Lecture VIII. The Myths And Epics. 397
and men.^327 And Gilgames was a man, the creation of the goddess
Aruru, whose original birthplace seems to have been Marad, and
of whom a tale was told which may be the prototype of that of
Akrisios and Perseus.^328 He was the Hêraklês of Babylonia, the
embodiment of human strength, who saves his country from its
foes, and destroys the monstrous beasts that infest it,—a mighty
prince, though not an actual king. There is no reason why he
should not have been like Cyrus, a historical personage round
whose name and deeds myths afterwards gathered; an early
inscription recording the restoration of the wall of Erech states
that it had been originally built by the deified Gilgames.^329
The Epic begins with a description of his rule at Erech,“the
seat”of his power. Between him and the inhabitants of the city
there seems to have been little goodwill. He had not left, they
complained, the son to his father or the wife to her husband.
It may be that the legend contains a germ of historical truth,
and goes back to the days when Erech was still a battleground
between Sumerian and Semite.^330 At any rate the gods, we [433]
are told, heard the cry of the people, and Aruru was instructed
(^327) Gilgames seems to mean“great father,”fromgilga,“father,”andmes,i.e.
mas,“great.”
(^328) Hist. Anim.xii. 21. Sokkaros, king of Babylonia, fearing that his daughter's
son would dethrone and slay him, imprisoned her in a tower. Gilgamos,
however, was born to her. By his grandfather's orders he was thrown from the
tower, but saved by an eagle, which caught him upon its wings. Philologically
it is possible to identify Sokkaros and Akris-ios.
(^329) Hilprecht,The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, i.
- 26; Hommel in theProc. SBA.xvi. pp. 13-15. The inscription is as follows:
“The deified Abil-ili(?), father of the army of Erech, the son of Bel-semea,
has restored the walls of Erech, which were built in old times by the deified
Gilgames.”
(^330) Professor Haupt, however, to whom we owe the“editio princeps”of the
Epic of Gilgames, believes that the description of the siege of Erech does not
belong to the Epic at all. He finds the beginning of it in the fragment K 2756
c, generally assigned to the third book of the poem. See his article on“The
Beginning of the Babylonian Nimrod Epic”in the“Johns Hopkins Semitic
Papers”(Journal of the American Oriental Society, xxii. 1 (1901)).