Tablet XI from the 'Epic of Gilgamesh.' The British Museum.
Sotd - Sunday 13th of January -
Razor - ATT Calypso SE 'Maria'
blade - Proline (3)
brush - Wee Scot best badger
soap - Haslinger Sheep tallow
post - witch hazel
a/s - Artic Kinesia - Spanish
balm - Almond oil moisturiser
scent - Hermes Eau d'Orange Verte edt.
Result - great.
Relaxed Sunday shave. The razor handled a full seven day growth with ease - I knew she would - I have yet to have any poor shaves with the Calypso - it is effortlessly good for me. If there was some horribly dystopian parallel universe - he shudders - where you were only allowed one razor - this one would be a good candidate - but thankfully that isn't the case. I can have more razors than I need with impunity. Nice to revisit the Haslinger soap with the Wee Scot - given their diminutive size - natural companions. Everything well and good - bbs in two passes - smelling nice. I had intended shaving tonight - but given a momentary lapse of concentration last night cooking - I took the top off my thumb chopping coriander with a surgically sharp Japanese Santoku knife - I'll pass on that for the next few days. Ho hum. Find following something to read - if you are interested - part the first in an occasional series - 'Quiet Revolutionaries' - people that changed their world - but posterity has largely forgotten. Enjoy your shaves one and all - yours - I.
George Smith - Assyriologist - b. Chelsea 26/3/1840 - d. Aleppo 19/8/1876.
Born into a working class family - apprenticed as an engraver of bank notes at the age of 14 - fascinated with ancient Mesopotamian culture - to the extent he spend his spare time in the British Museum reading everything he could find on the subject - teaching himself to transliterate cuneiform script into English. His talent was eventually recognised by the museum and he was appointed a senior research assistant. His greatest work was the discovery and translation of the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh' - revolutionary in his day. Why so? If you already know about the text - you can skip to the next bit - if not - here is a very condensed overview.
‘Gilgamesh' is important because - in the Western tradition - it is the oldest example of literature that has survived to us - first committed to clay - in fragmented poetic form - using Sumerian cuneiform - around 2100 - 2000 bce - but the version Smith studied - known as the 'Standard Akkadian' text - dates to about 1300 - 1000 bce - it is recognisably prose in the modern sense. Remarkably - we know the name of the scribe who recorded it - he signed the individual tablets - Sin Liqe Unninni. It is about two thirds complete - and on the face of it - is about the heroic doings of Gilgamesh - the king of the city state of Uruk - modern day Iraq - and his various interactions with the gods of the day - your standard sort of pantheon - named deities for the sun, moon, crops, weather - that sort of thing. The ‘Epic' is much more though - it deals with ideas concerning the futility of man seeking immortality - hubris and vanity. The unified version is preserved on twelve damaged clay tablets. There is good evidence that Gilgamesh was a historic figure - ruling Uruk around 2700 bce.
It opens with Gilgamesh being an oppressive ruler over his subjects - the gods decide he needs put back in line - and send his nemesis in the form of Enkidu - a huge wild hairy man - who lives as an animal until he is civilised by a temple prostitute - he challenges Gilgamesh to single combat. The king wins but instead of killing Enkidu - they become firm friends. They decide to go on an epic journey - to enhance their renown as warriors. Monsters are slain - but they cross the line when they kill the ‘bull of heaven.' The deities decide Enkidu has to die - and they deliver disease upon him. Gilgamesh - in one of the more touching sections - can't accept the death of his friend and holds him close - until a maggot falls out his nose. This prompts the king to consider his own mortality - and he resolves on another journey to meet the only two humans that are immortal - Upnapishtim and his wife.
The meeting of the pair is on tablet XI - Gilgamesh asks why Upnapishtim - who looks very ordinary to him - is immortal - and he explains that it was granted to them by the gods as the only survivors of the ‘Great Flood' millennia before. ‘Great Flood?' The senior deity - Enlil - for various reasons decided to wipe out humanity and start again. This is supposed to be secret but Ea forewarns Upnapishtim - giving him very specific instructions on the construction of a boat - that he was to put his family in and ‘
all the animals of the field.' The deluge duly arrives - after some time the boat becomes lodged on a mountain top - three birds are released - the first two return - the last - a raven - doesn't. The waters were receding - Upnapishtim releases the animals and sets up camp with his wife and family - the only human survivors of the flood. They make sacrifice to the gods in gratitude and get on with the business of repopulating the world. Immortality was a unique gift - it is explained to Gilgamesh - one which you will never know - go back home - be a better ruler and build - the city will be your legacy - "
Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands."
Sound familiar? - so it ought to - the parallels with the flood story in Genesis are unmistakable - except it was being written down at least 1500 years before the completion of the Old Testament. Smith's first reading of his translation - to the Society for Biblical Archaeology in December 1872 - was wildly controversial - the prime minister Gladstone attended - it rolled a hand grenade into the cozy suppositions of late Victorian theology. Abuse was heaped on Smith - how dare a working class person - who hadn't even been to university - challenge orthodoxy - social and religious. The museum backed him - continuing his studies - he died during a second expedition to Mesopotamia - looking for the missing fragments of ‘Gilgamesh.' Ultimately his work was vastly influential - a quiet revolutionary in my opinion.
