The clay tablet and the deluge
On December 3, 1872, in London, during a meeting of the Biblical Archaeological Society attended by Prime Minister Gladstone, a sensational news was communicated: among the thousands of clay tablets unearthed by archaeologists in Mesopotamia, a story had been identified Chaldean on the Great Flood. The astonishment was enormous and passionate discussions immediately broke out over a discovery that seemed to confirm the veracity of the Bible.
The discoverer, George Smith, was a former engraver of the English State Mint: while researching and ordering the Assyrian texts of mythological content, he realized that he had identified a tale very similar to that narrated in the sacred text:
I immediately found half of an interesting table which probably originally had to contain six columns of text ... Examining the third column, my eye fell on the news that the ship had stopped at Mount Nisir, and on the subsequent story of the mission of the dove that, not finding a place to perch, had turned back. I immediately understood that I had found, at least in part, the Chaldean account of the Flood.
The two lines read with difficulty by Smith are part of the story of the Flood contained in the XI table of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which Smith himself, continuing his research, would soon have identified.
When Smith was preparing to communicate the fruit of his studies to the world he was 32 years old and was animated by an irrepressible passion for everything related to discoveries in the Middle East.
Everyone has some inclination, which if accompanied by favorable circumstances, will make sense of the rest of his life. My personal predisposition has always been directed to oriental studies and since my youth I have always felt a great interest in the explorations and discoveries of the Middle East, especially in the great work in which Layard and Rawlinson were engaged.
The two Englishmen mentioned are closely linked to the sensational and controversial discoveries of the first Assyrian palaces, which excited public opinion so much. Sir Henry Layard was best known for having unearthed two Assyrian capitals between 1845 and 1851, Calah (modern Nimrud) and the famous Nineveh, symbol of the invincible power of this people, while Sir Henry Rawlinson came to the fore for having contributed to the deciphering of the Assyrian-Babylonian language. Much of what Layard had found in the Middle East was brought, not without difficulty, to London, and in October 1848 the first English collection of Assyrian antiquities was inaugurated at the British Museum.
In the galleries of the British Museum, among the stupendous orthostats in which scenes of war and massacres were engraved, the "rest under the arbor of the Assyrian king" and the famous lion hunt of King Ashurbanipal, next to the black obelisk of Shalmanassar III, to the beautiful and majestic winged androcephalic lions, George Smith used to spend most of his free time.
His interest in the Assyrians was heightened by the profound religious significance that this newly unearthed world was beginning to reveal, involving the historical veracity of biblical accounts. Until 1843, when the first Assyrian palace was brought to light by a Frenchman, Paul-Emile Botta, beyond the partial information provided by the Bible and some Greek historians, almost nothing was known about the Assyrians, and luck would have it that the first archaeological finds belonged to the kings mentioned in the Sacred Text: Salmanassar III and V, Tiglat-Pileser III (mentioned with the name Pulu), Sargon II, Sennacherib, Asarhaddon.
The Assyrian collections exhibited in the British Museum thus seemed to give life to the biblical stories which narrated the submission of the kingdom of Judah and Israel to the power of Assur, the taking of Samaria and the deportation of the Israelites to Calah, especially in the Second Book of Kings ( XVII-sgg.).
But to understand the relationship between the Assyrians and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah it was necessary to know the Assyrian language, so as to read what was written on the archaeological finds. Smith therefore set out in Rawlinson's wake to study Akkadian, the Assyrian-Babylonian language. [...] Smith's interest in possible parallels between Assyrian and Biblical history was shared by all Orientalists. We can indeed affirm that the great impetus that the archaeological excavations of Nineveh and Muqayyar had, since the middle of the last century - the latter explored several times since 1625, but identified only in those years as the famous Ur of the Chaldeans, the city of Abraham according to Genesis (XI, 28) - was essentially due to the desire to demonstrate the historicity of the Bible. [...]
The first discovery of a parallelism between the Assyrian annals and biblical history occurs when Smith studies the black obelisk of Shalmanassar III.
In 1867 Smith was associated with Rawlinson to prepare the collections of copies of the inscriptions belonging to the so-called Kouyunjik Collection (Kujundshik), named after the Tell, or artificial hill, in which Nineveh was found with the famous Library of Ashurbanipal. The task was not the easiest due to the poor state of the finds. [...] Smith observes:
The tables consist of fine clay and while they were still soft they were inscribed with the cuneiform script, then baked in ovens and then taken to the Library. During the destruction of Nineveh they were broken and many suffered, as a result of the heat of the fire of the royal palace, cracks and signs of fire.
This vandalism is thus explained by Deller, a well-known German scholar: when Cyaxar, king of the Medes, and Nabopalassar, king of Babylon, in 612 BC managed to break the obstinate resistance of the Assyrians barricaded in their capital, and triumphantly entered the city, were surprised by the high artistic value of the representations with which the rooms of the royal palace were ordered: it was not possible that the Assyrian barbarian soldiers could have such a strong sense of art. When then, especially the Babylonians, penetrated the flight of rooms where the tablets were collected, as in a library, they began to throw them on the ground and crush them, thus destroying what perhaps constituted the most precious heritage of the whole Mesopotamian world.
Later they began to look for treasures among the ruins, so that the tablets were further broken due to trampling. Finally the water completed the destruction because during the spring rains, penetrating into the soil and clay of the tablets, it filled them with minerals, and in every small crack crystals formed which, growing, broke the tablets even more, so that some were found in tiny fragments.
Under these conditions Smith patiently carries out the work of cataloging and classification:
[...] The mythological collection was one of six in which I had grouped all the cuneiform inscriptions in the British Museum. Since the tablets and fragments of tablets belonging to the same class were piled up in the same place, it was possible for me to reconstruct some tests by joining them together and get a generic idea of the contents of the collection. In my opinion all those tables that spoke of mythology, of legends in which the gods played the main role, as well as those tablets that contained prayers and inscriptions of similar content belonged to the mythological category.
Finally Smith comes to the discovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh:
With a meticulous work among these fragments I immediately found half of an interesting table which probably originally had to contain six columns of text: two of these, the third and fourth, were almost complete; two others, the second and fifth, only half-preserved; the first and sixth were completely missing. Examining the third column, my eye fell on the news that the ship had stopped on Mount Nisir, and on the subsequent story of the dove's mission which, not finding a place to alight, had turned back. I understood immediately that I had discovered, at least in part, the account of the Flood.
I immediately began to study the document and realized that the style was direct, and the speech that the hero of the Flood was making was addressed to a person who had the name Iz-du-bar. I then remembered a legend (contained in another fragment) about this hero Iz-du-Bar and which, on closer comparison, turned out to belong to the same series. For this reason I immediately set about looking for all the missing passages of these tablets. [...]I found the fragment of another specimen of the story of the Flood, which also contained the mission of the birds, and so I began to collect other pieces of the same table, which I ordered next to each other until I was able to recompose most of the second column. Fragments of a third specimen recognized by me as such, helped me to recompose the missing parts of the first and sixth columns. So now I had the story of the Flood so convincingly reconstructed that I was able to present it to the assembly of the Society for Biblical Archeology on December 3, 1872. I understood that the Iz-du-Bar series encompassed at least 12 plates and I later discovered that this corresponded to reality. In this series the account of the Flood corresponded to the XI plate. [...].
Smith understood almost immediately that the Epic had been written on 12 clay tablets. But how did he manage to identify the exact number of the plates, given that he was only able to partially reconstruct the XI plate and recognize a piece of the VI? The Mesopotamian scribes had devised an interesting system with notable practical implications: at the end of each tablet they wrote in addition to the order number - first plate, second plate, third plate, etc. - also the initial line of the series, because at that time the title had not yet been invented and a work was indicated with its first line. Thus at the end of the first plate of the Epic the scribe had engraved the following colophon:
Table first. "Of him who saw everything". Gilgamesh seriesPalace of Ashurbanipal, king of wholeness
King of the land of Assur
Furthermore, the following table began with the last line of the previous table. Smith had managed to reconstruct, from the eleventh plate, also the sixth and last column where the colophon was engraved, and it was not difficult for him to infer that there must have been at least 10 other plates of the same work.
Smith's report to the assembly of the Biblical Archaeological Society had dramatic consequences:
In my lecture on the Flood Tablets I gave a summary of the legends of Iz-du-Bar and expressed the belief that the Chaldean inscriptions must contain many other accounts connected with Genesis, which would surely have aroused great interest. At this point the Daily Telegraph intervened. Immediately after my lecture, the editor-in-chief of this newspaper, Mr. Edwin Arnold, who had previously shown interest in my discoveries, came to congratulate me and presented me with the offer of the owners of the newspaper to resume, at their expense, excavations in Assyria for new insights into the content of these legends. [...]
The offer was submitted to the curators of the British Museum and they granted me permission to go to Assyria and undertake excavations for a short time, having given me only six months of leave. [...]
On January 20, 1873, at night, I left London and crossed the Canal ...
The Daily Telegraph initiative corresponded to an amateurish, sporting conception of archaeological research. At that time archeology was not considered a real profession, but mainly as a fascinating hobby. Suffice it to say that Paul-Emile Botta, the discoverer of Khorsabad, dug when his profession as consul in Mossul allowed him and Henry Layard began his adventure, but nurtured the secret hope of embarking on a diplomatic career. Nevertheless Botta and Layard, as well as the other "archaeologists" of the time, were true pioneers of archeology.
Smith, however, was totally inexperienced compared to them, and men like Layard and Hormuzd Rassam, who had dug in Nineveh twenty years earlier, would certainly have been better suited for this new mission, but both were already busy elsewhere: Layard in Spain, Rassam ad Aden to carry out a delicate political assignment on behalf of the Government of the Indies. The choice thus fell on Smith.
After three months of travel by sea and land, Smith arrives in Mossul and, having obtained the necessary permits from the Turkish authorities, on 7 May begins the excavation on the site where the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal had been found. And on May 14 it achieved its purpose:
... I sat down to examine the heap of fragments and cuneiform inscriptions found that day, picking them up and brushing off the dirt they were encrusted with, to read their contents. Cleaning one of them, I found to my surprise and gratification that it contained most of the seventeen lines belonging to the first column of the Chaldean Deluge account, which filled in the only gap in the story.
In reality today we know that the fragment found by Smith is not part of the story of the Flood of the Epic, but of an older work, the Atramkhasis, which takes its name from the main character, called by modern scholars the Babylonian Noah, where the same episode of the Flood is narrated.
After telegraphing the news to the Daily Telegraph it appeared to the financiers that Smith had accomplished his purpose and therefore refused to fund the excavations further. Smith was thus induced, much to his chagrin as the excavations had just begun, to return to London.
Smith's discoveries don't end there. In the years he had left to live - he died at the age of only 36 - he went to Nineveh three more times and each time his research was crowned with success, unearthing about 2,300 tablets and buying 2,000 more in Baghdad. it was fatal to him: he died in the city of Aleppo, Syria, in 1876
The reconstruction of the poem from Smith to Thompson
George Smith, together with Rawlinson, published in 1875, in The cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, an exhaustive reconstruction of the 6th and 11th tables of the epic. After his death, the work of recomposing and translating the poem was continued by others. Various translations of the Epic appeared in English, French and German, gradually more and more updated thanks to the continuous discovery of new tablets relating to the Epic.
The discovery of the Paleo-Babylonian Epic
The discovery of a text of the Epic belonging to the Paleo-Babylonian period, written around 1800 BC, many centuries before those found in the Library of Nineveh which date from around 800-700 BC, confirms the existence of very ancient versions centered on the mythical king of Uruk.
In fact, the Epic was known in Palestine before the tenth century, as evidenced by the discovery of fragments dating back to the twelfth century, that is, before the arrival of the Jews in the promised land. In any case, scholars agree on one thing: the biblical story derives directly from the Babylonian one, but it has been wisely read in a monotheistic key. In Mesopotamian myths the actors are the gods as a whole, while in the biblical stories always and only the king of Israel intervenes.
Note
The Second Book of Kings
In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah he became king in Samaria, over Israel Hosea son of Ela. He reigned nine years. He did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not like the kings of Israel his predecessors. Shalmanassar, king of Assyria, marched against him; Hosea became his servant and paid him a tribute. But the king of Assyria uncovered a conspiracy of Hosea that had sent him messages to So, king of Egypt, and no longer sent tribute to the king of Assyria as he did annually before. Therefore the king of Assyria had him imprisoned and locked him in prison.
The king of Assyria invaded the whole country, went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years. In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria occupied Samaria, deported the Israelites to Assyria, allocating them to Halah, to the area around Habor, the river of Gozan, and to the cities of Media.
This happened because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord, their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, freeing them from the power of Pharaoh, king of Egypt: they had worshiped other gods. [...] Only the tribe of Judah remained. But not even in Judah did they keep the commandments of the Lord their god, but rather followed the customs practiced by Israel.
(II Kings 17, 1-12, 18-19)
The Assyrian sources inform us about these facts which take place around 720 BC The king who besieged Samaria is Shalmanassar V; the Bible does not explicitly mention the name of the Assyrian ruler who conquered Samaria, but (p. 115, Pet 1992) scholars all agree that it was Sargon II in the first year of his reign.
(p. 343, Gal 1969) The facts that mark the end of the kingdom of Israel are these. Dead Jeroboam II, the son of Zechariah, last of the Iehu dynasty, reigned only 6 months and was killed in a conspiracy by Sallum, who usurped the kingdom for a month, and was in turn killed by Menahem who reigned 10 years in Samaria . He was succeeded by his son Pekahia for two years, but Pekah conspired against him, his squire of him, who reigned perhaps 8 years. Pekah is famous for the attack against Ahaz, king of Judah, which gave rise to Isaiah's prophecy about Emmanuel. Hosea, the last king of Israel, plotted a conspiracy against Pekah. This series of conspiracies that changed the dynasty 5 times reigning in the space of 30 years, they totally weakened the solidity of the kingdom. But the Bible interprets the facts in the light of God: the kingdom of Israel had become unfaithful to the Lord, incurably despite the warnings of the prophets. Therefore God abandons him and continues the history of salvation with the tribe of Judah, because from them the Messiah will have to arise.
From this moment on the ten northern tribes will exist only remnants, aggregated with time to the tribe of Judah or absorbed by the other populations. On the site of Samaria, the king of Assyria had populations deported from their homes to live, which, mixing with Israelite elements, then formed the population of the "Samaritans", disliked by the Jews for their mixed origins.
The Assyrian ruler Shalmanassar III (858-824 BC) who resided in the palace of Kalakh (today Nimrud), had the account of his victories engraved on an obelisk. Cut to scale like a ziggurat, the obelisk is in black alabaster and is two meters high with a section of 60 cm at the base and 40 at the top.
The piece, almost intact and of a cold and geometric beauty, is kept at the British Museum in London. Layard recovered it in 1846, during his exploration of Nimrud. Since the decipherment was not yet complete it was not possible to give an exhaustive and correct translation. Both for its writing (an easily recognizable Persepolitan "third script") and for the style of its images, the monument cannot be prior to the Assyrian era (first half of the 1st millennium BC).
The text engraved on the "black obelisk" (for a length of about 200 lines) contains a brief reference to the triumphal campaigns of Salmanassar III, which are partly illustrated by twenty bas-relief plates placed in groups of five along the four faces of the monument. It depicts the different peoples defeated by the king intent on offering their tribute as a sign of submission.
The first two registers are almost identical and show sovereigns in an act of submission before the Assyrian king. Other figures standing behind Shalmanassar are the Assyrian dignitaries, while the submissive ruler is followed by a procession of tributes that takes place on the other faces of the obelisk. In the second register - as the inscription explains - the king of Israel Jehu ( Jehu) (842-815 BC) who prostrates himself before Shalmanassar. His tributes are listed in the inscription: gold, silver, precious objects, tin, weapons.
Jehu's reign is dealt with in the Bible by the Book of Kings, II, chap. 9-10, but the biblical account mainly illustrates the internal affairs of the state.
Calling it Iz-du-bar I do nothing but use the writing signs that make up the name, giving them the most common syllabic values; this pronunciation, however, is only provisional since the signs of writing, by nature ideographic, must be read on the basis of Assyrian values, which, however, are unknown at the present time. For now let's just say that these legends, and herein lies their great value, contain the Chaldean tale of the Flood. [...]
The legends of Iz-du-bar, as they have come down to us from the Library of Ashurbanipal, are drawn up in 12 tables and on the basis of what has come down to us they were present in at least four copies. The tables consist of six columns and each column contains an average of 40 to 50 lines, so that the complete text must have embraced about 3000 lines. Currently all 12 tables are presented in a fragmentary state and none are complete. Fortunately, however, the most important, the eleventh, with the story of the Flood is the best preserved.
The exact reading of the epic hero's name, Gilgamesh, was recognized after much discussion a few years later. The first to read the name correctly was Pinches in Babylonian and Oriental Records, IV, 1890, 264. The problem of the meaning of this name has not yet been resolved, although many scholars are inclined to believe that the exact interpretation is the one proposed. from Falkenstein and that is: "the old becomes young". A highly suggestive explanation that fits well with the content of the Epic, that is, Gilgamesh's frantic search for eternal life.
