consent and assistance of Utu/Shamash. "If thou wouldst enter the Land - inform Utu," they cautioned him. "The Land, it is in
Utu's charge," they stressed and re-stressed to him. Thus forewarned and advised, Gilgamesh appealed to Utu for permission:
Let me enter the Land,
Let me set up my shem.
In the places where the shem's are raised up,
let me raise my shem. ...
Bring me to the landing place at. ...
Establish over me thy protection!
An unfortunate break in the tablet leaves us ignorant regarding the location of "the landing place." But, wherever it was, Gilgamesh and his companion finally reached its outskirts. It was a "restricted zone," protected by awesome guards. Weary and sleepy, the two friends decided to rest overnight before continuing.
No sooner had sleep overcome them than something shook them up and awoke them. "Didst thou arouse me?" Gilgamesh
asked his comrade. "Am I awake?" he wondered, for he was witnessing unusual sights, so awesome that he wondered whether
he was awake or dreaming. He told Enkidu:
In my dream, my friend, the high ground toppled.
It laid me low, trapped my feet. ...
The glare was overpowering!
A man appeared;
the fairest in the land was he.
His grace . . .
From under the toppled ground he pulled me out. He gave me water to drink; my heart quieted.
Who was this man, "the fairest in the land," who pulled Gilgamesh from under the landslide, gave him water, "quieted his heart"?
And what was the "overpowering glare" that accompanied the unexplained landslide?
Unsure, troubled, Gilgamesh fell asleep again - but not for long.
In the middle of the watch his sleep was ended.
He started up, saying to his friend:
"My friend, didst thou call me?
Why am I awake?
Didst thou not touch me?
Why am I startled?
Did not some god go by?
Why is my flesh numb?"
Thus mysteriously reawakened, Gilgamesh wondered who had touched him. If it was not his comrade, was it "some god" who went by? Once more, Gilgamesh dozed off, only to be awakened a third time. He described the awesome occurrence to his friend.
The vision that I saw was wholly awesome! The heavens shrieked, the earth boomed; Daylight failed, darkness came. Lightning flashed, a flame shot up. The clouds swelled, it rained death! Then the glow vanished; the fire went out. And all that had fallen had turned to ashes.
One needs little imagination to see in these few verses an ancient account of the witnessing of the launching of a rocket ship. First the tremendous thud as the rocket engines ignited ("the heavens shrieked"), accompanied by a marked shaking of the ground ("the earth boomed"). Clouds of smoke and dust enveloped the launching site ("daylight failed, darkness came"). Then the brilliance of the ignited engines showed through ("lightning flashed"); as the rocket ship began to climb skyward, "a flame shot up." The cloud of dust and debris "swelled" in all directions; then, as it began to fall down, "it rained death!" Now the rocket ship was high in the sky, streaking heavenward ("the glow vanished; the fire went out"). The rocket ship was gone from sight; and the debris "that had fallen had turned to ashes."
Awed by what he saw, yet as determined as ever to reach his destination, Gilgamesh once more appealed to Shamash for protection and support. Overcoming a "monstrous guard," he reached the mountain of Mashu, where one could see Shamash "rise up to the vault of Heaven."
He was now near his first objective - the "place where the shem's are raised up." But the entrance to the site, apparently cut into the mountain, was guarded by fierce guards:
Their terror is awesome, their glance is death. Their shimmering spotlight sweeps the mountains. They watch over Shamash, As he ascends and descends.
A seal depiction showing Gilgamesh (second from left) and his companion Enkidu (far right) may well depict the intercession of a god with one of the robot-like guards who could sweep the area with spotlights and emit
death rays. The description brings to mind the statement in the Book of Genesis that God placed "the revolving sword" at the entrance to the Garden of Eden, to block its access to humans.
When Gilgamesh explained his partly divine origins, the purpose of his trip ("About death and life I wish to ask Utnapishtim") and the fact that he was on his way with the consent of Utu/Shamash, the guards allowed him to go ahead. Proceeding "along the route of Shamash," Gilgamesh found himself in utter darkness; "seeing nothing ahead or behind," he cried out in fright. Traveling for many beru (a unit of time, distance, or the arc of the heavens), he was still engulfed by darkness. Finally, "it had grown bright when twelve beru he attained."
The damaged and blurred text then has Gilgamesh arriving at a magnificent garden where the fruits and trees were carved of semi-precious stones. It was there that Utnapishtim resided. Posing his problem to his ancestor, Gilgamesh encountered a disappointing answer: Man, Utnapishtim said, cannot escape his mortal fate. However, he offered Gilgamesh a way to postpone death, revealing to him the location of the Plant of Youth - "Man becomes young in old age," it was called. Triumphant, Gilgamesh obtained the plant. But, as fate would have it, he foolishly lost it on his way back, and returned to Uruk empty- handed.
Putting aside the literary and philosophic values of the epic tale, the story of Gilgamesh interests us here primarily for its "aerospace" aspects. The shem that Gilgamesh required in order to reach the Abode of the Gods was undoubtedly a rocket ship, the launching of one of which he had witnessed as he neared the "landing place." The rockets, it would seem, were located inside a mountain, and the area was a well-guarded, restricted zone.
No pictorial depiction of what Gilgamesh saw has so far come to light. But a drawing found in the tomb of an Egyptian governor of a far land shows a rockethead above-ground in a place where date trees grow. The shaft of the rocket is clearly stored underground, in a man-made silo constructed of tubular segments and decorated with leopard skins.
Very much in the manner of modern draftsmen, the ancient artists showed a cross-section of the underground silo. We can see that the rocket contained a number of compartments. The lower one shows two men surrounded by curving tubes. Above them there are three circular panels. Comparing the size of the rockethead - the ben-ben - to the size of the two men inside the rocket, and the people above the ground, it is evident that the rockethead - equivalent to the Sumerian mu, the "celestial chamber" - could easily hold one or two operators or passengers.
TIL.MUN was the name of the land to which Gilgamesh set his course. The name literally meant "land of the missiles." It was the land where the shem's were raised, a land under the authority of Utu/Shamash, a place where on e could see this god "rise up to the vault of heavens."
And though the celestial counterpart of this member of the Pantheon of Twelve was the Sun, we suggest that his name did not mean "Sun" but was an epithet describing his functions and responsibilities. His Sumerian name Utu meant "he who brilliantly goes in." His derivate Akkadian name - Shem-Esh - was more explicit: Esh means "fire," and we now know what shem originally meant.
Utu/Shamash was "he of the fiery rocket ships." He was, we suggest, the commander of the spaceport of the gods. The commanding role of Utu/Shamash in matters of travel to the Heavenly Abode of the Gods, and the functions performed by his subordinates in this connection, are brought out in even greater detail in yet another Sumerian tale of a heavenward journey by a mortal.
The Sumerian king lists inform us that the thirteenth ruler of Kish was Etana, "the one who to Heaven ascended." This brief statement needed no elaboration, for the tale of the mortal king who journeyed up to the highest heavens was well known throughout the ancient Near East, and was the subject of numerous seal depictions.