I-II

08.07.17

How will the questions be?

On the basis of the culture and the story and the way it was told, brief synopsis, what is the point of the
story, what kind of people told the story and why; you have to “get” the story.

Why did the cultures feel the need to give phenomenon like rain, a name? Why’d they create a story
around it?
To explain the unexplainable.

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH:

Sumerians: it’s with these people that the story starts. It goes very far back; almost 2100 BC.
An epic poem called The Epic of Gilgamesh; this is the oldest story that we know of. A full literary work.
The Sumerians called him Bilgamesh.
Gilgamesh is a king who is said to have lived around 2800 BCE. Ruler of Uruk.
The Epic of Gilgamesh deals with the basic, most fundamental problem of human life: the fear of death;
the oldest problem of humanity.
The story revolves around how this fear civilizes Gilgamesh and makes him a better person.
He’s an ancient hero: half divine with a divine parent, bigger, stronger, eats more than others, huge
appetite // typical hero stereotype // (Is he bigger than us because he’s half divine or he’s half divine
because he’s bigger than us? Could be either way)
He’s a very cruel king: horrible, malevolent: picks up any girl, eats half the food of the city etc. He taxes
his people to the end of their resources; they’re sick of it. He drinks all the wine, eats all the food. People
are dying of hunger but king is living in luxury; a bad king.

People start praying to the Gods to relieve them of him // another convention of ancient literature, you
should never pray to the Gods, they don’t answer your prayers, always end up doing something weird //
Gods’ answer: We’ll create this little creature, raise him with the animals, and after he grows up..(people
stop listening at this point)
So they (gods) create this life form who will control Gilgamesh, they take some hair, clay, give it life.
They call it Enkidu. He is the opposite of Gilgamesh. While he is half man, half divine. Enkidu is half
man and half beast, super strong, powerful.
He was raised amongst the animals in the forest (like Mowgli // there’s nothing new, everything under the
sun has been written about //)
A hunter spots him in the forest, he lays traps; Enkidu is clever, he takes the bait out of the trap and walks
off; hunter is perplexed ‘what do I do, can’t capture him, very cunning’
He then comes up with a trick that nobody can resist: he sends a woman to seduce him; he sends a temple
priestess known as a hierophant (a temple priestess who performs certain rituals in the name of
spirituality) // parallel drawn to devdasi system of India //
She seduces Enkidu and they make love for 7 days and 7 nights.
When he goes back to the animals after that, the animals reject him because he has been with a human
being, they consider him impure. // cuckoos and chicks //
Enkidu has to be civilized. He’s taught all of this. First step is to betray his animal friends (becoming a
hunter), gradually turns to being a shepherd, keeps animals with him then he learns agriculture, then
learns how to clothe himself, hygiene. After this whole process is done he is sent to Uruk.
// This is a reflection of how Homo Sapiens have civilized themselves (animals – hunter gatherers –
trackers – shepherd – agriculture – urban man. The path of human civilization is the path of Enkidu. //

Once he gets to Uruk, he has to meet Gilgamesh. The first thing they do is fight. Why? To prove the
worth of their friendship. They have a big wrestling match which shakes the walls of the city, because
they’re both big and powerful and all the others go run and hide.
After the fight they become friends.
Gilgamesh says ‘you alone are worthy of being my comrade, amongst all these pathetic mortals; so let us
be friends and have great adventures together’, which they do.

One of the main adventures that is pivotal to the story:

They are required to go to a place called Mt. Lebanon (modern day Lebanon) because its very famous for
its cedar forests. To chop down a whole bunch of trees to use as building material // Uruk is in the middle
of a desert, they don’t have metal or anything, pre bronze age //
On Mt. Lebanon they meet a giant monster Humbaba who has been appointed by the Gods themselves to
guard something that is very important to the Gods // tablets at this point are very damaged, so we don’t
know what he is guarding //
Gilgamesh and Enkidu, at this point in the epic, have begun getting arrogant with their power // one of the
biggest problems we face as human beings, our own arrogance //
They fight Humbaba and kill him, together, if it was just one of them, Humbaba would’ve taken them on;
both are too much to deal with. At a point in their fight, Humbaba is begging for mercy, on his knees,
telling them to take whatever they want, just spare my life.
They’re too arrogant, tell him ‘we can spare you, but then even if we do kill you, kya hoga, what do we
have to lose’
The Gods are very angry because they killed Humbaba. So now they disperse whatever he was protecting
out of Gilgamesh’s reach saying that ‘mortals aren’t meant to get their hands on this, stay in your limit’
This is the first warning that they get; they don’t listen; obviously.
This treasure is out of their reach.
// Some people have drawn conclusions saying that these treasures may have been dispersed to seven
different locations and that became the seven wonders of the ancient world ; but no concrete evidence
there //

So, Humbaba is dead. Gilgamesh and Enkidu return to Uruk with a lot of wood; people are overjoyed that
they can build so many houses; they throw a parade in the honor of these two. In the parade both are
looking magnificent. Gilgamesh is the main “hero”, looking super awesome.
He’s looking so awesome that a goddess falls in love with him.
A goddess called Ishtar. // she has been adopted by a lot of writers as a symbol of feminism //
She’s the goddess of Love and War in ancient Sumerian culture. // why love and war? Sex and violence,
look at our TV shows, same thing //
She tells him to marry him, they’ll rule the world together. She’s a black widow sort of character,
whoever she marries, she ends up killing them. Gilgamesh knows this and very rudely (courtesy his
arrogance that has built up over the years, and the fact that he’s half divine) he says no.
Enkidu too, gets on the bandwagon and is ruder. They both insult her and Ishtar calls her brother to
avenge her insult.
Her brother, is the bull of heaven // the bull of heaven is figure that shows up in a lot of stories in this time
//
Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill him.
Enkidu, who has gotten very arrogant now; he tears of the legs of the bull of heaven and he flings them at
Ishtar saying “If you come back, this is what I’m going to do to you”
This is very serious. Gods say enough is enough. ‘You can’t just insult Goddesses like this’
They strike Enkidu down with a plague and he starts dying on the spot. His arrogance has cost him his
life.
// If you look at the path of Enkidu’s life: he begins as an innocent animal, slowly learnt how to trap, hunt
animals (losing his innocence), betrayed his brethren (animals), became a human, a corrupt human subject
to arrogance; animals can’t be arrogant, only humans can. Because of this arrogance, he went too far and
was struck down by the Gods //
Enkidu reflects, before dying, ‘why did I come out of the forest, why didn’t I stay an animal’
In the end he says ‘it’s worth it; its better living for a brief period as a human being than a thousand years
as an animal; because the life pf an animal is nothing; at least I got to insult a Goddess, what do the
animals get to do?’
Enkidu dies.

Now, Gilgamesh is petrified. Up until now he hasn’t even thought of death or dying. He hasn’t seen
anything that has troubled him. Now all of a sudden, his friend, who was as powerful as him is gone,
dead. This is a shock for him.
He resolves to find a way to never die.
He starts travelling all over the world in the quest of immortality. This is the more philosophical part of
the epic.
He can’t find a cure for death; but he performs numerous tasks to overcome death. This part of the epic is
where the ‘labors of Hercules’ are taken from; the Noah’s ark story is told here first, Noah is Utnapishtim.
Gilgamesh goes to Utnapishtim because he is supposedly immortal and he wants to know how.
Utnapishtim said that okay I’ll tell you, then he tells the ark story in flashback; how the gods decided to
flood the planet, he saved animals, people. Gods like this and made him immortal. Utnapishtim tells him
‘you can be immortal, just wait for the next flood’
Utnapishtim’s wife takes pity and tells him that even though she can’t make him immortal, she can give
him one thing : a magic herb. You eat this herb when you grow old and it’ll make you young again; not
technically immortality, if you get hurt, you can die.
He accepts it. Suddenly he’s benevolent too; he says that he’d share the herb with all the old men in his
village. Saying that their accumulated wisdom could help them.
On his way back, Gilgamesh stops at a river to bathe, he keeps the herb at the river bank; and a snake eats
the herb. So now even that is gone, he has travelled around the world and he still has no answers; the only
answer he had is now gone. // The snake eating the herb is also used as an explanation as to why snakes
shed their skin //
He is very dejected. On the way back he meets another Goddess who sort of consoles him and tells him
that his quest is stupid and that nobody can be. He says ‘the gods kept immortality to themselves and to
man they gave only death, disease, sickness, all the problems’
She tells him to not think about death, be happy.
// In most cultures, this contrast of gods and humans is often a reason to start a war; because Gods don’t
face any consequences //

This is how he becomes a good king.

He says he found a way to be immortal: ‘I’ll build a wall around Uruk with my own hands and on each
rock I will inscribe my name. This will ensure that my name lives forever because those walls will stand
forever’

Moral: The only way to gain immortality is to do something that makes sure your name lives on forever.

What makes Gilgamesh a hero?

The fact that he is as empty handed as he was in the beginning of the story. He’s a hero because he learnt
something, and that’s the point of a story: to teach you something.
ILIAD

Alexander carried the Iliad everywhere he went in a golden box.

It was written by Homer. Around 1000 BC. // Homer, people say was a bunch of people over a period of
time. But it has to be one guy since the literary style is very consistent //
People say that Homer combined all these folk tales and put them together with his own spin to it.

The ancient Greek theatre had the tradition of a character called the Iron who basically asked very stupid
questions (modelled after Socrates) //Socrates intellectualism stems from the fact that he never answered
questions, he just asked them and expected you to come up with answers. Irony is useful and beautiful.
Reminds us of our ​aukaat​ //

The Ancient Greek culture is a very direct culture.

They were absolutely, totally honest about everything.
At that point there was no “Greece”; it was a collection of islands; Achaean islands (Ithaca, Athens etc.)

The Greeks at that time fought mainly for Kleos ; which basically meant money and property, ownership,
to make your name as big as possible i.e. name and fame. The Greeks are very honest about that fact.

The Battle of Troy is central to numerous Greek myths coming from Homer.

The hero of the Iliad is Achilles

The Iliad doesn’t discuss the battle of Troy; it discusses some part in the tenth year of the war.

// Backstory:
Why does Troy need to be raided?
Because your adventures have to be glorious, so you have to raid the coolest city in the world i.e. Troy.
But, you can’t just raid it; you need a reason. The reason : they have something of ours, and we’re just
getting it back.
What have they taken?
A woman: Helen of Troy. // common people aren’t worth fighting over //
Helen, is Zeus’ daughter, the most beautiful woman in world.

Greeks’ interpretation of the Gods is very honest; they don’t want their Gods to be idolized or idealized.
They respect out of fear. Zeus: conqueror, rapist, murderer, child murderer. He is personification of a
storm.

In the court of the Gods; the goddess of discord: Eris throws a golden apple on which it is written “for the
most beautiful woman in the world” (playing to the vanity of the women in the court)
The 3 main contenders for this apple are: Hera, Aphrodite and Athena. (wife, daughter, daughter)
They ask Zeus to decide. He doesn’t fall for that. He calls up a mortal to decide this; because if those
three take their anger out on the mortal, zyaada farak nahi padega.
He picks Paris: prince of Troy to make this choice. Paris is also very smart; he asks Zeus ‘what’s in it for
me’ asking for a bribe.
Hera; the goddess of fertility ‘I’ll give you lots of children’
Athena; the goddess of wisdom (this behavior and vanity is very out of character for her) : ‘I’ll make you
the best strategist of all time’
Aphrodite; goddess of love: ‘I’ll give you the most beautiful woman in the world’
He goes with Aphrodite; because obviously.

Aphrodite makes Helen fall in love with Paris by striking her with her arrow. Helen runs after Paris.

Greeks have Xenia: strict rules of how guests should behave in others houses; social code of conduct.
Xenia is under the domain of Zeus.
Paris has broken the rules of Xenia as he has taken the wife of the man whose house he was living in as a
guest. Helen’s husband is called Menelaus who is the King of Sparta; which is a very warrior like culture.
// parallel with Rukmini-Krishna story //
Helen gets the apple.
Everyone wanted to marry her at the time because she was super pretty; but Menelaus won the contest
and so the other contenders swore to protect their marriage.
But, when the time comes nobody wants to go and get Helen back; But they do go because it’s Troy, the
richest city in the world. ‘Who cares about Helen? As long as we get our kleos’

Prophecy: the leader of the expedition to Troy: Agamemnon, Menelaus’ elder brother. He is approached
by the goddess Artemis and told that you will lead these people into battle and the only way you will be
successful is if you sacrifice your daughter; if you don’t, a lot of people will die. Agamemnon sacrifices
his daughter. A 1000 black ships sail to Troy.

Nobody initially wants to go to Troy. Odysseus actually goes to the extent of fooling people into thinking
that he is mad just to avoid going to war; he starts putting salt in his fields and ploughing them (even
though Odysseus is a king, he still has to plough his own land because this is a tribal society) Odysseus’
son is placed in front of his plough to see if he really is mad or not; he doesn’t run over his son thus
proving his sanity. Odysseus promises to get back at the man whose idea it was to place his son in front of
the plough.

There is another prophecy : ‘the first Achaean soldier whose feet touch the soil of Troy will be the first to
die in battle’; so obviously no one wants to get off the ship.
Odysseus calls them cowards and jumps over the side of the ship; this prompts everyone else to jump. The
guy who caught Odysseus’ lie (plough) goes next and when he jumps; he realizes that Odysseus, very
cleverly landed on his shield and not on the ground; so technically he is the first to touch the soil of Troy
i.e. he dies first.

Achilles. (Achos: grief, pain, burden ; laos: people; Grief of the people)
The Greeks loved him as they thought he represented what it meant to be Greek.
Prophecy: about his mother: that her son will be even more powerful than his father, whoever it may be.
Zeus falls in love with his mother. This complicates things. If this happens; he will be more powerful than
Zeus; and that’s a problem. He can even kick the Olympians out of Olympus.
The Olympians steer this woman away from Zeus and get him married to a mortal; no need to worry.
Achilles’ mother dips him in the river Styx when he is a baby, making him immune to death. Only part of
is body vulnerable: the heel.

When the war begins, Achilles is only 12/13. He doesn’t want to go to war; but they take him because
there is a prophecy that if you take him along; you will win. His mother does everything to protect him
but to no avail.
//

The epic begins in the 10​th​ year of the war.

Rule of war: when you kill an enemy; you get to take their wives, daughters as slaves.
Agamemnon has killed somebody and taken his sister as a slave. Her name is Chryseis; she is the
daughter of the priest of Apollo; priest tells him to take any other girl but not her because you don’t want
to make Apollo angry. Agamemnon surrenders Chryseis. By doing so he has lost face. In front of his men.
He has to regain his honor, status.
So now, he decides that he will take somebody else’s slave girl.
Whose slave girl?
Achilles’ , the mightiest warrior in the army.
Why does he do this?
To prove how mighty he is.

Achilles gets angry. ‘To save yourself from embarrassment; you’re going to embarrass me?; Why am I
even here? You’re here because Menelaus is your brother. For all I care Helen could stay in Troy forever.
I’m here for my kleos and you, by doing this, are taking away my kleos, I won’t fight for you’
He sulks for most of the book.
In the story of the greatest battle which has the greatest warrior; he doesn’t even fight. Now that is irony.
He won’t lift arms for most of the epic because Agamemnon has taken his prize.
Agamemnon sends numerous slave girls his way but Achilles is adamant that he wants THAT slave girl
which Agamemnon took. He’s throwing a tantrum for most of the epic.

Eventually, things come to a point where Achilles’ cousin: Patrichles tells him that it’s embarrassing; he
convinces Achilles to give him his armor and let him fight wearing it. ‘At least I’ll scare some people’
Achilles says ‘Fine, go. But don’t kill anybody whose kleos will go to me i.e. kill warriors at your level.
Imagine if at the end of this war, only the both of us survive and everybody else dies; imagine the kleos
then. Our name will live forever’
Patrichles goes out wearing the armor; eventually comes up against the bravest warrior in the Trojan
army: Paris’ older brother: Hector. Patrichles is killed.
Hector takes the armor. He is also very kleos minded. (He doesn’t technically have to fight)

The thing about Troy is that you can’t enter it without invitation; Poseidon built it.
Achilles is very angry because of Patrichles’ death. Now their plan of being the only two people alive and
having a lot of kleos is gone; because his best friend, his cousin is dead. What is anything worth now?
Nothing.
Now Achilles is only driven by revenge.
The theme of the Iliad is the wrath of Achilles.
The reasons for his wrath keep changing but the wrath doesn’t go away.
What can cure the wrath?
Maybe killing Hector can do it; so he goes out to fight.
A new armor is built for him as Hector has taken the previous one. Hephaestus, blacksmith of the Gods,
Vulcan, builds the new armor and a shield, on which there is a depiction of the entire world, how?
Because it is built by a god, gods can do whatever.
Why does Achilles need to see all of this?
Because he is never going to see it again. He will die in battle. That is the prophecy.
The prophecy was that he could either live a long happy anonymous life; but if you go to war, you will
die young but be very famous, for all time. // first meta story ever //

He goes and talks to his horses blaming them for Patrichles’ death; they tell him ‘it’s not our fault, he died
because of his idiocy in thinking that he could take Hector on. You know what Achilles, you also know
you will die and you’re still going into battle, that won’t be our fault either.’
He’s constantly being told to go back, to not fight. But where’s the kleos in that?
Die young, get kleos. Yolo.

There are many indications of his state of mind in the Iliad.

Warriors eat a lot, intoxicate a lot because battle isn’t a pretty thing. // battle isn’t WWE; it is UFC //
Intoxication: to distance yourself from the ugliness of battle or you’d break down and cry.
Achilles is not drinking or eating. He doesn’t want to get intoxicated. He doesn’t care that it’s his last
meal. He wants to be aware of every hand he chopped off; he wants to smell the blood. That’s the kind of
state of mind he is in. It’s not glorious battle for kleos anymore; its brutal battle for revenge.
At one point he’s killed so many Trojans, he’s blocked up a river and the God of that river comes out to
fight Achilles. Water vs Fire.
Gods are already a part of this battle: Hera is against Troy because Aphrodite got the apple. Aphrodite is
for Troy, because Aphrodite got the apple.

Achilles finally does confront Hector.

Hector sees Achilles covered in blood and guts and he is terrified. He starts running. Hector runs around
Troy 3 times before Achilles catches him. Hector resigns to his fate. He says ‘we’ll make a deal, whoever
wins will give the other person a proper warrior's burial and treat the corpse with utmost respect because
then our journey to the underworld is assured’
Achilles says no ‘Lions and men don’t make pacts’
‘I’m not going to respect your body. I’m going to kill you, eat you, excrete it, feed it to the animals and
I’m going to desecrate your body in every way because I hate you’
Hector : ‘But there’s no kleos in it’
Achilles: ‘I don’t want kleos, I just want to desecrate you’
Hector dies.
Achilles desecrates his body in every way possible.
Every morning Achilles drags Hector's body 3 times around the walls of Troy. His anger just doesn’t
subside. Hector’s death doesn’t pacify the anger.

The only way to get over something, is to get over it.

Revenge isn’t getting over it; it’s just delving deeper into it.
That’s what Achilles has done.

Hector’s father: King Priam of Troy, the richest King of the richest city in the whole world comes to
Achilles and begs for his son's body.
‘take all my riches, just give me my sons body back, just let me bury him’
Achilles sees this incredibly rich man, with more kleos than anyone, on his knees begging and realizes
that it’s not worth it, it's not worth a thing, kleos, revenge isn’t worth anything if you don’t have
humanity.
The only thing that will calm his rage is humanity.
He relents and lets go of his anger.
That’s how the wrath of Achilles subsides.

The book ends with Patrichles’ funeral.

They have something called ‘funeral games’ to celebrate the funeral.
The book begins and ends with funeral games.
At the beginning, the games were very kleos oriented; now there is a spirit of compromise, that now
they’re holding the funeral in the honor of someone who has passed away ‘let's not squabble, people
compromise with their medals (head decapitated archer, Agamemnon’s chariot)

Odysseus and his friend Diomedes are the only two people who conduct night missions. They are both
patronized by Athena. Odysseus blatantly cheats, Diomedes is more honorable.
Diomedes is the youngest and the most experienced person in the Achaean army, he’s been through most
battles than most (he’s 17 years old)
He comes up behind Paris to attack him, Aphrodite comes up to prevent him from being attacked; Apollo
turns up telling Diomedes to not mess with Gods and to ‘watch himself’
Diomedes is very disturbed.
He has doubts about this. ‘I can’t go against gods or I’ll be incinerated’
He leaves the battle.
Athena goes up to him and tells him ‘so what if they’re gods, I’m a god too. Why have you come all the
way from Greece? Can you imagine the amount of kleos if you beat Apollo? You’re a warrior, your job is
to fight, go out and fight, doesn’t matter if it’s Apollo’
When he goes out to fight, he faces Ares: the god of war; war itself personified challenging him;
Ares throws his spear at Diomedes, Athena catches it. Diomedes, by doing his ‘karma’ beats Ares.