They huddle together, around a large fire. The sun’s been down for hours, and it is cold, very cold. The murmur of their voices sounds feeble against the other shrieks, wails, and cracklings coming from the forest that surrounds them. The young are frightened by these sounds; their elders have learned to ignore them. They all know the dangers that come after dark – from the wild animals, and from others like themselves, who will try to plunder what they have in the cover of darkness. Only the fire protects them now. And yet, there is an air of anticipation, even of excitement, as the old storyteller makes his way to the circle. For they know, that when he speaks, he will tell them who they are, and where they come from.
“In the beginning . . .” these three words
begin one of the most sacred texts in our civilization. And they offer an answer to a question that
haunts every person who tries to find meaning in his or her personal life, and
in the society of which they are a part.
“Where do we come from?” “Why are
we here?” In trying to fathom a
destination, an end to life’s journey, we desperately search for a
beginning. Is life nothing more than a glorious
accident? And if so, is it merely a
delusion to believe that there is some purpose to it, some plan of which we are
a part? Science, with its disciplined
conjectures and hypotheses, has given us so much, and yet it seems to have
given us so little. We still grapple
with the same questions that troubled our ancestors long ago - in ages before
there were atoms and molecules, and the “Big Bang”, and evolution. We’re in search of a story, a story that will
provide us with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
In
our own lives, we search for a story, a story of who we are, who we’ve been,
and who we’re becoming. As we live each
day, we try to link the events of that day to some theme, some personal
destiny, that gives us a special identity.
Each of us has an occupation, a set of goals, a set of private fantasies
of what we’ll someday do, or could have done.
And we have memories – some good, some bad, and some that have special
importance to us. It’s amazing, though,
when you think of it, how little we really remember. Do you remember exactly what you were doing,
this time yesterday? Do you remember
exactly what you were thinking? Could
you write down every thought that went through your mind over the last
twenty-four hours? How about the last
hour? There’s really so little that we
keep, to define who we are. And often
what we keep, we don’t even remember correctly.
Have you ever found yourself discussing with a friend some great moment
that the two of you shared, and then discovered that you disagreed in the
details? Or that your memory of the
event was completely different? Not only
do we remember very little of our own past, but it seems that even that we
occasionally get wrong. We write our own
personal histories, we edit them, and we even throw in a little fiction. But it’s that story – that story we create –
that defines who we are and guides us as we live our daily lives.
This
series, “Larger than Life”, is going to examine the “story” of our
civilization. Not its history –
something more than that. It’s what
we’ve believed about our history. But
this isn’t a series on mythology, either.
We’re going to be in that troublesome place, the place between fact and
myth that has played a more important role in the shaping of our civilization
than most people would care to admit.
Think about your own beliefs for a moment. There are the “truths that we hold
self-evident” - the “scientific” facts
that you and I believe without hardly any doubts at all. We believe in gravity, and a round earth, and
that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.
And then there are the things that we might both agree are fable – Santa
Claus, leprechauns, flying saucers. All
right, you might actually disagree with me on that last one. But that’s exactly the kind of beliefs that
we’re talking about – the “unscientific” ones, or ones that are not shared by
everybody, but still influence all of our lives. Maybe they’re true, and maybe they’re not, we
say. Or maybe there’s a kernel of truth
in them. These are dangerous waters that
we’re treading, because this is where we find religious beliefs. God may not be a scientific certainty, but
God certainly plays an important role in our society. We even run into trouble if we try to take
the word “God” out of our pledge of allegiance.
So if you’re easily offended, this may not be a series that you will
enjoy or appreciate. And if you’re not,
you might just have a wonderful time.
We begin at the
beginning. Or what we think was the
beginning. Is there anything that we
know for sure about where and how we began?
We have all probably questioned, from time to time, how scientists seem
to be able to recreate the history of our planet from such scanty evidence:
images in a telescope, rock formations, or a handful of dust. After all, if we’re going to declare that the
existence of God is less than certain, then should we believe it without
question when an astronomer declares that the universe is more than 10 billion
years old? Or when a geologist asserts
that the earth is more than 4 billion years old? Why is a 10 billion year old universe a
greater certainty than the existence of God?
And what of the paleontologist who tells us that creatures resembling
humans walked the earth more than 3 million years ago? Are the calcified bones from which they draw
these conclusions really any more reliable than the truths uttered by saints or
enlightened sages? Ironically, most of
us choose to believe all of these facts, and base our beliefs more on faith and
tradition than on any systematic reasoning or understanding. When anthropologists tell us that Homo
sapiens – people like us – first appeared somewhere between 70,000 and 200,000
years ago, most of us do not dispute it.
But when all of these facts are laid together against a truth of which
we are far more certain, that recorded civilization began just a little more
than five thousand years ago, we run up against a conclusion that is truly
startling. The whole history of our
civilization, with all of its wars, and inventions, and stories, and dramas, is
just a blink of an eye compared with the vast stretch of time that preceded
it. If we count the whole time that
people like us have existed on this planet as a day, then civilization has been
around for less than one hour. If we
count the time that life has existed on this planet as a day, then human beings
have been around for about the last three seconds, and civilization for about a
tenth of a second.
Where do we come from? If we put religion and science aside, what do
we have left? Where can we turn for
tangible evidences of our beginnings?
There are the monoliths – the Great pyramid and Sphinx in Egypt,
Stonehenge and the serpent mounds in Britain, the strange rock giants on Easter
Island, and the pyramids of South America.
Somebody, very long ago, felt the need to leave these traces of their
existence. What were they trying to tell
us? Why did they feel compelled to build
these monuments to their existence? Is
there some great secret hidden in these stones?
If so, the secret still eludes us.
We search desperately for
something that will speak to us, that will tell us what we want to know. We must listen to the voices from the past,
and the tales that they tell. And all
that is left of these is preserved in the writings that have survived from
ancient times.
The oldest writings that do survive come from a land
between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, written by a people who called
themselves simply “the dark-headed”, and the place where they lived, “the
land”. The Bible calls this place “the
land between two rivers”, and today we remember it by the Greek name that means
the same thing: Mesopotamia. Its
inhabitants said that they came from the east – the land where the sun
rises. They were called by their
neighbors, Sumerians. From their
earliest writings, which date back to 3300 B.C., we know that they were already
fairly civilized. They had the wheel,
and ploughs drawn by animals, and even sailboats. They worked with metal tools, taming the wild
marshes that they inhabited and converting them into fields of cultivated
agriculture. And they wrote – on clay
tablets – mainly about mundane, daily transactions involving trades, and
feeding of livestock, and payments to workers.
They worshiped a pantheon of gods, four of whom participated in
creation: Anu, god of heaven, Ki, goddess of earth, Enlil, the god of air, and
Enki, the god of water. We also learn
from these writings that each of the dozen cities of Sumer was ruled by an
independent king, and that war was not uncommon. But the cities managed to survive, prosper,
and maintain their independence for a thousand years, until a people from the
north, the Akkadians, conquered them all.
Their leader was a man named Sargon, the founder of the world’s first
true empire (or at least the first empire that we know of). Tales of his exploits were read aloud to
enthralled listeners a thousand years after his death. They heard tales of how, as an infant, he was
discovered floating in a reed basket on the Tigris River by the queen’s
servants, and was brought up in the royal household, eventually becoming a king
himself. But while his legend survived
for a millennium, his empire only lasted for a century. After Sargon’s dynasty collapsed, the land
enjoyed a brief return to freedom from foreign invaders, and during this time
the Sumerians composed an epic describing the exploits of a more ancient and
revered king, the legendary Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh, we are
told, built the city of Uruk in 2700 B.C., more than three hundred years before
the reign of Sargon. Part god, part
mortal, he was the strongest man who ever lived, but his powers made him
arrogant and cruel toward the people that he ruled. The people appealed to the sky god Anu for
help, and Anu created a wild man, Enkidu, to do battle with Gilgamesh. But before he encountered the king, Enkidu
encountered a temple prostitute, who put him through a transformation, of
sorts. As a result of this encounter,
Enkidu lost much of his animal strength, but in its place he gained
understanding and knowledge – and not just about worldly things. He became Gilgamesh’s friend and counselor,
and together the two of them lived a life of comfort and ease – too
comfortable, in fact, for heroes of their stature. They went out in search of adventure, going
to the great Cedar Forest and overcoming Humbaba, the powerful demon that
guarded it, and bringing back the cedars to build walls for Gilgamesh’s city. They killed the great bull that had been sent
by the gods to punish Gilgamesh for spurning the love of the goddess,
Ishtar. But the gods retaliated by
taking Enkidu’s life, and Gilgamesh, who now became aware of his own mortality,
was overcome with grief. In desperation,
he went on a perilous journey to seek out the only humans who had ever been
granted eternal life by the gods, Utnapishtim and his wife. Upon finding him, Gilgamesh bowed and offered
this prayer:
Utnapishtim, the Eternal, you whom men call the Faraway, you who dwell at the mouth of the rivers, hear me! I am Gilgamesh, lord of Kullab, from the house of Anu, king of Uruk. You wonder at my appearance, but why should you look at me thus? My face is of one who has made a long journey in heat and cold, in light and darkness, over the mountain passes and across the waters of death. As for my clothing, it is the raiment of mourning, and I wear it for my friend Enkidu, who is dead. For seven days and nights I watched by his side when he died, and I saw the servants of the Annunaki take him below. I watched his death, and now I fear my own. As for my heart, it is the heart of a man who has seen death a thousand times and never feared it, yet saw death but once and now cowers in despair. Oh you whom the gods spared, you to whom they gave eternal life, my father Utnapishtim, you who have entered the assembly of the gods, I beg you: how shall I find the life for which I am searching?
Utnapishtim, in reply,
explained that long ago, the gods had decreed that the earth should be
destroyed by a great flood. But Ea, one
of the gods that created human beings, took pity on Utnapishtim, and allowed
him to learn of the impending flood, and of how to save himself and his wife by
building a great boat. They loaded the
boat with personal possessions and all living things. The Flood lasted for seven days and seven
nights, until the entire earth was covered in water. Utnapishtim’s boat came to rest on top of
Mount Nimush, where it remained for seven days.
On the seventh day, after sending out a raven that didn’t return,
Utnapishtim released all of the animals.
Enlil, one of the other gods, was angry at first that humanity had
survived, but then took mercy on them and bestowed immortal life upon the
couple, by touching his forehead to theirs.
Utnapishtim explained to Gilgamesh that if he could remain awake for six
days and seven nights, then he too could attain immortality. But Gilgamesh failed the test, and
Utnapishtim offered him, as a consolation, a magic herb that would make him
young again, if Gilgamesh was willing to go to the bottom of the ocean, where
it grew, to retrieve it. Gilgamesh did
retrieve the plant, but he didn’t eat it immediately – because he didn’t trust
in its powers, and while he slept a snake rose out of a nearby well and ate
it. At that moment, the snake acquired
the power to renew itself by shedding its skin – which, as is explained in the
epic poem, is a power that snakes retain to this day. Gilgamesh, after awakening and discovering
what had happened, lamented his fate – that all of his labors and journeys had
gained him nothing, and only profited the lowly snake.
We see, in Gilgamesh, a hero that was not
unlike the Sargon who had conquered the Sumerians. They must have felt a sense of awe at the
power of Sargon, this great conqueror from the north, but also a sense of
despair and outrage that an outsider could subject them to his will. The Gilgamesh of antiquity was, for them, a
more powerful figure, but also cruel and tyrannical. What, then, made Gilgamesh a hero? In the eyes of the Sumerians, he possessed
just those things that they felt they lacked, as their land had fallen to
foreign invaders. He was strong, and he
had a courage that made him bold and defiant even to the gods themselves. In a real sense, he was one of history’s earliest
rebels, and his desire to go out in search of adventure to test the limits of
his abilities and find ways to transcend these limits would become a recurring
theme in the legends of heroes that followed.
And in Enlil we see the earliest incarnation of the “sidekick”, the
hero’s partner who both challenges him and supports him. The sidekick often rivals his master in
strength, and is more headstrong, but generally not as smart as the hero he
serves. He is initially defiant, and his
loyalty must be earned, but once it has been, he is faithful to the end, even
to the extent of laying down his own life in support of his friend.
Like
Sargon, Gilgamesh was obsessed with his posterity. And while just as Sargon, though creating a
dynasty, had to accept his own mortality, Gilgamesh, too, after exhibiting
great strength and courage in overcoming his foes, eventually had to surrender
to the limits of his own abilities. The
Sumerians had witnessed not only the fall of Sargon, but eventually the decline
of his kingdom as well. For them, it had
all happened once before, on a much grander scale, with their own ancestor, the
god-man Gilgamesh.
The
Sumerians eventually succumbed to a succession of later invaders: the Amorites
- or Babylonians, as they are often called, after the city that they raised to
prominence under their reign, the Hittites and Kassites, and the
Assyrians. One of the Babylonian kings,
Hammurabi, became a living legend in his own right. The code of laws that he promulgated around
1750 B.C. is the oldest known to civilization, and they were practiced for more
than two thousand years. Under this wise
and noble king, the Amorites extended their power, and their land was now known
as Babylonia. Sumer was gone, and the
place of its old empire there were now two rival kingdoms, Assyria in the
north, and Babylonia in the south.
Eventually Babylonia fell to the ruthless Assyrians, who kept both their
subjects and neighbors in check through a reign of terror. But the Babylonians, and even the brutal
Assyrians, continued to believe in many of the gods and traditions that had
been preserved by the Sumerians from their earliest days. And it was during the reign of the Assyrians
that the Babylonian epic of creation, the Enuma Elish, was put to writing.
Tiamat and Marduk
When Marduk heard this his face shone
like broad day: ‘Tall Babel Tower, it shall be built as you desire; bricks
shall be set in molds and you shall name it Parakku, the Sanctuary.’
Now this is hardly what you’d
expect to hear in a Sunday sermon although, as you may have guessed, this is
the same Tower of Babel of biblical fame.
And the Babylonian king Hammurabi, in addition to being remembered for
his code of laws, might also have made a mark on posterity by being the actual
person responsible for destroying this legendary tower, not because it grew too
high to heaven, but because, after standing for nearly two thousand years, it
had become structurally unsound.
For the Babylonians and Assyrians, creation
itself was a violent act, an act of usurpation.
Ea and Marduk, the heroes of this myth, have attained their high places
in the pantheon of gods by murdering a parent and a grandparent,
respectively. Ea is fortunate - rather
than face death at the hands of his son, he merely has to acknowledge him as
lord and master. Here, then, in tales
handed down from the dawn of our civilization, is another of the earliest
images of the hero. He is impertinent,
rebellious, and can be every bit as cruel and merciless as the tyrants that he
overthrows, and monsters that he destroys.
The ancients, as they struggled to
build their civilizations, were confronted with a number of challenges. Their day-to-day lives, which involved the
building of shelters, cultivation of crops, and hunting of animals, were controlled
by fickle changes of climate. Within
their societies, some held power over their lives, while the masses were
subject to the whims of these overlords.
And beyond their societies, there was the ever-present threat of war or
invasion from outsiders. The stories of
their gods and goddesses, and the legends of their ancient heroes, cast these
struggles within a grander scale, and helped to make sense of their lives. If the gods could be appeased, then perhaps
nature itself could be controlled. The
people could consol themselves with the beliefs that their leaders were
divinely appointed, and that therefore power was not fickle or arbitrary. Their gods protected the established order,
and as long as these were appeased and not offended, the people could live in
peace and safety. According to
Babylonian scribes, for example, it was the anger of the god Enlil that finally
brought down the dynasty of Sargon – an anger provoked when king Naram-sin
sacked the city of Nippur, a city that worshiped Enlil as its patron god. When societies were usurped from within or
from without, the people could not only interpret it as an act of divine
intervention, but they could also see these conflicts mirrored in the struggles
and conflicts of the gods themselves.
When the Amorites invaded Mesopotamia and made Babylon the new center of
religion and culture, their god Marduk became the pre-eminent deity in the
entire land, displacing the other gods who had once reigned at the top of the
pantheon – Anu and Enlil. And so we find
in the Babylon creation epic the story of how Marduk was given authority over
the other gods. In the tales of the
gods, we find clues to the history of humanity.
But while the myths of the
Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians helped to make sense of a hostile world,
they provided little of comfort to the individual. The people might trust in a patron god to
protect their crops, their cities, even their families, but would any of these
fickle and combative gods really care about the problems and concerns of a
single person? One could rely on charms
and incantations to ward off evil and misfortune, but not the care of a
personal, loving god – not in a universe where the goddess of love was younger
sister to the goddess of death. Did it
really matter to the gods if a person lived a good life, or at least one that
was not flagrantly evil? What rewards
were offered to the good, the noble, and the just? Only the kings were bold enough to expect
such divine blessings. And if life here
on earth was unpleasant, could one look forward to an afterlife, and the
promise of happiness there? Was there
even a soul that survived this life?
When even the greatest of the mythical heroes failed to find
immortality, then for the masses - the struggling farmers and soldiers, the
housewives and craftsmen - there was not even a faint hope of such a
reward.
Here, in the earliest civilization, there was
not yet a place for the immortal human soul.
To find such a place, we must turn to another ancient kingdom, rising on
the banks of the Nile – the land of Egypt.
