Gilgamesh at Tilmun

Awed by what he saw, yet as determined as ever to reach his destination, Gilgamesh once more appealed to Shamash for protection and support.

Overcoming a “monstrous guard,” he reached the mountain of Mashu, where one could see Shamash “rise up to the vault of Heaven.”

He was now near his first objective—the “place where the shem’s are raised up.” But the entrance to the site, apparently cut into the mountain, was guarded by fierce guards:

Their terror is awesome, their glance is death. Their shimmering spotlight sweeps the mountains. They watch over Shamash, As he ascends and descends.

A seal depiction (Fig. 76) showing Gilgamesh (second from left) and his companion Enkidu (far right) may well depict the intercession of a god with one of the robot-like guards who could sweep the area with spotlights and emit death rays.

The description brings to mind the statement in the Book of Genesis that God placed “the revolving sword” at the entrance to the Garden of Eden, to block its access to humans.

When Gilgamesh explained his partly divine origins, the purpose of his trip (“About death and life I wish to ask Utnapishtim”) and the fact that he was on his way with the consent of Utu/Shamash, the guards allowed him to go ahead. Proceeding “along the route of Shamash,” Gilgamesh found himself in utter darkness; “seeing nothing ahead or behind,” he cried out in fright.

Traveling for many beru (a unit of time, distance, or the arc of the heavens), he was still engulfed by darkness.

Finally, “it had grown bright when twelve beru he attained.” The damaged and blurred text then has Gilgamesh arriving at a magnificent garden where the fruits and trees were carved of semiprecious stones. It was there that Utnapishtim resided.

Posing his problem to his ancestor, Gilgamesh encountered a disappointing answer: Man, Utnapishtim said, cannot escape his mortal fate. However, he offered Gilgamesh a way to postpone death, revealing to him the location of the Plant of Youth—“Man becomes young in old age,” it was called. Triumphant, Gilgamesh obtained the plant. But, as fate would have it, he foolishly lost it on his way back, and returned to Uruk empty-handed.

Putting aside the literary and philosophic values of the epic tale, the story of Gilgamesh interests us here primarily for its “aerospace” aspects.

The shem that Gilgamesh required in order to reach the Abode of the Gods was undoubtedly a rocket ship, the launching of one of which he had witnessed as he neared the “landing place.”

The rockets, it would seem, were located inside a mountain, and the area was a well-guarded, restricted zone.

No pictorial depiction of what Gilgamesh saw has so far come to light. But a drawing found in the tomb of an Egyptian governor of a far land shows a rockethead aboveground in a place where date trees grow. The shaft of the rocket is clearly stored underground, in a man-made silo constructed of tubular segments and decorated with leopard skins. (Fig. 77)

Illustration: Underground Rocket Shaft

Very much in the manner of modern draftsmen, the ancient artists showed a cross-section of the underground silo. We can see that the rocket contained a number of compartments. The lower one shows two men surrounded by curving tubes.

Above them there are three circular panels. Comparing the size of the rockethead—the ben-ben—to the size of the two men inside the rocket, and the people above the ground, it is evident that the rockethead—equivalent to the Sumerian mu, the “celestial chamber”—could easily hold one or two operators or passengers.

TIL.MUN was the name of the land to which Gilgamesh set his course. The name literally meant “land of the missiles.” It was the land where the shem’s were raised, a land under the authority of Utu/ Shamash, a place where one could see this god “rise up to the vault of heavens.”

And though the celestial counterpart of this member of the Pantheon of Twelve was the Sun, we suggest that his name did not mean “Sun” but was an epithet describing his functions and responsibilities. His Sumerian name Utu meant “he who brilliantly goes in.”

His derivate Akkadian name—Shem-Esh—was more explicit: Esh means “fire,” and we now know what shem originally meant. Utu/Shamash was “he of the fiery rocket ships.” He was, we suggest, the commander of the spaceport of the gods.

The commanding role of Utu/Shamash in matters of travel to the Heavenly Abode of the Gods, and the functions performed by his subordinates in this connection, are brought out in even greater detail in yet another Sumerian tale of a heavenward journey by a mortal.

The Sumerian king lists inform us that the thirteenth ruler of Kish was Etana, “the one who to Heaven ascended.” This brief statement needed no elaboration, for the tale of the mortal king who journeyed up to the highest heavens was well known throughout the ancient Near East, and was the subject of numerous seal depictions.

Etana, we are told, was designated by the gods to bring Mankind the security and prosperity that Kingship—an organized civilization—was intended to provide. But Etana, it seems, could not father a son who would continue the dynasty. The only known remedy was a certain Plant of Birth that Etana could obtain only by fetching it down from the heavens.

Like Gilgamesh at a later time, Etana turned to Shamash for permission and assistance. As the epic unfolds, it becomes clear that Etana was asking Shamash for a shem!

O Lord, may it issue from thy mouth! Grant thou me the Plant of Birth! Show me the Plant of Birth! Remove my handicap! Produce for me a shem!

Flattered by prayer and fattened by sacrificial sheep, Shamash agreed to grant Etana’s request to provide him with a shem. But instead of speaking of a shem, Shamash told Etana that an “eagle” would take him to the desired heavenly place.

Directing Etana to the pit where the Eagle had been placed, Shamash also informed the Eagle ahead of time of the intended mission. Exchanging cryptic messages with “Shamash, his lord,” the Eagle was told:

“A man I will send to thee; he will take thy hand … lead him hither … do whatever he says … do as I say.” Arriving at the mountain indicated to him by Shamash, “Etana saw the pit,” and, inside it, “there the Eagle was.” “At the command of valiant Shamash,” the Eagle entered into communication with Etana. Once more, Etana explained his purpose and destination; whereupon the Eagle began to instruct Etana on the procedure for “raising the Eagle from its pit.”

The first two attempts failed, but on the third one the Eagle was properly raised. At daybreak, the Eagle announced to Etana: “My friend … up to the Heaven of Anu I will bear thee!” Instructing him how to hold on, the Eagle took off-and they were aloft, rising fast.

As though reported by a modern astronaut watching Earth recede as his rocket ship rises, the ancient storyteller describes how Earth appeared smaller and smaller to Etana:

When he had borne him aloft one beru, the Eagle says to him, to Etana: “See, my friend, how the land appears! Peer at the sea at the sides of the Mountain House: The land has indeed become a mere hill, The wide sea is just like a tub.” Higher and higher the Eagle rose; smaller and smaller Earth appeared. When he had borne him aloft a second beru, the Eagle said: “My friend, Cast a glance at how the land appears! The land has turned into a furrow… The wide sea is just like a bread-basket."… When he had borne him aloft a third beru, The Eagle says to him, to Etana: “See, my friend, how the land appears! The land has turned into a gardener’s ditch!” And then, as they continued to ascend, Earth was suddenly out of sight. As I glanced around, the land had disappeared, and upon the wide sea mine eyes could not feast. According to one version of this tale, the Eagle and Etana did reach the Heaven of Anu. But another version states that Etana got cold feet when he could no longer see Earth, and ordered the Eagle to reverse course and “plunge down” to Earth.

Once again, we find a biblical parallel to such an unusual report of seeing Earth from a great distance above it. Exalting the Lord Yahweh, the prophet Isaiah said of him: “It is he who sitteth upon the circle of the Earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as insects.”