found goat milk and wheat ale at the store. theres no way im NOT making a white gilgamesh tonite
ok here we go. recipe/original post here:
i sent this post to my friend who is known for making Concoctions. thinking she'd just find it funny. i underestimated her hubris
so for anyone curious about the white gilgamesh experience. i hope this satiates that sick desire in your hearts
Hello, I just read Andrew George's Epic of Gilgamesh and I stumbled upon this passage :
From what I know, the word "chapel" is quite distinctly meaning a place of worship for Christian, which surely this Epic predates by many centuries. The mention of juniper incense made me think that Gilgamesh and Enkidu performed divination and purification ritual, since in ancient Mesopotamia juniper incense is usually used for those rituals. And those rituals are also commonly performed in temple. But I don't understand why the translation didn't use 'temple' like in many other instances in the Epic, especially since the segment before located in a temple, more specifically Ninsun's temple where she adopted Enkidu as his foster son. Like, do Gilgamesh and Enkidu moved place? Do the word for 'chapel' there is different from 'temple' in other segment so it cannot be translated with the same word? What does exactly that 'chapel' word sounds in Sumerian/Akkadian?
Hello, and thanks for clarifying (in dms) which section of the Epic this comes from - it's Tablet III, lines 148-154. The word in question is the Akkadian bīt, which means "house" or "building", and is the root of many more specific terms for different buildings. It could also be used for "temple" or various other kinds of structures. It's the equivalent of the Sumerian e, which has the same set of meanings, and both are written 𒂍 in cuneiform.
George was, like many modern translators, presumably trying to make the text as recognizable as possible to his (assumed) reader, so used "chapel" as a creative liberty. Helle (2021) here uses "temple" with the same surrounding phrasing: "Enkidu in the temple of ... / and Gilgamesh in the temple of ..."
The term used for the temple of Ninsun earlier in tablet III is egalmah, a Sumerian term that literally means "great big building", but is used for a major temple. It starts with the same e sign, 𒂍. Given that we don't know what comes after bīt in the lines here, it's possible it was egalmah, but without a more complete version of this section we can't know for sure. The term bīt is also used in this tablet as part of the phrase for "bath-house" (bīt narmaku III.37), illustrating its more generic "building/house" meaning.
If I were to translate this, I'd probably use "building", just because the lack of context makes any more specific term seem too confident in meaning (this section is extremely fragmentary). As to what this section refers to, it could basically be anything - though if any Akkadianists have thoughts, please reblog with them! And thank you again for your question.
I was thinking akkadian bīt could be cognate with hebrew בית (beit, bayit) and then was like "nah there's no way" but it IS in fact!
with a definite article (הבית) it can refer to the temple in jerusalem (usually written out as בית המקדש). see also בית כנסת, synagogue. apparently ܒܝܬܐ in classical syriac also has some sort of religious-building as its secondary meaning.
I don't know if this is because the proto-semitic *bayt- does also carry the religious-building meaning (I mean, it doesn't seem to do so in arabic بَيْت)? or if it's coincidental / for some other reason.
(not to say that any semitic connotations of the word would be applicable to its sumerian meaning, but something I found cool nonetheless.)
Ah I see, I also often find the word 'bīt' in the Epic, like House of Dream God ('bīt'-zaqiqu), wedding house ('bīt'-emi), also sister's house using Sumerian é (é-nim). So that's how the arabic word 'baitun' came from! 'bīt' has a very general meaning but the mention of juniper incense made me think that Gilgamesh and Enkidu were in temple doing some kind of ritual. In arabic indeed 'baitun' is usually used for religious-building but the word itself also means "house" in general. Since the segment is so fragmentary we can't take any definite conclusion huh..
I hope more fragment of Epic of Gilgamesh's tablet get founded soon...
#sorry I reblog your post with an essay
PLEASE EVERYONE SHOULD REBLOG MY POSTS WITH ESSAYS
Hello, I just read Andrew George's Epic of Gilgamesh and I stumbled upon this passage :
From what I know, the word "chapel" is quite distinctly meaning a place of worship for Christian, which surely this Epic predates by many centuries. The mention of juniper incense made me think that Gilgamesh and Enkidu performed divination and purification ritual, since in ancient Mesopotamia juniper incense is usually used for those rituals. And those rituals are also commonly performed in temple. But I don't understand why the translation didn't use 'temple' like in many other instances in the Epic, especially since the segment before located in a temple, more specifically Ninsun's temple where she adopted Enkidu as his foster son. Like, do Gilgamesh and Enkidu moved place? Do the word for 'chapel' there is different from 'temple' in other segment so it cannot be translated with the same word? What does exactly that 'chapel' word sounds in Sumerian/Akkadian?
Hello, and thanks for clarifying (in dms) which section of the Epic this comes from - it's Tablet III, lines 148-154. The word in question is the Akkadian bīt, which means "house" or "building", and is the root of many more specific terms for different buildings. It could also be used for "temple" or various other kinds of structures. It's the equivalent of the Sumerian e, which has the same set of meanings, and both are written 𒂍 in cuneiform.
George was, like many modern translators, presumably trying to make the text as recognizable as possible to his (assumed) reader, so used "chapel" as a creative liberty. Helle (2021) here uses "temple" with the same surrounding phrasing: "Enkidu in the temple of ... / and Gilgamesh in the temple of ..."
The term used for the temple of Ninsun earlier in tablet III is egalmah, a Sumerian term that literally means "great big building", but is used for a major temple. It starts with the same e sign, 𒂍. Given that we don't know what comes after bīt in the lines here, it's possible it was egalmah, but without a more complete version of this section we can't know for sure. The term bīt is also used in this tablet as part of the phrase for "bath-house" (bīt narmaku III.37), illustrating its more generic "building/house" meaning.
If I were to translate this, I'd probably use "building", just because the lack of context makes any more specific term seem too confident in meaning (this section is extremely fragmentary). As to what this section refers to, it could basically be anything - though if any Akkadianists have thoughts, please reblog with them! And thank you again for your question.
I was thinking akkadian bīt could be cognate with hebrew בית (beit, bayit) and then was like "nah there's no way" but it IS in fact!
with a definite article (הבית) it can refer to the temple in jerusalem (usually written out as בית המקדש). see also בית כנסת, synagogue. apparently ܒܝܬܐ in classical syriac also has some sort of religious-building as its secondary meaning.
I don't know if this is because the proto-semitic *bayt- does also carry the religious-building meaning (I mean, it doesn't seem to do so in arabic بَيْت)? or if it's coincidental / for some other reason.
(not to say that any semitic connotations of the word would be applicable to its sumerian meaning, but something I found cool nonetheless.)
Scooby's lineage goes back to the age of myth,
His oldest known ancestor, Enki Doo, even co-stars in the first known work of fiction
Sumerian city of Uruk, considered first civilized city in the world 6500-4000 BC.
Uruk is located in southern Iraq. This city was first discovered in 1849 AD, by english archaeologist William Lofts.
does anyone have akkadian / epic of gilgamesh - related resources?
I just read the stephen mitchell version which I know takes some pretty heavy liberties. However, having read it, I wanted to read foster or george and get more familiar w the text and various translations.
also hmu if you just want to talk about EoG in general
Hi, is there a pdf or something with the epic of gilgamesh in sumerian script cuneiform?
There is not exactly, for three reasons. One is that the Epic of Gilgamesh in its standardized, complete (well, as complete as we know it!) form isn’t in Sumerian, it’s in Akkadian. The second is that it’s composed of multiple tablets, some of which have multiple versions, and some of which are fragmentary. And the third is that most people don’t work in cuneiform fonts, just going from tablet images directly to transliteration - so I can give close examples of those, but not of a cuneiform text per se.
The standard reference is available in transliteration here, at SOAS. For images of the original tablets, I recommend George (2003) volume ii, which is available here (all the images are at the end of the document). But as far as I know, nobody’s taken those tablets and put them into a copy-pastable form in cuneiform font, so you have to work with the images or a transliteration instead.
Two heroes grapple with a foe. The scene is sometimes interpreted as a depiction of Gilgamesh and Enkidu's battle with Humbaba from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Basalt relief sculpture by an unknown artist; 10th century BCE (Neo-Hittite/Hurritic). From Tell Halaf in present-day Syria; now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo credit: Walters Art Museum.
