ivory inlays as a figure with the upper part of the body human and the lower part ending in a scorpion’s mil. According to the Enuma Elish created by the primeval waters in order to fight the gods.

MASHU: The word means ‘twins’ in the Akkadian language. A mountain with twin peaks into which the sun descends at nightfall and from which it returns at dawn. Sometimes thought of as Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon.

NAMTAR: Fate, destiny in its evil aspect; pictured as a demon of the underworld, also a messenger and chief minister of Ereshkigal; a bringer of disease and pestilence.

NEDU: See Ned.

NERGAL: Underworld god, sometimes the husband of Ereshkigal, he is the subject of an Akkadian poem which describes his translation from heaven to the underworld; plague-god.

NETI: The Sumerian form of Nedu, the chief gatekeeper in the underworld.

NINDUKUGGA: With Endukugga, parental gods living in the underworld:

NINGAL: Wife of the Moon God and mother of the Sun.

NINGIESU: An earlier form of Ninurta; god of irrigation and fertility, he had a field near Lagash where all sorts of plants flourished; he was the child of a she-goat.

NINGIZZIDA: Also Gizzida; a fertility god, addressed as ‘Lord of the Tree of Life’; sometimes he is a serpent with human head, but later he was a god of healing and magic; the companion of Tammuz, with whom he stood at the gate of heaven.

NINHURSAG: Sumerian mother-goddess; one of the four principal Sumerian gods with An, Enlil, and Enki; sometimes the wife of Enki, she created all vegetation. The name means ‘the Mother’; she is also called ‘Nintu’, lady of birth, and IG, the earth.

NINKI: The ‘mother’ of Enlil, probably a form of Ninhursag.

NINLIL: Goddess of heaven, earth, and air and in one aspect of the underworld; wife of Enlil and mother of the Moon; worshipped with Enlil in Nippur.

NINSUM The mother of Gilgamesh, a minor goddess whose house was in Uruk; she was noted for wisdom, and was the wife of Lugulbaada.

NINURTA: The later forth of Ningirsu; a warrior and god of war, a herald, the south wind, and god of wells and irrigation. According to one poem he once dammed up the bitter waters of the underworld and conquered various monsters.

NISABA: Goddess of grain.

NISIR: Probably means ‘Mountain of Salvation’; sometimes identified with the Pir Oman Gudrun range south of the lower Zab, or with the biblical Ararat north of Lake Van.

PUZUR-AMURRI: The steersman of Utnapishtim during the flood.

SAMUQAN: God of cattle;

SEVEN SAGES: Wise men who brought civilization to the seven oldest cities of Mesopotamia.

SHAMASH: Sumerian Utu; the sun; for the Sumerians he was principally the judge and law-giver with some fertility attributes. For the Semites he was also a victorious warrior, the god of wisdom, the son of Sin, and ‘greater than his father’. He was the husband and brother of Ishtar. He is represented with the saw with which he cuts decisions. In the poems ‘Shamash’ may mean the god, or simply the sun.

SHULLAT: A divine herald of storm and of bad weather.

SHULPAE: A god who presided over feasts and feasting.

SHURRUPAX: Modem Fara, eighteen miles north-west of Uruk; one of the oldest cities of Mesopotamia, and one of the five named by the Sumerians as having existed before the flood. The home of the hero of the flood story.

SIDURI: The divine wine-maker and brewer; she lives on the shore of the sea (perhaps the Mediterranean), in the garden of the sun. Her name in the Hurrian language means ‘young woman’ and she may be a form of Ishtar.

SILILI: The mother of the stallion; a divine mare?

SIN: Sumerian Nama, the moon. The chief Sumerian astral deity, the father of Utu-Shamash, the sun, and of Ishtar. Ills parents were Enlil and Ninlil. His chief temple was in Ur.

TAMMUZ: Sumerian Dunuzi; the dying god of vegetation, bewailed by Ishtar, the subject of laments and litanies. In an Akkadian poem Ishtar descends to the underworld in search of her young husband Tammuz; but in the Sumerian poem on which this is based it is Inanna herself who is responsible for sending Dumuzi to the underworld because of his pride and as a hostage for her own safe return.

UBARA-TUTU: A king of Shurrupak and father of Utnapishtim The only king of Kish named in the prediluvian Ring-List, apart from Utnapishtim.

URSHANABI: Old Babylonian Sursunabu; the boatman of Utnapishtim who ferries daily across the waters of death which divide the garden of the sun from the paradise where Utnapishtim lives forever (the Sumerian Dilmun). By accepting Gilgamesh as a passenger he forfeits this right, and accompanies Gilgamesh back to Uruk instead.

URUK: Biblical Erech, modem Warka, in southern Babylonia between Fara (Shutrupak) and Ur. Shown by excavation to have been an important city from very early times, with great temples to the gods Anu and Ishtar. Traditionally the enemy of the city of Kish, and after the flood the seat of a dynasty of kings, among whom Gilgamesh was the fifth and most famous.

UTNAPISHTIM: Old Babylonian Utanapishtim, Sumerian Ziusudra; in the Sumerian poems he is a wise king and priest of Shurrupak; in the Akkadian sources he is a wise citizen of Shurrupak. He is the son of Ubara Tutu, and his name is usually translated, ‘He Who Saw Life’. He is the protege of the god Ea, by whose connivance he Survives the flood, with his family and with ‘the seed of all living creatures’; afterwards he is taken by the gods to live for ever at ‘the mouth of the rivers’ and given the epithet ‘Faraway’; or according to the Sumerians he lives in Dilmun where the sun rises.