1. A Helle of a Dissertation (sorry sorry sorry)

In dawdling about the Internet preparing for a conversation on Gilgamesh, I stumbled across Sophus Helle's dissertation.¹

The dissertation is not itself about Gilgamesh, but about authorship -- Helle's other great interest being Enheduanna as the first named author of an ancient text.

I am engaged by his thesis, which suggests that authorship -- which is not a universal among pre-modern and early modern texts -- arises out of cultural crisis, the need to condense identity from a shared cultural body of literature into a single figure.

From the committee's notes:

Helle’s main argument is that authorship rose to prominence in an otherwise anonymous culture during times of cultural crises .... demographic, linguistic, and political upheaval that threatened the authority of cuneiform scholarship. Tradition had to be protected, and to do so, it had to be condensed into the figure of the author.

I have not read the entire dissertation -- only the preliminary notes so far! -- but I find this at least an interesting and in some ways a congenial thesis.

From the committee's notes again, Helle's approach seems both sane and useful:

Arguing that authorship in the ancient world should be studied as cultural narratives rather than as an empirical reality, Helle demonstrates that narratives of authorship are “a crucial and often overlooked source of information of how literary texts were perceived, categorized, and evaluated” (67).

The overall response of the committee is rather what I would expect of commentary on a dissertation by Helle: that the work is inspired, even brilliant, but also a little bit scattershot and neglectful of detail.

Here it is if you want to look at it too.

2. The Operatic Gilgamesh

There is a new opera based on Gilgamesh!

It's Australian. From 2024. The images associated with it appear to include Enkidu and Gilgamesh smearing (bull's?) blood all over each other.

Now I have to try to figure out whether there is a recording and if so, how I can see it.

§rf§

1. If you don't happen to be a ridiculous Gilgamesh fentity, I'll note that Helle is a current rock star of ancient text translation and the creator of my fave version of Gilgamesh. And, as Jasmine points out, his website is an academic thirst trap.

2. I do need an Ancient Texts icon of some kind.

This morning's work, prompted by reading Enkidu is dead and not dead by Tucker Lieberman, a gift from sabotabby .

* * * * * *


I come in from the outside of that city.
I come in; the door is unguarded.
The door is unguarded
to go in. It’s the way out that is venomous,
fanged, seething with fire.

It’s Enkidu who knows me. Knows himself not
as human, wild but not predatory,
with silky hair. I have dreamed
of Enkidu.

They threaten you, these other men
in the snake’s gullet.
There’s only room inside this great city,
Poisoned-Snake-Guts,
for real men. Your sweetness, your weakness –
this time, they swear they will drive you out.

The snake is immortal. It has eaten
their immortality. The men are searching
for their unbounded lives, here
in the bone-barred throat, smelling their freedom
in the snake's bowels.

Yet you never are expelled. Only cursed,
punished, your face shoved
into the acid sea that sloshes
around the men searching through shit
for their immortality.

That is Poisoned-Snake-Guts: unbreachable
and terrified. You can never leave,
unless you leave.

I say you and I mean you, Gilgamesh.
You are bound to your city.
Your magnificent wall holds you
like the throat of the snake.
If you run with me, no matter how far we go,
you will always turn back to Uruk. I like Uruk:
but I go where I please.
I am the man who goes between.

I say man and I mean it, and yet
I am no man of Uruk.

You shake your head. No, you say, we
tamed you. Cut your hair. Gave you
beer and bread. You liked the beer, you
smile. And the bread. And the bed.

Gilgamesh, I have travelled here, long days
and nights in their thousands, down
the road of the snake, into its stinking guts,
to bring you back to the world, which you call
wilderness.

But always when I begin to explain
your eyes return to the gleaming walls of Uruk
bright as copper, as a strand of measuring-wool
in the waning sun.

* * * * * *

§rf§