The Lord to the Living One's Mountain: A Sumerian Gilgamesh Story

The Epic of Gilgamesh, as most readers encounter it, comes from what scholars call the “Standard Babylonian Version,” compiled sometime between 1300 and 1000 BCE. But according to Andrew George, the leading scholar on the epic, Sumerian stories of the hero predate that standard version by nearly 2,000 years.¹ Roughly five Sumerian versions of the Gilgamesh story survive.² One of them, known as Bilgames and Huwawa Version A, was popular enough in antiquity that it made the list of texts a scribe-in-training was expected to consult.³ Because so many students transcribed it, more copies of this version have survived than of most other Gilgamesh texts, and it’s in a remarkably complete state.

In Sumerian, Gilgamesh is rendered as Bilgames and Humbaba as Huwawa. Ancient scribes named texts by their opening line, and this one’s opening line was The Lord to the Living One’s Mountain, which is how the story came to be known in the ancient catalogs.

The story shares some ground with the Standard Babylonian Epic, but it reads more like its own, self-contained tale than a “missing” episode of the epic we know today. It’s included in some modern translations of Gilgamesh, including Andrew George’s Penguin Classics edition.

Mountains and Immortality

In The Lord to the Living One’s Mountain, Bilgames confronts the fact of human mortality before his friend and servant Enkidu dies. This is a key difference from the Standard Version, where it’s Enkidu’s death that triggers Gilgamesh’s fear of death. Thinking about his own end, Bilgames turns his attention to the “Living One’s mountain.” The so-called “Living One” is Huwawa, or Humbaba. Bilgames tells Enkidu:

O Enkidu, since no man can escape life’s end, I will enter the mountain and set up my name. Where names are set up, I will set up my name, where names are not yet set up, I will set up gods’ names.⁴

What do we make of this? The most natural reading is that Bilgames means to make a name for himself, to accomplish some feat on Huwawa’s mountain, a slope draped in cedars like a green mantle, that will outlast him.

It’s worth pausing on how this differs from the Standard Babylonian Version. There, Gilgamesh and Enkidu attack Humbaba before Gilgamesh becomes preoccupied with mortality. It’s only after they defeat Humbaba and Enkidu subsequently dies that Gilgamesh becomes fixated of his own death and sets out to find Uta-napishti. In The Lord to the Living One’s Mountain, the order is reversed: the fear of death comes first, and it’s what sends Bilgames toward the mountain in the first place.

Enkidu, in this Sumerian tale, advises Bilgames to consult the sun god Utu before going to the mountain.Utu, the Sumerian god, is known later in Akkadian as Shamash, and both names simply mean “sun.” As Enkidu puts it:

Things to do with the mountain are Utu’s concern.⁵

Mountains and sun gods are frequently linked in Mesopotamian thought. Various mountain ranges sat at the edge of the imagined Mesopotamian world, the places where the sun was believed to rise and set. The Babylonian Map of the World, as you can see in the image below, places mountains at the very edges of the world.

When Bilgames makes his offering to Utu, he explains when he first became concerned with death and why he wants to visit the mountain:

I raised my head on the rampart, my gaze fell on a corpse drifting down the river, afloat on the water: I too shall become like that, just so shall I be! “No man can stretch to the sky, no matter how tall, no man can compass a mountain, no matter how broad!” Since no man can escape life’s end, I will enter the mountain and set up my name. Where names are set up, I will set up my name, where names are not yet set up, I will set up gods’ names.⁶

What strikes me here is how Bilgames equates immortality, or remembrance, or fame with mountains. The mountain — vast, imposing, unmovable — is a metaphor for the kind of monumental deed worth remembering. Cutting cedar from Huwawa’s mountain, in this reading, is the method for that metaphor. One achieves a kind of immortality through deeds, especially large ones that benefit others or that get preserved in story, which is exactly what the opening tablet of the Standard Babylonian Epic suggests happened to Gilgamesh himself.

It’s also worth noting that even in the Standard Version, where Gilgamesh isn’t yet worried about immortality when he sets out to kill Humbaba, mountains still shadow his eventual quest for eternal life. After Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh crosses the “Twin Mountains” to search for immortality. Whichever version you read, his path to immortality runs through mountains.

Crossing Mountains, A Metaphor for Immortality

When Bilgames addresses Utu in Version A of The Lord to the Living One’s Mountain, he quotes the line:

“No man can stretch to the sky, no matter how tall, no man can compass a mountain, no matter how broad!”

A close variant of this line shows up in Version B of the story, a less commonly found text than Version A. There, Bilgames speaks a similar line, but he says it earlier before he addresses Utu. And, in Version B, the metaphor narrows to mountains alone, dropping the sky. Bilgames says early in Version B:

“No man can reach across a mountain, no matter how lofty, no man can compass a mountain, no matter how broad!”

Both versions put this line in Bilgames’s mouth as he laments his mortality, so its meaning in both instances is clear enough. This is an expression that uses mountain metaphors to convey the fact that no man can achieve immortality, no man can live forever. In other words, crossing a mountain, or “compassing” one — perhaps “surveying” or “knowing it well” or “walking its full circumference” — is a Mesopotamian metaphor for immortality. This is why in the story Bilgames wants to visit the literal mountain. The expression is turned into narrative.

I can only speculate here why mountains are linked to immortality, fame, and memory. In the Mesopotamian world, mountains are literally and symbolically far-off places. The gods are honored in temples and ziggurats that are high. They were not only high and looked like mountains, but they were imagined to be mountains and their construction was comprised out of mountain materials (as we saw in the Gudea Cylinders).

The Lord to the Living One’s Mountain: A Synopsis, by Andrew George

Below is Andrew George’s synopsis of The Lord to the Living One’s Mountain taken from his Penguin Classics edition. I hope reading this will entice you to buy the edition, as I recommend it over the others as a starting point. It comes with the standard Gilgamesh story, of course, but also contains extensive commentary, context, and a range of other Mesopotamian texts, including the complete Lord to the Living One’s Mountain.

In fear of death Bilgames turns his thoughts to deeds of glory and proposes an expedition to the fabled Cedar Mountain, where dwelt the Living One. This epithet apparently refers to its guardian spirit, the demigod Huwawa. In early tradition the Cedar Mountain was far in the east, where the sun rose. Bilgames’s servant Enkidu tells him that he should seek the approval of the Sun God, Utu (the Sumerian Shamash). This Bilgames does, giving as the reason for the expedition that he has seen the impermanence of the human condition and wishes to establish his fame. Utu grants him the help of seven constellations, which will guide him on his journey. Bilgames mobilizes the young men of Uruk, arms them and sets out. The constellations guide him to the mountains where cedars grow. After crossing seven mountain ranges in search of a suitable tree, finally he finds one to his liking. Without further ado he fells the chosen cedar and his companions cut it into logs. Thereupon Huwawa, the cedars’ guardian, awakes and launches at Bilgames one of his auras, the radiant numinous powers that protect him. Bilgames and Enkidu are stunned and fall unconscious. Enkidu wakes and eventually rouses Bilgames too. Bilgames swears to learn more of their assailant. Enkidu describes to him the terrible being that is Huwawa but Bilgames is confident that the two of them will succeed where one would fail.

As they approach Huwawa’s dwelling Bilgames is stopped in his tracks and the voice of Huwawa calls to him, telling him not to be afraid but to kneel on the ground. Bilgames then pretends to wish to form a marital alliance with Huwawa and offers him his sisters, Enmebaragesi and Peshtur, to be his wives. He promises Huwawa other pleasures of life that are evidently unknown in his remote mountain lair: fine flour and water in leathern bottles, sandals large and small, choice gemstones and other presents. For the betrothal of the sisters and the promise of each further gift Huwawa surrenders one of his protective auras. These are conceptualized as great cedars, which Bilgames’s men duly cut into logs for the journey home. When Huwawa has no auras left and is helpless to attack, Bilgames shows his true colours. He strikes him and takes him prisoner. Huwawa then pleads for his life, complaining to Utu of Bilgames’s treachery. Bilgames shows him princely mercy but Enkidu warns that this is too dangerous: if they let Huwawa go they will never see home again. As Huwawa turns on Enkidu in anger, Enkidu cuts his throat. The heroes take his head to the god Enlil. Enlil angrily asks them why they have killed Huwawa and tells them they should instead have treated him with every courtesy. In conclusion Enlil distributes Huwawa’s auras.⁷