— false charges, — which you and your master have concocted
. . . T h e document (nothing but windy words and importunities! ) which you have sent me, I am returning to you, after replacing it into its seals. Of course you will say, " W h a t is he sending back to us?" From the Babylonians, my servants and my friends are writing me: W h e n I open and read, behold, the goodness of the shrines, birds of sin . . ,28
And then the tablet is broken off.
A further interesting difference is their depiction of an Assyrian king. The Babylonian kings of the early second millennium were confident and fearless, and probably did not have to be too militaristic. The cruel Assyrian kings, whose palaces are virile with muscular depictions of lion hunts and grappling with claw-ing beasts, are in their letters indecisive frightened creatures appealing to their astrologers and diviners to contact the gods and tell them what to do and when to do it. These kings are told by their diviners that they are beggars or that their sins are making a god angry; they are told what to wear, or what to eat, or not to eat until further notice:29 "Something is happening in the skies $
have you noticed? As far as I am concerned, my eyes are fixed. I say, 'What phenomenon have I failed to see, or failed to report to the king? Have I failed to observe something that does not pertain to his lot?' . . . As to that eclipse of the sun of which the king spoke, the eclipse did not take place. On the 27th I shall look again and send in a report. From whom does the lord my king fear misfortune? I have no information whatsoever."30
28 Pfeiffer, Letter 80.
29 Pfeiffer, Letters 265, 439, and 553.
30 Pfeiffer, Letter 315.
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Does a comparison of these letters, a thousand years apart, demonstrate the alteration of mentality with which we are here concerned? Of course, a great deal of discussion could follow such a question. And research: content analyses, comparisons of syntax, uses of pronouns, questions, and future tenses, as well as specific words which appear to indicate subjectivity in the Assyrian letters and which are absent in the Old Babylonian. But such is our knowledge of cuneiform at present that a thorough analysis is not possible at this time. Even the translations I have used are hedged in favor of smooth English and familiar syntax and so are not to be completely trusted. Only an impressionist comparison is possible, and the result, I think, is clear: that the letters of the seventh century B.C. are far more similar to our own consciousness than those of Hammurabi a thousand years earlier.
The Serialization of Time
A second literary comparison can be made about the sense of time as shown in building inscriptions. In 1.2, I suggested that one of the essential properties of consciousness was the metaphor of time as a space that could be regionized such that events and persons can be located therein, giving that sense of past, present, and future in which narratization is possible.
The beginning of this characteristic of consciousness can be dated with at least a modicum of conviction at about 1300 B.C.
We have just seen how the development of omens and augury suggests this inferentially. But more exact evidence is found in the inscriptions on buildings. In the typical inscription previous to this date, the king gave his name and titles, lavished praise on his particular god or gods, mentioned briefly the season and circumstances when the building was started, and then described something of the building operation itself. After 1300 B.C., there is not only a mention of the event immediately preceding the building, but also a summary of all the king's past military ex-
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ploits to date. And in the next centuries, this information comes to be arranged systematically according to the yearly campaigns, and ultimately bursts out into the elaborate annal form that is almost universal in the records of the Assyrian rulers of the first millennium B.C. Such annals continue to swell beyond the recountal of raw fact into statements of motive, criticisms of courses of action, appraisals of character. And then further to include political changes, campaign strategies, historical notes on particular regions — all evidence, I insist, of the invention of consciousness. None of these characteristics is seen in the earlier inscriptions.
This is, of course, the invention of history as well, commencing exactly in the development of these royal inscriptions.31 How strange it seems to think of the idea of history having to be invented! Herodotus, usually famed as "the father of history,"
wrote his history only after a visit through Mesopotamia in the fifth century B.C., and may have picked up the very idea of history from these Assyrian sources. What is interesting to me in this speculation is the possibility that as consciousness develops, it can develop in slightly different ways, and the importance of the writing of Herodotus to the later development of Greek consciousness would make an interesting project. My essential point here, however, is that history is impossible without the spatialization of time that is characteristic of consciousness.
Gilgamesh
And finally a comparison from this best-known example of Assyrian literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh proper is a series of twelve numbered tablets found in Nineveh among the ruins of the temple library of the god Nabu and the palace library of the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. It was written for the king out of previous stories in about 650 B.C., and its hero is a demi-god, 31 See Saggs, p. 47 2f.
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Gilgamesh, whom his father, Esarhaddon, had worshiped. Certainly the name Gilgamesh goes far back into Mesopotamian history. And numerous other tablets have been found which relate to him and to this series in some way.
Prominent among them are three apparently older tablets which parallel some of the Assyrian tablets. Where they were found and their archaeological contexts are not at all clear. They were not found by archaeologists, but were bought by private buyers from a dealer in Baghdad. Their dating and provenance therefore are a questionable matter. From internal evidence I would place them at about the same time as some Hittite and Hurrian fragments about Gilgamesh, perhaps 1200 B.C. The more usual date given them is 1700 B.C. But whatever their date, there is certainly no warrant to suppose, as have some popularizers of the epic, that the seventh century B.C. rendering of the story of Gilgamesh goes back to the Old Babylonian era.
What we are interested in are the changes which have been made between the few older tablets and their Assyrian versions of 650 B.C.32 The most interesting comparison is in Tablet X. In the older version (called the Yale Tablet because of its present location), the divine Gilgamesh, mourning the death of his mortal friend Enkidu, has a dialogue with the god Shamash, and then with the goddess Siduri. The latter, called the divine barmaid, tells Gilgamesh that death for mortals is inevitable. These dialogues are nonsubjective. But in the later Assyrian version, the dialogue with Shamash is not even included, and the barmaid is described in very human earthly terms, even as self-consciously wearing a veil. To our conscious minds, the story has become humanized. At one point in the later Assyrian tablet, the barmaid sees Gilgamesh approaching. She is described as looking out into the distance and speaking to her own heart, saying to herself,
"Surely this man is a murderer! Whither is he bound?" This is subjective thinking. And it is not in the older tablet at all.
32 All references here are to the translation by Alexander Heidel.
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The Assyrian tablet goes on with great elaboration (as well as with great beauty) to bring out the subjective sadness in the heart of Gilgamesh at the loss of his friend. One of the literary devices here (at least as translators have restored a damaged part) is repeated questions that describe the outward demeanor of Gilgamesh rhetorically, asking why his appearance and behavior are thus and so, so that the reader is constantly imagining the interior 'space' and analog T of the hero.