Ackerman Susan - When Heroes Love The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David

When Heroes Love

GENDER, THEORY, AND RELIGION

Columbia University Press

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Copyright 2005 Columbia University Press

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-50725-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ackerman, Susan.

When heroes love : the ambiguity of eros in the stories of Gilgamesh and David / Susan Ackerman.

p. cm.(Gender, theory, and religion)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-231-13260-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Gilgamesh. 2. David, King of Israel. 3. Homosexuality in literature. 4. Homosexuality in the Bible. 5. Jonathan (Biblical character). 6. Bible. O.T. SamuelCriticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. II. Series.

PJ3771.G6A25 2005

809.93353dc22

2004065670

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in celebration of the twenty-eight years of our friendship

Contents

At least a thousand years separate the stories of the ancient Mesopotamian King Gilgamesh and the ancient Israelite King David, or at least a thousand years separate the earliest forms of the stories of Gilgamesh and David that have come down to us. At least a thousand miles, moreover, separate Gilgameshs ancient city-state fiefdom of Uruk and Davids ancient capital city of Jerusalem, or at least a thousand miles separated these two cities for any traveler in antiquity, who could hardly journey as the crow flies, across the Arabian desert, but instead had to follow the more roundabout route that tracked the waterways of the Orontes and Euphrates Rivers. Everything we know about the historical Gilgamesh in addition suggests that Gilgamesh was of Sumerian stock and not of the Semitic ethnos of which David was a part.

Nevertheless, scholars have frequently been drawn to compare these two great kings tales, It is also the case that, despite the distances that separated them, the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia and the peoples of ancient Israel were closely associated with one another during the period in which the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh and the biblical story of David came into their final forms; indeed, the ancient Mesopotamian empires of Assyria and Babylonia conquered and established themselves as overlords of the ancient Israelite Northern and Southern Kingdoms (Israel and Judah) in the eighth through the sixth centuries BCE. Furthermore, whatever we might claim regarding the historical Gilgameshs Sumerian origins, the ancient Mesopotamian poem that recounts his tale is a Semitic composition, the creation of the Akkadian people who supplanted the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia in the late third and early second millennia BCE.

Kings Gilgamesh and David are also both celebrated in their stories as particularly valiant warriors, in fact, as warriors whose heroic abilities are really larger than life. Gilgamesh is lauded in his Epic as the greatest among kings, whose bravery and might surpass any others;