The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

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6 Chapter One

The craftsmen sat down and held a conference.
Great weapons they cast.
Axes of three talents each they cast.
Great swords they cast...^6

But raiding in search of scarce commodities was a high-risk enterprise.
Gilgamesh, the tale informs us, lost his friend and companion, Enkidu,
after their return from the cedar forest—a kind of poetic justice for
Enkidu’s refusal to make a deal, as the following passage indicates:

So Huwawa [lord of the cedar forest] gave up.
Then Huwawa said to Gilgamesh:
“Let me go Gilgamesh; thou shalt be my master,
And I will be thy servant. And the trees
That I have grown on my mountains,
I will cut down, and build thee houses.”
But Enkidu said to Gilgamesh:
“Do not hearken to the word which Huwawa has spoken;
Huwawa must not remain alive.”^7

Whereupon, the two heroes killed Huwawa, and returned trium­
phantly to Uruk, presumably bringing the cedar logs with them.
The decision to kill Huwawa reflected a highly unstable constella­
tion of power. Gilgamesh could not long remain in the cedar forest:
only momentarily could he bring superior force to bear, and that with
difficulty. As soon as the expeditionary force withdrew, Huwawa’s
power to defy the wishes of strangers would have been restored had
Enkidu and Gilgamesh not killed him. Obviously, an adequate timber
supply for Uruk was hard to assure by such methods, regardless of
whether Gilgamesh accepted or refused Huwawa’s proffered submis­
sion.
A more reliable way to get scarce resources from regions too far
away to be folded into the ordinary command structure was to offer
some tangible commodity in exchange, i.e., to substitute trading for
raiding. What civilized societies could offer, characteristically, were
products of specialized artisan skills, developed initially for the delec­
tation of gods and rulers.
Such luxury objects, of course, were rare; only a few could ever


  1. A. Heidel, ed. and trans., The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago,
    1946), tablet III, col. iv, lines 156–67. The Gilgamesh epic is known through fragments
    of several different versions, all much later than the historic date of Gilgamesh. Still the
    texts undoubtedly embody archaic elements, reflecting conditions in Sumer near the
    beginning of civilized development.

  2. Ibid., tablet V, col. iv, lines 20—28.

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