NUMERICS AND GEOGRAPHY
OF GILGAMESH TRAVELS
E. Spedicato
Department of Mathematics
University of Bergamo, Italy
Abstract. We consider Gilgamesh travels, as described in the surviving Gilgamesh
epic. Assuming that the epic is based on actual travels, we propose dierent itineraries
than usually assumed. We claim that Gilgamesh aimed to the heart of Asia, possibly
the original land of the Sumerians, via two dierent routes: one taking him through
the Karakorum, the other via the Balkash lake and most probably the Zungarian gates.
Final aim was a mountain range still now sacred to the local Ngolok tribe.
1
***
This work is dedicated:
to the late Leonard Francis Clark,
whose adventures in Amazonian Peru fascinated my young years,
whose report of his military duty in Northern Tibet
opened a new light on the dawn of civilization,
in the year of my rst ight over Amazonian Peru,
land of secrets to be unveiled
to the Ngolok
erce tribe of North Tibet
preservers of the ancient sacred Anu Mashu mountain,
let them for ever own the land of their fathers
and keep faithful to their traditions
to Khubaba
and to the Yetis
peaceful creatures in the high mountains,
our genetic brothers,
hunted down by Homo Sapiens Sapiens,
by homo homini lupus.
***
2
***
Sunt
nomina
lumina
Oh, Geography
Cinderella of sciences!
S.H.,
beautiful daughter of the Hunza people,
do learn Burushaski,
language of your ancestors
language of a special people
of a very special place...
***
3
1. Introduction
The Gilgamesh epic deals with the adventures of Gilgamesh, king of the Sumerian
city of Uruk (biblical Erech), son of the semigod Lugalbanda and of the goddess Rimat
Ninsun, hence himself two thirds "god", one third man, but mortal as all men. The text
of the epic is not known in its entirety. The rst tablets were found in the excavations
of the library of Assurbanipal (668-627 BC) in Ninive by Layard in the 1840s. The rst
communication that these tablets contained a Chaldaic story of the Universal Flood
was made on December 3, 1872, in London, by the assyriologist Smith. It is now known,
see Pettinato (1992), that the epic in the version of the Assurbanipal library (where
apparently four copies were kept) consisted of 12 large tablets, each one having about
300 lines, for an estimated total of 3059 lines. Currently about 2000 lines are known.
More may be discovered in future excavations or more simply in the deposits of the
world museums. It is interesting to note that the rst four lines of the epic were found
in September 1998 by Theodore Kwasmann while searching among the collections of
the British Museum (see the article of R.J. Head in Odyssey, July-August 1999). The
four lines, published in Nouvelles Assyriologiques Breves et Utilitaires, are given here
in the original Assyrian text and in their published translation:
(sha nagbu iimuru i) shdi maati
(xxx-ti iid) uu kalaama hhassu
(Gilgamesh sha n)agbu iimuru ishdi maati
(xxx-t)i iidu kalaama hhassu
He who saw the nagbu (the country's foundation)
who knew.... was wise in all matters!
Gilgamesh (who saw the nagbu), (the country's foundation)
who knew.... was wise in all matters!
In the above translation the correct meaning of nagbu was a point of discussion. In the
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary the word is translated as "totality" or "spring, fountain,
source". We will see at the end of this essay an intriguing relation with "spring", in
both a geographical and an ethnographical sense.
In addition to the Assyrian version of the epic found in Ninive, fragments in dierent
languages, including non semitic Hurrian, Sumerian and Hittite, have been found in
several locations in the Middle East, most of them predating Assurbanipal time. At
least ten documents are dated to the paleobabylonian period (i.e. Hammurabi's time,
circa 1800 BC), while half a dozen documents in Sumerian are dated to the second
half of the third millennium BC. There is the intriguing possibility that the epic was
originally composed by an advisor of Gilgamesh (no more a semigod apkallu, but a
human ummanu), named Sileqiunnini, see Pettinato (1992).
About the historicity of Gilgamesh opinions are divided. Gilgamesh is listed in
ancient tablets as the fth king of the rst dynasty of Uruk, often dated at the period
3500-3100 BC. Now the dendrochronological record, see Baillie (1999), suggests that
in the year 3195 BC a dramatic climatic event occurred, possibly associated with a
4
substantial world ooding episode of extraterrestrial origin (i.e. a cometary or asteroidal impact or the close passage of a large body). If the suggested ood event is the
one described as the Utnapishtim/Ziusudra ood in the Gilgamesh epic (and as the
Noah ood in Genesis, the Pygmalion ood in Greek traditions, etc.), then the dating
of the rst Uruk dynasty should be lowered by a few centuries. This would be in agreement with the chronological revision proposed in the last fty years by several authors,
starting from Velikovsky (1953), see in particular Rohl (1998), who dates Gilgamesh
at circa 2500 BC. The following Tables provide some of Rohl's dating.
Table 1: Rohl's dating of First Uruk dynasty
3000 BC Heskiagkasher (biblical Cush)
2900 BC Enmerkar (biblical Nimrod)
2800 BC Lugalbanda
2588 BC Dumuzi
2487 BC Gilgamesh
2348 BC Urlugal
Table 2: Rohl's dating of rst four Egyptian dynasties
2789-2669 BC Menes and First dynasty
2669-2514 BC Second dynasty
2514-2459 BC Third dynasty
2459-2350 BC Fourth dynasty
Rohl dates the Flood at about 3100 BC, but there is a discrepancy in his chronology.
Indeed he notices (p. 425 of his monograph) that a dierent counting of dynasties
lengths based upon the Turin Royal Canon would provide 2898 BC for Year 1 of Menes.
If we take the suggested dendrochronological dating (at 3195 BC) of the Flood and we
notice that according to Manetho there was in Egypt a period of 350 years of confusion
and crisis before Menes, a period that can be naturally explained as the aftermath of
a huge destructive ood, then we would have a date of 2845 BC for Year 1 of Menes,
about half way between the date provided by the Turin Canon and the date in Table
2. In view of likely unavoidable errors that may aect both the dendrochronological
record (despite the high accuracy claimed by its proponents) and the surviving lists
(where coregencies have always been a question diÆcult to extricate), it seems safe to
conclude that the Flood should be dated in the period between 3100 and 3200 BC. An
additional support for dating in this century a catastrophic climatic event is provided
by the analysis of ice cores at Camp Century, Greenland, where a large acid layer has
been identied and dated at 3150 plus or minus 50 BC. It is interesting to note that
another acid layer at Camp Century, dated at 1390 plus or minus 50, comes close to
the dating of the Exodus at exactly 1447 BC, proposed rst by Velikovsky (1953) and
again claimed by Rohl (1995). Both Velikovsky and Rohl have identied the pharaon
of the Exodus with the last pharaon of the 13th dynasty, the obscure Dudimose, whose
name appears in the Turin Canon, and whose tragic kingdomship is certainly more
5
characterized by a great natural catastrophe and by the onslaught brought by the
Hyksos than by the departure of a few hundred thousand Hebrews.
In this paper we will not discuss the historicity of Gilgamesh and its dating. We will
not propose explanations of the extraordinary semigod qualities that he shows in the
epic (see for instance Sitchin (1980) for the nonstandard interpretation of Gilgamesh
mother "goddess", as a female belonging to a group of extraterrestrial "gods" that according to him visited the Earth in ancient times, "created" man by genetic engineering
and were able to copulate with their creatures, as also Genesis states with regard to
the Nephilim). Under the assumption that the epic is based upon an actual traveller's
experience, we will try to identify the routes in the two trips of Gilgamesh, the rst
one to the "Forest of Cedars", the second one to the mountain called "Mashu". Our
proposed routes and nal destinations are wholly dierent, as far as we know, from
those usually considered, these being not too far from Sumer. We claim that Gilgamesh
nal destination was the heart of Asia, the land where quite possibly the Sumerians
came from, the land which in the case of a catastrophical ood of extraterrestrial origin
is the best protected in the whole world from the eects of a global tsunami and of
long lasting torrential rains. According to our thesis Gilgamesh tried to reach this land
via the two most natural routes from Sumer. The rst one, shorter but of much more
diÆcult terrain and of great altitude, took him to the Karakorum passes (e.g. Kilik,
4755m, Mintaka, 4709m, or Khunjerab, originally 4934m now after the construction
of the Karakorum highway reduced to 4602m), quite probably via Iran, Afghanistan,
Kashmir (Barda, Buner, Hazara, Kohistan, Dardistan, Punjal, Hunza), from which he
could have descended into the heart of Asia via eastern Pamir and the Tarim basin region. This approach failed, probably for the extreme diÆculty of the Karakorum trails,
often closed by landslides and snowslides, possibly also for the failure of Gilgamesh to
acclimitize to the high altitude of the Karakorum passes. The two heroes consoled
themselves by killing poor Khubaba (we will suggest who Khubaba might have been)
and by cutting a large cedar tree that they brought back to Uruk.
The second route is longer, by some 3000 km, and went most probably through
very little populated land. It allowed however access to the heart of Asia by the much
easier Zungarian Gates pass, less than 500 meters. Mount Mashu, we claim, is the great
sacred mountain range surrounded on three sides by the Yellow River, still locally called
Maqu (pronounce "Machu"), whose sources are not far from it. The mountain is sacred
to the local north Tibetan Ngolok tribes and till the fties was closed to foreigners. Its
name still bears obvious reference to Mashu and to the highest god of the Sumerian
pantheon.
2. The trip to the Forest of Cedars. Numerics and geographical information
in surviving tablets.
The rst trip takes Gilgamesh and Enkidu to the Forest of Cedars, in a land called
"Lebanon", which is reached overland. Here they kill the monster Khubaba (in Assyrian; Huwawa in the Hittite text) and cut a very big cedar to be taken to the temple of
Enlil in Nippur. They return to Uruk via water, navigating a river called "Euphrates".
6
It is commonly assumed that the Forest of Cedars is present Lebanon.
The trip is described in Tablets II 184 to V 266 in the Assurbanipal text, aected
by several lacunes, only partially remedied by use of the other texts. For the following
discussion of the route, here we report the passages containing numerical and geographical information. These passages are translated from the italian version of the whole
corpus of surviving material given by Pettinato (1992). We rst give the passages from
the Assyrian texts in Assurbanipal library.
1. II, 184{193
Khubaba whose cry is stormy.....who can hear at 60 leagues through the forest
trees..... to protect the Forest of Cedars he has been commanded by Enlil and a
bodily fatigue takes possession of anyone who tries to enter this forest....
2. II, 221{224
I have made up my mind. I will leave to the far away land where Khubaba lives.
I want to face a defy even if of uncertain outcome, I want to explore an unknown
way
3. III, 6{7
Let Enkidu preceed you, he knows the way to the Forest of Cedars
4. III, 48{51
He (Gilgamesh) intends to take the long travel to the place of Khubaba. He will
engage a ght of uncertain outcome, he will walk over unknown trails till the day
when, after a long way, he shall reach the Forest of Cedars.
5. IV, 1{6
After 20 leagues they took a meal, after 30 leagues they stopped for sleep, 50
leagues they had made in their daily march, a distance of one month and a half
they made in 3 days, reaching the "mountains of Lebanon".
6. IV, 78: Gilgamesh ascended the mountain
7. IV, 84: ... spit blood...
8. IV, 87: was overwhelmed by sleep
9. IV, 100: let us go back to the steppes
10. IV, 91: why am I so nervous?
11. IV, 93: why do I feel so week?
12. IV, 207{208
... a diÆcult trail, that a single person cannot easily take, better to be in two...
13. V, 2: ...they were astounded at the height of the cedars...
7
14. V, 5{8:
there were nicely cut trails, they looked at the mountain of cedars, the place where
the gods dwell, the sanctuary of Irnini, the cedar was tall and majestic...
15. V, 5 (Uruk version):
when you (Enkidu) were young, I saw you...
16. V, 255: Gilgamesh cut the trees...
17. V, 258{265:
My friend, the wonderful cedar has been cut, it no more reaches the sky. I want
to use it to build a gate, of height 6 times 12 spans, one span of width, the lower
and the upper hinges one span. Let it be carried to Nippur by the Euphrates....
they put the trunk in the river, Enkidu guided it, Gilgamesh was carrying the head
of Khubaba.
Information from other sources:
18. Yale tablet, 165:
They made axes of 3 talents each
19. Yale tablet, 170:
Gilgamesh and Enkidu each one were carrying ten talents of weapons
20. Yale tablet, 193:
The forest extended 60 leagues in each direction
21. Yale tablet, 247{250:
Let Enkidu lead you, let him check the way, he knows the access to the forest and
every trick of Khubaba
22. Yale tablet, 255:
May he (Shamash) open to you the close trails
23. Yale tablet, 262{269:
...in the river of Khubaba, as you wish, put your feet
24. Baghdad tablet 1{2:
Climb the mountains crevasses, the gods have taken away my sleep...
25. Hittite version:
When they arrived to the shores of Euphrates they made a sacrice.... from there
after 16 days they were in the middle of the mountains.... then they looked at the
cedars.... Gilgamesh and Enkidu cut the cedars... when Huwawa heard the noise
he got angry and said: who has cut the cedars I have grown?....
26. Huwawa said: I will lift you, I will carry you up hill, I will hit your head, I will
put you in the black earth!
8
27. Gilgamesh and Khubaba, 53:
Young men like him, in number of 50, went with him...
28. Gilgamesh and Khubaba, 82:
The sons of your city who accompanied you should not wait long for you at the
foot of the Mountain.
Remark. The "span" is about 60 cm. The "league", Assyrian beru, is the distance
walked in two hours, commonly estimated at 10 km but possibly more, 15 km or more.
3. Identifying the location of the Forest of Cedars
From the above given texts, features of the Land of Cedars are the following:
It is very far away
Enkidu knows the way
The taken overland route was previously "unknown", required a "long wandering"
and in the nal stage goes through a diÆcult terrain "which a simple person
cannot easily take", where "it is better to be in two"
The forest is large, extending in each direction 60 leagues: it is located in the
"mountain of Lebanon"
A river crosses the forest; by putting the cedar in the waters of the river one can
nally reach Uruk
The trip can be divided in two stages. The rst one, equivalent to 45 days of
normal travel, takes the two friends to the "Euphrates river". The second stage
in 16 days takes them to the middle of the mountains.
From the secondary text Gilgamesh and Khubaba we know that 50 friends of
Gilgamesh waited for him at the foot of the mountain. Since they do not appear
to have accompanied him along the new overland way, this suggests that they
reached the waiting point by a dierent, presumedly easier and well known way.
Khubaba could hear "60 leagues" away; his way of dealing with his opponents
was quite peculiar: a hit on the head, lifting them, carrying them uphill, putting
them in the black earth.
It is usually assumed that the destination of Gilgamesh rst trip was some point in the
mountains of present Lebanon, where cedars are known to have existed since ancient
times (only half a dozen of them still live in the wild, well fenced in a national park).
The identication of the land with Lebanon seems supported in the text by references
to Lebanon and Euphrates, despite Lebanon is mainly a modern name for a country
in ancient times known as Phoenicia or with other names. It is our opinion that this
standard identication must be rejected on the following grounds:
9
it is in unresolvable conict with a number of statements in the text
it leads to a feat which is almost certainly physically impossible
it is based upon a hasty identication of the names translated, albeit not incor-
rectly, as "Lebanon" and "Euphrates", with the present state and river in the
Middle East
it does not correspond to a route dened in the text, especially for the terminal
phase, as new, very diÆcult and providing unusual bodily eects.
Our proposal is that the Forest of Cedars was located in Kashmir, i.e. in the mountainous region cut by the river Indus and its several auents. We will more precisely
argue that the meeting with Khubaba took place in the northern reaches of Kashmir,
probably just north of the Hunza valley, on the way to one of the passes (Khunjerab
or more probably Mintaka, for reasons that will be discussed in a forthcoming paper),
that lead via eastern Pamir to the Tarim basin (now mainly a desert, the Takla-Makan,
but still borderd by chains of oasis) and hence to China via the Yellow River valley.
The Hunza valley, about 100 km long, elevation between 1700 and 2500 meters, is a
very special place, with nice climate and where many fruits are grown. Its natural access from Gilgit, about 120 km as the crow ies, was in the past, before the opening of
the Karakorum highway, extremely diÆcult, taking over two weeks, see Bircher (1980).
The approaches to the passes at the end of the valley are also extremely steep and
diÆcult. We will argue that the word translated as "Euphrates" should more correctly
and meaningfully be translated as the "River of the cows" and should be identied with
the Hunza/Indus river, while "Lebanon" should be translated as "Land of milk", this
referring to the general high Kashmir region. We propose that Gilgamesh and Enkidu
reached the Indus via Iran and most probably via southern Afghanistan, hence via the
Khyber pass, reaching their friends at the foot of the Kashmir mountains somewhere
between present Peshawar and Rawalpindi, not far from ancient Taxila, possibly at
the meeting point of the Kabul and Indus river (near the present cities of Attock and
Nowshera).
The 16 days of ascent to the "middle of the mountains" were most probably rst
along the Indus (locally "Sind") river, then, after the Indus turns in an easterly direction towards Ladakh via Baltistan, by following the auents Gilgit and Hunza. We
identify, as said before, the "Middle of the mountains" with the special Hunza valley,
gently elevating from 1700 to 2500 meters, surrounded by steep montains, the river
Hunza having a rather deep bed, not easy to cross (dierent tribes live on each side
of of the river). The valley has about 200 villages, population about 10.000 people at
the time of Second World War, now over 35.000. Every cultivable piece of land is used
to produce cereals, vegetables and fruits (some 20 varieties of superb tasting apricots,
dried for the winter). Till the construction of the Karakorum highway (opened in 1978
for special, mainly military use, in 1986 to general passage, rst European to cross it
Danziger, 11 October 1984, who lled the visa form n. 1 declaring himself to be Donald
Duck, see Danziger (1993)) which crosses the ridge at 4602 meters, the most used pass
was the Mintaka pass (4709m), the one where probably Gilgamesh was directed. The
10
pass was used to import some products from China, silk and a few objects of daily use.
By this way, we surmise, Gilgamesh intended to cross into the heart of Asia towards
the sacred mount Mashu that he reached by a longer easier way in his second trip.
Our proposals above are based upon the following considerations:
The Forest of Cedars. The so called cedar of Lebanon, scientic name Cedrus
Libanotica, presently grows wildly in extremely limited numbers in Lebanon,
Siria and southern Anatolia, but its greatest natural habitat, in the variety Cedrus
Deodara, is Kashmir, see Appendix 3. In view of the thesis strongly argued for by
Kamal Salibi (1988, 1996, 1998) that the Hebrews previous to their deportation
rst to Assyria by Sargon II (722 BC), then to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar (587
BC), were living on the mountains of south-western Arabia (present Asir/Yemen
region) and that the Phoenicians too originally lived along the arabian coasts of
the Red Sea, it may even be argued that Kashmir, and not Lebanon, was the
main source of cedar wood in ancient biblical times. See again Appendix 3 for
the fact that Cedrus Deodara is the standard timber used even now in Asia for
religious works. The timber had to be brought to the Red Sea by Phoenicians
via the Indus river and the Indian Ocean. Trade of timber is well documented to
Sumer from the Indus valley, not necessarily by Phoenicians.
A further argument that the Forest of Cedars was not in Lebanon is the huge
size given in the text. The forest is said to have an extension of "60 leagues",
i.e. at least 600 km., in each direction. Such size is incompatible with the small
dimensions of Lebanon. Jebel Liban is about 120 km long and no more than 40 km
wide, Jebel el Sharqui (the Anti Lebanon) is even smaller. If the Kashmir region
is dened by the mountain area whose waters feed the Indus, then this region
is roughly a rectangle of over 700 by 500 km, in excellent agreement with the
epic statement. It should be noted that Kashmir, now partially deforested, was
in ancient times almost fully covered by forests (of course only partly consisting
of cedar trees!), thanks to the rains brought by the monsoons. The tree line
now approaches 4000 meters and barley can be grown up to 4400 meters on
the slopes of the Hunza valley. At Gilgamesh time, around the middle of the
third millennium BC according to Rohl's revised chronology, which we deem
to be basically correct, the world was experiencing a climatic optimum, with a
megalitic civilization thriving in northern Europe, grape growing in Sweeden,
wetter conditions in many regions now very arid, including central Asia, hence
the tree line might have been even higher.
The terms Lebanon and Euphrates. What is usually translated as "Lebanon"
is a semitic word that in say the original, purely consonantal (vocalization was
introduced only between the 5th and 8th century AD by the Masoretes, when
ancient Hebraic was no more spoken since almost one thousand years) biblical
text reads as LBN. We think it is correct to look at the most natural basic
meaning of a consonantally spelled word. Now one of the arabic vocalizations for
LBN is leben, laban, that in Hebraic and in Arabic is a word for "milk" or "dairy
products". Thus we are led to propose as a feasible translation for the term LBN
11
in a geographical context the expression land of milk. Similarly the word usually
translated as "Euphrates" appears in the biblical consonantical text as NHR
PRT, where NHR is vocalized as nahar, meaning "river", while PRT is vocalized
as farat, following the present way of calling the river Euphrates in Mesopotamia
(nahar farat/furat). However PRT may more meaningfully and without violating
linguistic rules be vocalized as PAROT, plural of PARA, Hebraic word for "cows
", hence leading to NHR PRT as river of the cows, a term perfectly correlated with
our proposed land of milk. Now cows, while certainly present in Middle East at
Gilgamesh time, were not the most common cattle, since the relatively arid land
favoured, in Mesopotamia as well as in Lebanon, Palestine and much of Arabia,
sheep and goat. Cows and milk are plentiful in India, where climatic conditions
are better and where cheese and yogurt are basic staples for the population.
Moreover there is a curious special feature in the animal life in the Hunza valley,
namely the presence of a unique type of small cow, about as big as a St Bernard
dog, that produces some 4 liters of milk a day, is very useful for transport and
can graze on extremely steep slopes. Not far from the Hunza valley, in fact just
beyond its north-eastern ridge, there is the Vakhan corridor of Pamir, the "nger"
that Afghanistan points between Pakistan and Tagikistan. This name also is a
sanscrit term for a type of cow, related to the latin term "vacca "....
All above elements suggest a new translation for the terms LBN and NHR PRT,
tied to a natural feature of the land of extreme importance for living. It may be
even wondered if the sacrality of cows in Hindu religion may predate the Arian
invasion of circa 1600 BC, being a surviving element of previous religions.
The diÆculty of the travel. The epic states that the travel was long, diÆcult
and by a previously unknown route. Now reaching Lebanon (or Palestine) from
Uruk via the shortest way, i.e. by a straight line through the Sirian desert, would
in fact be a great, almost impossible feat, since the mainly stony reddish desert
lying between lower Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean coast (Al Widyan and
Badet esh Sham, namely the Arabia Deserta in Ptolemaic maps) is extremely
poor in water and was always avoided in classical times. Even now the area, as
shown e.g. by the satellite night picture found in the Times Millennium Edition,
1999, is totally dark in the night, a sign of absence of humans, while Saudi
Arabia, except for the Rub-al-Khali desert, is dotted by many white spots, most
of them unrelated to methane aring in the oil elds, but indicative of villages and
towns. We may here note that prof. Salibi in his last quoted monograph states
that western Arabia was easily reached from Mesopotamia via a range of wadis
from Kuwait to Al Madinah going through the extensive Kassim oasis (the power
region of King Ibn Saud, possibly the original place of the Kassites?), a way that
became the standard route taken by the pilgrims from the East to the Meccah
(notice that the whole of present Saudi Arabia is called Arabia Felix in Ptolemaic
maps!). However there is a natural and easy way from Mesopotamia to Lebanon,
that was taken by most travellers, and that adds less than 15% extra mileage,
namely by following the Euphrates (on foot or by boat, the current being not
12
strong), up to latitude about 36Æ , close to ancient Thapsacus, then crossing the
mildly ondulated stretch of land (about 150 km) to the Orontes, hence following
the Orontes to the mountains of Lebanon via Homs, Baalbek and the Bekah. One
must also notice that the mountains of Lebanon, maximum elevation 3086m, are
of rather easy access, with rotund usually smooth slopes. Total distance from
Uruk to the Bekah via the described route is just about 1500 km. Such a distance
can certainly be made on foot by a fast athletic walker in two or three weeks,
against the six weeks that the epic states were normally needed to reach the foot
of the mountain. Notice also the absurd geographical statement, in the usually
assumed scenario, that the river Euphrates was reached at the end of the rst
stage of the trip! It is moreover almost certain that the way to Lebanon over
land (the only possibility by sea would imply to circumnavigation of Africa....)
was known well before Gilgamesh times, since already in Ubaidic times contacts
existed between the Mediterranean and the Gulf area. Thus accepting Lebanon
as the nal destination would wholly remove the aspects of diÆculty and novelty.
Our proposal is that Gilgamesh tried a new approach via land towards the Indus
region. We feel however that his nal aim was entering the heart of Asia. He failed
attaining this goal in his rst trip due to the diÆculties on the Karakorum trails. At his
time the Indus valley civilization (Harappa, Mohenjo Daro; the name of the region in
Sumerian was probably Meluhha; any relation with the Moluccas?) was in full blossom
and contacts via water (by the Indus river and then by coasting the Baluchistan/Iran
coast), implying commercial trade, were well developed, as proved for instance by the
excavations of Bibby (1970) in Bahrein, a stopover for merchant boats in view of the
rich wells of sweet water. So we think it was merit of Gilgamesh to try a new road
(and we will discuss later how Enkidu could be a guide). The text does not provide
any clue to precisely which route was taken by Gilgamesh. A reason for this may be
that he went for most part by unpopulated lands, certainly full of wild animals, no
check for Gilgamesh and Enkidu. We suspect however that in the missing lines some
clues were probably available, since there was at least one important developed area
they crossed.
Now we give an educated guess about the possible route.
To the central Zagros mountains via lower Mesopotamia, Elam and the Persian
Gates. Notice that according to Bibby the line of the southern coast of Irak
surprisingly has not changed much from Sumerian times. So Gilgamesh may have
initially just moved east, skirting the north side of the Shatt-el-Arab marshes,
crossing the Tigris and the Karun river near present Ahwaz and entering the
mountains near present Behbehan
Crossing central Zagros via present Shiraz (near Persepolis) and Saidabad (previ-
ously Sirjan) towards Kerman, the capital of Khorasan, ancient Carmania. The
road is via mountains never over 3000m, well watered, inhabited since millennia
before Gilgamesh by tribes specialized in carpetry and among the rst makers of
pottery
13
Towards Sistan by skirting the southern side of the Dasht-e-Lut desert via Bam
and other oasis. At Gilgamesh time Sistan (ancient Drangiana/Paratacene), an
extremely fertile region of about 30.000 square kilometers, was one of the few
areas in the world where walled cities of substantial size had been built. One of
the main activity in this area was mining, in particular of precious hard stones
(turquoise, agate, possibly, as later discussed, even copper), certainly to be exported also to foreign lands. Among the cities we recall Shar-i-Sokhta, about
60 km south of Zabol, on the borderline between present Iran and Afghanistan,
with an estimated population of about 10.000 people (notice that the population of Uruk is estimated at 50.000 people). We recall that Sistan cities were
destroyed catastrophically in the period 1600-1800 BC, possibly in relation with
the Arian invasion and/or the catastrophe that left a strongly dened sign in the
dendrochronological record in the year 1629 BC. The name Sistan is relatively
modern, having been given after the region was invaded by the Saci, a Scythian
tribe, around 130 AD (SAKASTAN = SIGISTAN = SISTAN...). Sistan is the
place of the adventures of Rustem, the hero of the Book of King of Ferdowsi (any
relation with Gilgamesh?....).
From Sistan there are two natural ways to the Indus valley. The southern one
goes via Zahedan, then follows the southern side of the Chagai hills, rather well
watered, north of the Baluchistan desert of Kharan. It enters the Indus valley
after Quetta via the Balan pass, about 1000m high. It reaches the river near the
historical city of Sukkur, about 60 km north-east of Mohenjo Daro. The second
route follows the river Helmand towards Kandahar, then skirts the southern side
of the Afghanistan mountain range and reaches Kabul via a number of valleys and
easy passes. From Kabul it follows the river presently named Kabul, but till the
rst half of the 19th century named Peshawar, in an easterly direction. It enters
Pakistan via the Khyber pass, 1067m, crosses Peshawar and reaches the Indus
near Nowshera, close to the meeting of the Kabul and Indus. We would guess
that the way between Sistan and Mohenjo Daro was used by caravans in view of
the likely contacts between these areas; thus it would be more corresponding to
an exploratory attitude that Gilgamesh choose the route via the Khyber pass.
It is natural to assume that the starting point for the ascent to the mountains of the
Forest of Cedars was near the meeting of the Kabul and the Indus. This is also a likely
place where the 50 friends referred to in the Gilgamesh and Khubaba text waited for
the return from the mountain expedition. The 50 friends most probably arrived via
the normal route, i.e. by sea and river, whose feasibility with reed boats was proved
by Heyerdahl (1980), see also Severin (1982). Because navigation along the Indian
Ocean must take into account the eects of the monsoons, this means that Gilgamesh
started his trip most likely around May-June, when his friends could start the water
voyage to the meeting point on the Indus. The monsoon (whose name comes from
the arabic word MAWSIM = season) from October to April blows from NE to SW,
i.e. from the Tibetan mountains towards the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula
(such a monsoon is mainly dry, except in the terminal part; even nowadays a branch
14
of the monsoon brings rather heavy rains and mist to the Dhofar mountain region
of Oman, (inhabited by tribes possessing four non semitic languages having at least
nine nonsemitic sounds), from June to August it blows in the reverse direction, being
associated with heavy rains. Monsoons are active only below 4000 meters.
From the hypothesised point the Indus enters the Hindukush-Karakorum ranges,
characterized by deep and very steep canyon-like valleys and peaks reaching over 7000
m (e.g. the K2, 8611m, rst climbed by the Italian expedition directed by geologist
Ardito Desio in 1954, the Nanga Parbat, 8126m, the Distagil Sar, 7885 m). In 1986,
on my rst ight to China, I ew a Swiss Air airplane that after a night stopover in
Sharja crossed over the Karakorum in the early morning. I still vividly remember the
fantastic view of the most rugged mountain area I have ever contemplated from an
airplane. I was particularly impressed by the very deep canyons zigzagging through
forested mountains. The pyramid like magnicent K2 jutted to the sky just a couple
of thousand meters under the airplane. Beyond the K2 the blue sky changed to a
greyish-yellowish colour that lasted for almost three hours, the eect of winds lifting
the ne dust of the Takla-Makan and the Gobi deserts.
By following the Indus river and its auents one can reach the heart of Asia via
several passes. A natural possibility is by following the Indus (through Dardistan),
then the Gilgit, then the Hunza rivers. From here following the Khunjerabi one arrives at the Khunjerab pass, originally 4934m, now 4602 after the completion of the
Karakorum highway. To the left of this pass there is the Mintaka or Minteke pass, 4709
m, wherefrom the river presently called by the Chinese as Ming-t'ieh-kai-ho is born,
owing ultimately into the Tarim, that was mostly used before the construction of the
Karakorum highway (and that most likely, also for further reasons to be discussed in
a forthcoming paper, was the pass where Gilgamesh was directed). We can give the
following justication for the proposed mountain route:
some information about the route had to be generally known by people in the
Indus valley, since quite probably contacts and trade existed already between the
Indus valley and present Xinjang (exchanges of silk and tea). Notice that the
proposed route may also have been one of the routes taken, some 800 years after
Gilgamesh, by the invading Arians from the North, since pockets of indoeuropean
language speaking peoples are documented in the Takla-Makan region. These are
the Tocarians, who even had a script (based on the Brahmi alphabet with additional 12 characters for nonsancrit sounds), several rolls in Tocarian, over 1500
years old, having been found at the beginning of the 20th century in a monastery
in Dunhuang, the town of the One Thousand Buddhas (other manuscripts have
been found in Turfan and in Kucha; some Tocarians, apparently quoted in Strabo
XI, 8 as Asioi, moved to Bactriana circa 180 AD, most probably under pressure
from the Mongols/Huns). It is however likely that most of the Arians came via
a more westernly auent of the Indus, namely the present Chitral/Kabul river,
called till last century the Peshawar, that winds in dramatic gorges on the eastern
side of the Hindukush (whose traditional meaning is "the killer of Hindus", with
reference to the diÆcult and dangerous paths along the river).
15
the road is the most direct one to the heart of Asia from the Indus valley. We have
the suspicion that the real goal of Gilgamesh already in his rst trip was to reach
the place of Utanapishtim by the shortest way. We will claim in a next section
that the place of Utanapishtim is a sacred mountain near the sources of the Yellow
River. Failure to cross into the Tarim basin, most probably for acclimatization
diÆculties and the impassibility of the trails, even nowadays, like the Karakorum
highway, often closed due to landslides, led Gilgamesh to substitute the original
aim with the killing of Khubaba and the cutting of a great cedar. It should also
be noticed that the trail to the Mintaka pass is cut in parts along almost vertical
walls, as shown in a picture in Danziger's book.
a number of names in the Hunza region share intriguingly the rst syllabe in
Khubaba, indicating a possible common origin and meaning (that presently I am
unable to specify). Such are:
{ the names of the pass and river, KHU-njerab, KHU-njerabi
{ the name of the river HU-nza; this is also the name of the valley and is the
ancient name of the main town, now called Baltit
{ the name of other small town: KHU{dabad, Mor{KHUn....; an inspection of
the names of the about 200 villages in the valley might enrich this list
{ KHU-rukuts, the name of one of the four clans of local population.
We should note that the fact that KHU is often followed by N in the above names
suggests, if our correlation is correct, that perhaps the correct prononciation of
the Sumerian syllabe KHU might be more close to KHUN.
Some information on the local population is interesting, even if unrelated to
Gilgamesh travels, since probably he crossed unpopulated mountains. The local
people are the Burusho and speak a language, Burushaski, apparently unrelated
to any other world language, extremely rich in words dening dierent states
of objects, persons, animals....The Burusho are very strong physically, walk fast
over steep trails, have almost zero child mortality, live usually over 100 years,
father children at very high age, keep perfect eyesight and hearing till their last
days; before the opening of the Karakorum highway, their diet had very little
fats, being based on a lot of fruits.
the epic contains also a geographical reference to Saria, as a country not far from
the Forest of Cedars, usually assumed to mean Siria. We can notice that SR can
correspond to ZR, which appears in the name of a Hunza valley village, ZARAbad, and moreover in the rst mountain region crossed by the Indus, which is
Ha-ZARA.
We suspect that the Hunza valley, elevation between 1700 and 2500 meters, gently
sloping (but with very diÆcult access, hence the need of "being in two"), now well
cultivated, was the place where Gilgamesh found the great cedar forest, intersected by
trails and "taken care of" by Khubaba. Here we suspect the great cedar was cut, to
16
be transported to the foot of the mountains by otation over the river. The meeting
with Khubaba appears to have occurred further on, at higher elevations, since the
symptoms indicated in the epic, i.e. weakness, fatigue, strange dreams, loss of blood,
sleeplessness, are clear symptoms of mountain sickness. The fact that they aected
Gilgamesh and not Enkidu is intriguing and a possible explanation will be oered in
a next section. Gilgamesh was a man of low plains and a fast walker. From Hunza
valley the trail goes up very steeply, so he may have been unable to acclimatize when
he reached elevations over 4000 meters. The failure of crossing into the Tarim basin
may be explained, in addition to the physical problems of mountain sickness, by the
impassibility of the Mintaka pass, due to landslides or snowslides. Since snowslides are
often produced just by human high voices, one wonders if the great cries of Khubaba
may have resulted in closing the pass by starting a snowslide.
4. Numerics of the rst trip
It is stated that the route from Uruk to the river Eupfrates, by us identied with
the Indus river, was equivalent to a month and a half (i.e. to about 45 days) of
normal travel, but was accomplished in 3 days, corresponding to a total distance of
150 "leagues", or, in Assyrian, "beru".
Leaving aside the question of how this distance could have been made in three
days (we think there is a symbolic meaning behind), we note that 150 beru imply a
distance of at least 1500 km but possibly even of over 2700 km. Indeed one beru being
equivalent to the distance walked in two hours, presumibly in the easy at region of
Sumer, it would depend on the speed of the walker. Nowadays a person used to walk
easily walks 12 km in two hours; persons well trained in walking, which was the normal
way of moving in Sumerian times, could certainly make more than 12 km in two hours,
possibly even 18 km (notice that techniques for fast walking were developed on the
plateaus of Tibet, as noticed for instance by Alexandra David Neel). Now the distance
"as the crow ies" between Uruk and the Indus/Kabul joining point is about 2400
km. If the 150 leagues should be considered as the shortest distance between the two
points, this would give a value for the beru of 16 km, certainly an acceptable value.
The actual overland route is not along a geodetic and has unavoidable detours. A
reasonable estimate of it would be around 4000 km. Such a distance can certainly be
covered in 45 days by trained people who know the way. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and
most of their contemporaries, were certainly well trained in walking over long distances
and Enkidu is claimed to have known the way (we will suggest in a next section why).
Now 4000 km divided by 45 makes an average walk of about 90 km a day. That this
is not an impossible feat is shown by the following examples:
Fyona Campbell, see her book On foot through Africa, Orion, 1994, in her twenties
crossed by foot North America, Australia and Africa (this continent from Cape
Town to Tanger, over 17.000 km). In Africa she usually made daily stages of
50 km, in less interesting Australia she often made 80 km a day. She is not a
tall woman. She walked about 10 hours a day and spent lot of time in reading,
17
washing, hearing radio news (two people with a jeep were waiting for her), talking
and even irting with her escorts.
Geronimo, the well known chieftain of the Apaches, used to raid the Mexicans
(he hated them since they had killed his wife and children) in the rugged Sierra
Madre region, which has the deepest canyons in the world. He was a very short
man. In his biography, see Barrett (1906), he estimates that he usually walked
65-70 km a day during these raids.
As stated in Polybius III, 41 (I read this passage 40 years ago, when I was 15;
I was impressed and recalled it well; I have checked that memory did not fail
me!), the Romans expected Hannibal to invade from Sicily, hence the main body
of the army led by Tiberius Sempronius was stationed near Lilibeum, present
Trapani, in Sicily, on the coast facing Carthago. When news came that Hannibal
was going to cross the Alps, the army was relocated to Rimini (easiest access to
Rome at that time was via Picenum) in just 40 days (Polybius III, 68), implying
an average walk of about 50 km a day. Notice that Roman men were usually
stocky but short. Moreover Roman soldiers were carrying heavy weapons (the
weight of the Roman pylum was no less than 30 kilos) and food for 40 days (salted
pig, vinaigre and cereals in grain), for a total weight certainly greater than their
body weight. Notice also that a whole army cannot move as fast as a few persons.
The Roman soldiers were tired when they arrived in Rimini and were granted a
good rest, possibly on the sandy beaches at those times cleaner than now, most
probably in the cheap local brothels....
John Chardin in his Travels in Persia, 1673-1677, second volume, chapter XII,
Dover Press, 1988, describes a walking competition occurring in Ispahan every
year where the winner walked from 4 in the morning to 6 in the evening, covering
a xed length corresponding to 36 French leagues, i.e. about 160 km (the French
common league was 4.445 meters, the postal leugue 3.980; the UK league was
4.828 meters, the Spanish 5.572), at an average speed hence of about 13 km per
hour; he says that people complained the winner was not so good, since in the
reign of Sha Sefy the winner made the walk in 12 hours, averaging 15 km per
hour. Chardin tried to follow the man when in the hot middle of the day he was
slowing his pace, but he could not keep his pace at the walking mode; rst prize
was 500 tomans, equivalent to 22.500 french Livres.
Julius Caesar was able to led his army on several occasions through daily walks
of about 100 km, and this in a territory full of forests, marshes and often covered
by over one meter of snow.
In view of the above examples, and the fact that Gilgamesh and Enkidu were unusually
tall, strong and trained persons, reaching the Indus river in 45 days by foot is in our
opinion a perfectly possible feat.
The ascent to the Middle of the mountains where the Forest of Cedars was located
took 16 days. The description of the Forest (with good trails, taken care by Khubaba)
18
does not seem to relate to a wild pristine forest on the slopes of steep mountains,
but more to a forest somehow managed in an area somewhat at. We guess that the
location of the Cedar Forest was the Hunza valley, over 100 km long, about 10 km wide,
gently sloping, now cultivated as much as possible, especially in fruits (over 20 types
of the best apricots in the world). The Hunza valley can presently be reached over
the Karakorum highway from the Kabul/Indus meeting point in about 600 km (via
an older road by the Malakand and Shangla passes in about 530 km). Along ancient
trails distance would have been certainly dierent, but it is diÆcult to estimate if it
was longer or shorter (some ancient trails cut directly through very steep slopes, where
modern roads must wind up their way). Assuming a distance of 600 km this would
correspond to about 40 km a day, thus a distance per day about half that made in
the easier way from Uruk to the Indus; 40 km a day over mountains is certainly a
possible feat (when I was 14 staying in the summer house of the Collegio Rotondi in
Campestrin, in the Italian Dolomiti, our frequent excursions were usually of 14 hours,
up and down for over 3000 meters altitude dierence and for about 40 km; we were
dead tired at evening!). The trail from Chilas, near Gilgit, to the beginning of the
Hunza valley (the villages of Chilt and Pissan) is very diÆcult, with up and downs,
since the river bed cannot generally be followed due to the narrowness of the canyon
like valley. Still it does not go over elevations higher than those met in the crossing
of the Zagros mountains or on the way from Sistan to the Indus. Hence the mountain
sickness symptoms of Gilgamesh described in the epic should not have occurred before
arrival to the Hunza valley. Therefore it is likely that the nal event, the meeting with
Khubaba, occurred at much higher elevations, on the way to the Karakorum passes,
probably over 4000 meters. Let us recall that the tree line is now close to 4000 meters
and that at Gilgamesh times, a period of climatic optimum, it was possibly higher. A
further reason why the meeting with Khubaba must have taken place in the 4000/5000
meters region is given in the next section.
We do not believe that the real aim of the rst trip was to kill Khubaba or to cut
cedars. We think that the trip had to be terminated on the way to the Karakorum
passes for the following reasons:
the battle with Khubaba was diÆcult and he was not alone, other similar beings
were in the region
due to mountain sickness and the need to still go several hundred meters higher
Gilgamesh felt unable to continue
most likely, the trail was made impassable by landslides or snowslides.
After the killing of Khubaba a great cedar was cut, Gilgamesh intending to bring
it home to build a gate for the great temple of Enlil in Nippur. It is natural to assume
that the gate would be constructed using single planks. Since the given height of the
gate is 72 spans, corresponding to about 43 meters, the cut cedar had to be at least 45
meters long, with a likely average diameter of over 2 meters. Cedar trees in pristine
forests could certainly reach this height (just recall that according to Strabo yew trees,
which presently are not known in giant sizes, on the mountains of Liguria could reach a
19
diameter of over 4 meters!). Thus the cut cedar volume would have exceeded 150 cubic
meter and its weight would have been at least 100 tons. It was certainly possible to
cut such a giant using the huge axes in dotation to Gilgamesh and Enkidu (recall that
Miro of Croton cut giant trees and used his hands as wedges; till a too big tree clinched
his hands so hard that he could not districate himself and was then devoured by wild
animals....). It would also not have been impossible to roll such a tree into the Hunza
river and oat it down till the meeting point with the 50 friends, wherefrom it could
have reached Uruk along the well known watery way used in trade between Meluhha
and Sumer. It appears however to this author that it would have been impossible to
accomplish this feat if the cedar was cut in the mountains of Lebanon. Indeed, even
assuming that the Orontes had enough water and gradient to oat it to the closest most
convenient point to reach the Euphrates, say to the region of Hama, from there the
huge tree should have been hand carried, pushed or pulled for over 100 km of country
not precisely at. This would have meant a weight of at least 2 tons for each man, a
probably impossile feat, which could have resulted also in substantial damage to the
trunk. Moreover we feel that such a sweaty slavish job would not have been considered
appropriate for a person being two thirds divine and for his friends, certainly chosen
among the highest ranking families in Uruk. We think that this statement in the test
strongly contributes to rejecting present Lebanon as the place where the cedar was cut.
4. Who were Khubaba and Enkidu?
Here we will oer a suggestion on the nature of Khubaba, and possibly of Enkidu.
We let aside the possibility that the two characters are ctional or mainly loaded of
symbolic elements. We try to identify which real creatures they could have been.
According to our scenario the meeting with Khubaba took place in the heart of the
high mountains between the Indus, the Tarim and the Amu Darya basins, a region
where the three great ranges of Karakorum, Pamir and Hindukush join. That this is
a very special place in history of mankind will be claimed in a forthcoming paper. We
also observed that the meeting took place most probably on the way to the Mintaka
pass and at an elevation well over 4000 meters, in view of the symptoms of mountain
sickness shown by Gilgamesh. It is important to note that Enkidu did not show such
symptoms. Now it is a fact known since very ancient times that people in the Himalaya,
Karakorum, Pamir regions, and till last century at least also in Caucasus, have strong
belief in the existence in their mountains of great bipedal walking creatures with the
following features:
they are tall, often over 2.5 meters, very hairy, with rather short legs but arms
reaching the kneels; they are endowed with extraordinary good hearing
they live in caves above the three line, in the 5000 meters region
they keep hidden during the day, hunt in the night, especially in misty nights,
but are occasionally seen at dusk
20
they do not usually attack man nor do they eat human esh. They eat roots and
animal meat. They like yak meat. In the night they approach the fenced places
where yaks are kept, jump inside, kill the animal hitting their head with their
powerful st, jump out with the yak under their arms, run overhill and hid their
prey under earth or sand to keep it for the next days away of reach of vultures
occasionally they are known to carry o women or men with whom they have
sexual intercourse, leading, it is claimed, see below, to osprings.
These creatures are known with dierent names, the common name in the west, "yeti",
being just a local name in Nepal meaning "the man in the rocks". Among other names
we recall tshemo, dremo, tschemong, meti, sciukpa, migo, kangmi, baman, jangal.
Most people think that the stories about the yeti (here we will use this well known
name) are fruit of imagination. This was also the opinion of the great mountain climber
Rheinhold Messner, till the day, 19th July 1986, when, while trekking the high reaches
of the Mekong in south-east Tibet, on the way from Chamdo to Nagqu, near the hamlet
of Alando, at dusk he saw not far in front of him a great creature, well over two meters
high, moving fast and silently. He was utterly surprised and could not believe his eyes.
He moved to the place where the creature had been and there a great deep print was
visible in the soft humid soil, which he photographed. Some minutes later he saw again
the creature, moving fast, stopping sometimes, emitting hissing sounds. It had stocky
legs and long arms. It disappeared uphill, apparently running with both legs and arms.
A strong phetid smell was left, a mixture of rancid butter, garlic and excrements. The
footprint was about 20 by 30 cm.
Sightings of yeti have been made by several reliable western persons, e.g.: in 1921
by colonel Howard-Bury, who led the rst expedition that tried to reach the summit of
mount Everest; by the Polish oÆcer Rawicz, on his escape to India from a soviet lager
(he saw a yeti near the Bajkal, height about 2.4 meters, huge chest, arms reaching
the kneels, looking like a hybrid of a human and an ape). At the end of the 19th
century a female yeti, named Zana, was caught and kept captive in a semi-domesticated
state in the Caucasus village of Tkhina, as documented in oÆcial reports based upon
local testimonies by academicians Porsnev and Maskontsev. She had a huge hairy
body, used stones as weapons, could run faster than a horse, was unable to speak but
emitted sounds, had extremely good hearing, her face was terrifying with reddish eyes.
She learnt to do simple jobs, as collecting wood. She copulated with village males
producing babies! As soon as a baby was born, she washed him in the freezing waters
of the local river, which resulted usually in the death of the child. Four babies however
survived, were taken away from her and developed as normal persons. Tha last of her
children, named Khvit, died in 1954.
In another story a woman, living in the village named Hushe in Baltistan, not far
from Hunza, was taken by a yeti and had children from him. When villagers found her
they killed her children, despite her protests. She was returned to the village, where
the yeti again tried to retake her. This story was told to Messner in 1997. The above
information is mainly taken from Messner (1999).
It is clear from the above that Khubaba shares with the "yeti" several elements:
21
big hairy body, extreme good hearing (he hears sounds from at least 600 km; recall
that elephants hear at several hundred km distance, whales at over 1000, birds migrating from Arctic to Antarctica probably hear sounds from over 10.000 km; such
hearing is in the low frequency range, related to large atmospheric waves produced by
macrogeographical structures acting on the atmosphere), and, very intriguingly, the
special way of dealing with big preys: a hit on the head, lifting the dead body under
the arm, bringing it uphill, hidding it in the soil. It is therefore natural to hypothesize
that Khubaba was a huge yeti, one exemplar of a population of human-like creatures
acclimatized to high elevations. Messner currently seems to believe that the yeti is an
unkown variety of bear. However the persistent stories of yeti-human copulations with
production of osprings, if true, necessarily imply a strong genetic similarity; moreover
the story that the children of Zana grew as normal persons implies the essential equivalence of the genetic material, dierences thus being behavioral and probably related
to the very special ecological niche utilized by the yeti. Here we certainly have one of
the most fascinating questions on the origin and the evolution of homo sapiens.
The above facts moreover suggest that Enkidu, whom Khubaba claims to have
met when he was young, might have been the ospring of a yeti, who was able to
overcome the cultural gap between "wild man" and man not really because of his love
making with the sacred prostitute, but because he had been taken very young by the
hunter (who may have killed his parents or found him orphaned). Perhaps and more
interestingly the hunter had a yeti "wife", about whom he was loath to speak, so that
the real story of Enkidu's rst years was not what the epic says. Our last hypothesis,
moreover, would also explain how Enkidu could communicate with Khubaba and how
he could speak Sumerian, two feats that are left unexplained in the text and that could
have no other explanation if not a miracolous one, or the fact that Enkidu is a totally
ctitious being.
The epic states that Enkidu knew the way. Not much is said about the hunter
who informed Gilgamesh about Enkidu. Maybe this man was he too a great traveller,
moving on the vast steppes east of the Tigris, and on the mountains and plateaus
of Iran and beyond. He might already have visited the Karakorum reaches where
Gilgamesh went. His feat had clearly to be censored, not to detract from the glory of
the king. That primitive hunters had no problem in walking thousand of kilometers
during their hunt for game is a fact. Coronado described the plain Indians following
the million rich packs of bualos from the Gulf of Mexico up the Mississippi inside
present Canada. Van der Post wrote that once a Bushman (a San, using their name)
followed a wildbeast he had only wounded with his arrow for an estimated 800 km
till the beast collapsed; moreover, he was always able to identify the footprints of the
wounded animal among the hundreds of footprints of the animals in the pack.
5. The second trip. Numerics and geographical information
The second trip has as destination mount Mashu, where Utanapishtim (in Assyrian;
Ziusudra in Sumerian), a man who survived the Flood, was dwelling, having being
22
granted immortality by the gods. Gilgamesh too hoped to get immortality, having
gone through a period of depression at the thought of human mortality, especially
after the death of his friend Enkidu.
In the following we give the surviving information from the corpus of Gilgamesh
texts oered by Pettinato (1992).
Tablets from Assurbanipal library.
1. IX, 5-9:
I wander by the steppes. I am going to the place of Utanapishtim, the son of
Ubartutu. I am moving fast towards this place. In the night I have reached a
mountain pass. I have seen lions, I was scared
2. IX, 36: The name of the mountain is Mashu
3. IX, 55-59
Who are you who came by far away roads, who wandered till you got to my
presence, crossing with diÆculty ever fast owing watercourses?
4. IX, 132-134
You, Gilgamesh, do not be afraid! I open for you mount Mashu, cross without
fear the mountains and the hills!
5. X, 1
Siduri, the hostess who lives far away at the shore of the sea..
6. X, 43-47
Why do you look like someone who has travelled over long distances? Why does
your face show the signs of a hot and of a cold wheather? Why do you wander
only covered with a lion skin?
7. X, 76-91
Gilgamesh insisted: Please, hostess, which is the direction to Utanapishtim? Give
me accurate information. If necessary I will cross the sea, otherwise I will take
the way by the steppe.
Gilgamesh, there has never been a boat for the crossing, no one in memory has
ever crossed this sea. Only Shamash can cross it... The crossing is diÆcult, full
of dangers, in the middle there are lethal waters that make navigation impossible.
How, Gilgamesh, can you cross this sea? Once you get to the mortal waters, what
will you do?
There is however, Gilgamesh, the boatman of Utanapishtim, his name is Urshanabi. You can nd him cutting trees in the woods, near the stone "stela"
8. X, 156-160
Gilgamesh, take an axe, go to the wood, cut planks of 30 meters length, work
them smooth, bring them to me
23
9. X, 166-170
Gilgamesh and Urshanabi entered the boat and began the voyage. A route of
one month and a half towards the land of..... they made in three days. Then
Urshanabi arrived at the waters of death
10. X, 259-261
I have killed bears, hyenas, lions, leopards, tigers, deer...
11. XI, 194-195
Now let Utanapishtim and his wife be like gods. Let Utanapishtim dwell far away,
at the mouth of the rivers
12. XI, 257-258
Gilgamesh and Urshanabi enter the boat. They free the boat and begin the [return]
voyage
Berlin/London tablet
13. 100-104
So Gilgamesh spoke to Surshanabu: Gilgamesh is my name. I have come from
Uruk, from the Eanni, I have wandered by the mountains. I have made a long
way towards the rising Sun
14. 115-119
The stones "stela", Gilgamesh, are my guide, so that I avoid the waters of death.
In your fury you have broken them. I keep them with me, so that they can guide
me
Hittite version
The god of the Moon (Sin) said: bring these two lions you killed to the city, bring
them to the temple of Sin
Hittite version by J. Friedrich (1930), quoted by Sitchin (1980)
After crossing the death waters with Urshanabi, they were in Tilmun, aiming to
the Mashu mountain in a straight way, in the direction of the far away great sea.
On the way there was the town Itla, sacred to the god Ullu-Yah
6. Identifying the route of the second trip
According to the proposal defended here, Gilgamesh trip took him to the heart
of Asia, to mount Mashu, that we will identify, close to the sources of the Yellow
River, with a huge mountain range still sacred to the local population, the Ngolok
tribe. Then he returned to Uruk by water, rst following the Yellow River (for
24
about 4000 km), then coasting the eastern-southern side of Asia, for at least
15.000 km. Thus Gilgamesh truly succeeded in completing a voyage of epic
dimensions, perhaps, after him, surpassed, in terms of mileage and diÆculties,
only by Ibn Battuta, who crossed the Sahara, the Central Asia deserts and visited
China, India, the Meccah nine times....
Gilgamesh reached mount Mashu by a route about which vague information had
to be available. The distance travelled in the second trip was about 3000 km
longer than by the route he had attempted in the rst trip, but now it did
not take him through the almost impassable high ranges of the Karakorum. It
took him through wild and almost unpopulated steppes, fraught of diÆculties in
term of quick sands, salt ats and lack of sweet water. We think that without the
guiding help of Urshanabi he would have been lost after the about 5000 kilometers
that had taken him to the "sea" where he met Siduri, the custodian of the temple
of Sin.
It is perhaps interesting at this point, before unveiling the nal destination, to
introduce a digression on how the routes proposed here came to the mind of
this author. Gilgamesh epic was rst read by me, in the popular Penguin edition, in 1971, when I was visiting the University of Essex in UK for research on
Quasi-Newton methods with professor C. Broyden. During my visit a theatrical stage of the epic was performed, where two stark naked actor and actress
represented the erotic meeting of Enkidu and the sacred prostitute Shamkhat
(the following day a colleague at the CS Department asked me: did you like the
performance of my wife? She had acted Shamkhat). Already at that time I had
doubts about the real destination of Gilgamesh trips. Several years ago, having reread the epic in the 1992 book of Pettinato, I looked in the Enciclopedia
Treccani, the great italian encyclopedia (almost twice the size of the Britannica),
about cedars of Lebanon. To my delight I found out that they grow in the variaty Cedrus Deodara in Kashmir. Since the Indus basin and Mesopotamia at
Gilgamesh time were in well documented contacts via water, it made sense to
hypothesize that not only Kashmir had to be a well known source of cedar timber, but that reaching and exploring that region might have been an interesting
goal { personal and even political, in view of incipient trends towards forms of
"imperialism" { to a strong willed, intelligent and physically powerful person as
king Gilgamesh. Perhaps it is worth here to remember that Alexander too aimed
to that region (but perhaps only visited Swat, in the lower reaches of Kashmir),
and that before him, apart from the Persian emperors, also Sesostris I the Great
had accomplished this feat, at least according to the classical sources (Diodorus,
Herodotus) that modern historians have yet to accept. Sesostris I lived some 700
years after Gilgamesh (in a forthcoming paper we will claim that Abraham was
his contemporary, worked for him, got a wife from his family and a new land
"of honey and milk" in Asir, better than his previous land somewhere located in
eastern Anatolia/Azerbaijian/Armenia, not in Sumer).
The identication of mount Mashu came suddenly to my mind on a day of May
25
1999, while I was reading Sitchin's "The stairway to heaven" (in its Italian translation as "Le astronavi del Sinai", Piemme, 1988). At the point where Sitchin,
whose source is mainly the Hittite text in Friedrich's translation, describes how
Gilgamesh, after crossing a mountain pass, saw a water extent, near which there
was a city with a temple dedicated to Sin, I closed the eyes and tried to visualize
the map of central Asia (since a child I have been fascinated by maps; I possess
a remarkable collection of maps and of atlases, several of them of the 18th and
17th century; I sadly miss not having bought a beautiful 1613 edition of the Mercator Atlas, but is was priced 45.000 pounds....). It dawned to me that the water
expanse, certainly not a sea but a large lake, had to be the Balkash lake, which,
as will be discussed soon, fully satises the features in the text. Then I thought
what mount Mashu might be in this geographical context, and the answer ashed
back immediately, the product of a geographical and anthropological information
I had memorized a couple of years before from a book by Leonard Clark, to whose
memory this paper is dedicated. Of Leonard Clark, possibly with Heyerdahl the
greatest explorer of this century, I had read and reread in my teens the fascinating
book The rivers descended to Orient, describing his exploration of the Tambo,
Perene, Ucayali and Maranon rivers. If I had not read his other book The Marching Wind (Funk and Wagnalls, New York; italian translation as Alle porte della
Mongolia, Garzanti, 1960), mount Mashu would still remain unidentied. I was
lent the book by my cousin Sergio Risso, after it was recommended to me by my
aunt Amelia Risso, who at over 80 still reads several books a month. It is quite
remarkable that the sacred mountain of the Ngolok has remained unnoticed in
the community of people who investigate world places that have ancient religion
connections or esoteric signicance. As far as I can recall, it is never quoted in
the works of ther great Tibetanologist Alexandra David Neel. It not cited in the
recent book listing sacred mountains by Roux (1999). It is quoted in passim by
Messner without any special notice. Almost nothing about it was known by the
people I met March 3, 2000, in the Tibetan Foundation in London.
Let us now discuss the route that we propose to mount Mashu. Of course the
precise itinerary is beyond any possible identication, since the text does not
provide suÆcient elements. Perhaps if more of the missing lines are found our
proposal will have more elements for support or for rejection. Ours is an educated
guess, as we did in relation the the route to the river "Euphrates" at the foot of
the mountains of the Forest of Cedars. Our guess comes very naturally once the
"sea" with the temple of Sin and mount Mashu are identied. Further elements
in favour will be presented in a forthcoming paper, Spedicato (2000).
Let us rst discuss the "sea" with the temple of Sin. The text calls it a "sea",
and the Kirgisi actually call it a "sea" (their word for sea being just "Balkash"),
but we identify it actually with a large lake. Notice that what we call "Caspian
sea" is actually a large lake, the remnant of a previous very large lake, hence in
a sense a "sea", that included at least also the Aral lake, as it still appears in the
Atlas of Ptolemy, see the edition by Pagani (1990). Notice also that the Caspian
26
is called by Persians "Darya-ye-Khazar", i.e. the "sea" or "water" of the Khazars
(whose empire ourished along its northern and eastern sides for seven centuries
before the arrival of the Mongols in the 13th century). Now "Darya" is an iranic
word that means generally "water expanse" and is used in the whole of central
Asia for both rivers, lakes and sea. Thus we claim that Gilgamesh reached this
"sea" after a very long way, in a main easterly direction, along which he met wild
attacking animals, had to cross large rivers always full of water (the crossing of
easily fordable rivers would not merit any mention). The "sea" appears just after
the crossing of a mountain pass, appears diÆcult to cross directly, the steppes
around it also appear diÆcult, making Gilgamesh feel depressed. Near the "sea"
there is a city with a temple to Sin, the god, inter alia, associated with the Moon.
We identify the above "sea" with the Balkash lake on the following grounds:
It is certainly far away from Sumer, about 4000 km as the crow ies, proba-
bly well over 5000 km by the route taken by Gilgamesh, where many detours
and false starts had to occur.
It lies in a rather at basin, elevation around 350-400 meters, which is
surrounded on the north and west side by a chain of hills (the Khaisaghin
Daban hills in the north reach 1559 meters, the Chu-Ili hills on the west reach
1053 meters). On the south-east, beyond the mainly at gently sloping delta
of the Ili, there are quite high mountains, namely the Zailiski Alatau and
the Zungarian Alatau, reaching respectively 4951 and 4463 meters.
The lake is fed mainly by a river coming from a valley among high mountains,
where the city of Alma-Ata is located. The river has the intriguing name
Ili, easily associated with the semitic EL, one of the main gods.
The waters are salty, undrinkable by man, actually so salty that only small
sh lives in the lake. It has a tormented coastline, it is surrounded by
marshes, quick sands and deposits of salt, over which it is extremely diÆcult
to move by foot, either for man and for camel, see Hedin (1943) for the
claim that these areas, called scior in eastern central Asia, are avoided
by everyone. Around the shores there is a lot of woods. The lake has
sources of sweet water on his bottom, that apparently have contributed
in signicantly reducing the high salinity noted in the 19th century to a
more moderate salinity in the 20th century, especially in the southern part
(industrial pollution is now poisoning the lake)
From a description of the lake at the end of the 19th century by Gregoire
(1876) we have the following information (to be probably updated in the
sense of a decreasing size of the lake, the phenomenon of drying up of inner
lakes being common worldwide and being probably related to the fact that
such lakes were lled over their normal capacity during some catastrophical
ooding event, the Noah-Utanapishtim ood being one such likely events):
- the lake is long 530 km, large at most 85 km, area 22.000 square kilometers;
the lake around 1950 was very shallow, max depth only about 11 meters
27
- present elevation (Times Atlas, Comprehensive Edition, 1974) is 339 meters
over sea level. Just east of it two smaller lakes are found aligned in an
easterly direction: lake Sasykul, elevation 334m, and Alakul, 340m. In case
the water level in the Balkash would increase by about ten meters, these two
lakes would join with the Balkash, as appears it was the case from maps in
atlases of the 18th century, then giving rise to a lake over 800 km long but
no more than 100 km wide
- the form of the lake is arcued, rather half-Moon like
- if the level of the lake would increase to the isoipse 500 meters, quite a
possibility in the event of a great ood, it would give rise still to a water
expanse with no outlet to the ocean, with a size of circa 150.000 square
kilometers, about the area of the Caspian Sea. We do not know how was
the elevation of the Balkash at Gilgamesh time. We guess, in view of the
drying up tendency, that it was signicantly higher than now; the lake could
have had the characteristic half Moon shape before the Flood, making it
sacred to the god Sin; an increase of the water level to ther isoipse 500m,
for instance, about 160 meters higher than now, would completely change
its shape.
The name of the lake is indicative, in the linguistic analysis that we will
propose, of a relation with the god Sin, to whom perhaps the lake was sacred
in view of its peculiar half-Moon shape (as said above, if not at Gilgamesh
time, before the Flood).
Let us now discuss our proposal about the meaning of the name BALKASH. We
have been unable of getting literature information on the etymology of that name,
even by asking an educated Khazak met on a ight to Oman, and by contacting
the greatest expert in Italy on Turkish and Islamic civilization, professor Jibril
Mandel, author of close to 200 books, procient in several central Asia languages,
descendent of a noble Afghan family, owner of an 8th century Koran and of some
objects that belonged to Gengis Khan (professor Mandel is muslim, the head of
the Milan Sus, his three children are one catholic, one muslim, one jewish...).
Our proposal is that the name BALKASH is the contracted form of a more ancient
name BALKASHIN. It was to my delight that after having got this idea, I found
that atlases and geographic dictionaries up to half the 19th century call the lake
BALKASHI, one step closer to the proposed BALKASHIN. Now there are no
linguistical problems in the equivalence BALKASHIN = BALKASIN, that we
see as a word composed by three each one meaningful one syllable words, namely
BAL - KA - SIN, for which we claim the validity of the following translation:
Sin, Lord of the people. The reference to Sin and the term Lord is obvious. The
main point is the validity of the identication KA = PEOPLE, that is addressed
in Appendix 2.
Having on the above grounds identied the "sea" with the temple of Sin with the
Balkash lake, we can now make our educated guess on the rst stage of Gilgamesh
trip, from Uruk to the Balkash lake.
28
From the Hittite text in Friedrich translation, but not from the corpus in Pettinato, the trip appears to have started when Enkidu was still alive, and by sea,
on board of a boat named MA-GAN. The boat sank near the coast of MA-GAN,
with Enkidu dying in the accident. Then Gilgamesh continues the trip alone
overland. Sitchin identies Magan with Egypt, while most scholars identify Magan with the easternmost coast of the Arabian peninsula, i.e. mainly Oman and
part of the Emirates, in view of the fact that copper was among the exports of
Magan and that bronze age mines of copper have been found in the mountains of
Oman. If the Hittite version used by Sitchin is correct, then we may think that
Gilgamesh again intended to reach the heart of Asia by the Karakorum passes
tried before, reaching however the foot of the Kashmir mountains not along the
overland route explored in the rst trip but by the more usual way via the Indian Ocean and the Indus river. Moreover we claim that MAGAN, also read
as MAKAN, is neither Egypt nor Oman, but the southern coast of the Iranian
plateau, the ancient Gedrosia, a vast expanse of low mountains extremely poor
in wells, that Alexander insisted to cross on the return from India, for reasons
that are not clear in the surviving reports of his adventures (Arrianus, Curtius
Rufus, Plutarch), perhaps not unrelated to a memory of the feat that we are
now proposing Gilgamesh accomplished. This region, while diÆcult and even
now very sparsely populated, is not a complete desert. Now mainly inhabited by
Baluchi people, divided between Iran and Pakistan, in classical times, as reported
in that superb navigational reference book that is the Periplus of the Erithraean
Sea, had a number of ports and a coastal population, the Icthiophagy, that took
water and food from sea life. The present local name of this region, attested as I
have checked at least in atlases of the 18th century, is MAKRAN (sometimes also
spelled as MEKRAN, MUKRAN). The name MAKRAN has obvious similarity
with MAGAN/MAKAN, a fact reinforced by the observation that the sound KR
does not belong to the Sumerian phonema. Incidentally, let us note that Vinci
(1998), in his seminal monograph Omero nel Baltico, (where mainly on geographical grounds he sets the Homeric world and sagas in the Baltic/North Sea region
at a time before the circa 1600 BC migration of several indoeuropen people from
Northern Europe/western Siberia to central/southern Europe, Anatolia, Iran and
India) notices that Homeric TROIA must be located with the southern Finnish
town of TOIA, the sound TR not existing in Finnish.
Whether or not the second trip of Gilgamesh began by boat, the "sea" with the
temple of Sin was reached overland. The likely route is the following.
First from Uruk to Sistan. This could have been done via sea and then
crossing the Makran region, along one of the valleys (e.g. the Dasht or the
Rakshan valleys) that certainly allowed the precious hard stones mined in
Sistan to reach the Indian Ocean for trade to the east and to the west.
Notice also that there are important copper mines in Birjand, just about
150 km north-west of central Sistan, that possibly were already exploited
in bronze age time, therefore voiding the claim that Oman was Magan,
29
because of the presence of copper in Oman. Notice that on Makran coast a
well protected bay is the Gwatar bay, on whose probable ancient coastline,
near a river, was located the town of Kalataki, now in ruins; many ancient
tombs are found also on the south-eastern promontory that closes the bay,
near the village of Jiwani. Or it could have been done via overland, possibly
even by same route taken in the rst trip. From Sistan the natural way
to Balkash, not less than 3000 km, skirts on the west the mountains of
Afghanistan and Pamir, in a basic direction north-east. On this way he
had to cross a few really large rivers, certainly not fordable and rich of
water the whole year around, including the Amu Darya (classical Oxus, see
Spedicato (2000) for more exciting information on this river), the Syr Darya
(classical Jaxartes/Araxes, the northernmost river reached by Alexander,
who built on his shores Alexandria Ultima; previously reached also by Cyrus
and Semiramis, convincingly identied by Pettinato (1985) as Sammurat,
circa 800 BC; possibly also reached by Sesostris I the Great), and, nally,
the Chu river. The epic states that Gilgamesh was attacked by dangerous
animals along the way. Leopards and hyenas are still found in the area; the
famous Aral tiger, a variety of royal tiger well adapt to swimming and living
among river reeds, became extinct around 1950 (a similar variety along the
Tarim river disappeared around 1900); lion became extinct several centuries
ago (it was the favourite game of Achaemenid and Sassanid rulers), but we
should quote unconrmed reports, see the Lonely Planet Guide for Iran,
that it has been sighted by peasants in Mazandaran, along the southern
coast of the Caspian Sea.
Let us now discuss the second stage of the trip, from lake Balkash to Mount
Mashu. As remarked before, at Gilgamesh time lake Balkash was almost
certainly much larger, with a length close to 1000 km, a width possibly over
100 km on average. We do not know where the temple of Sin was, certainly
close to the ancient higher shore, so at some distance of the present shore, but
a look at a map, e.g. that in the Times Atlas of the World, Comprehensive
Edition, 1974, suggests that Gilgamesh, who presumibly had coasted the
western side of the Tien Shan (Mountain of the Sky), likely crossed the
Chu-Ili hills in the pass where both a road and a railway cross now, near the
small towns of Khantau and Burubaytal (are the Burushaski speaking Hunza
anyhow related with the place named Burubaytal?), hence approaching the
lake at its southern shore. At his time the lake probably lled much of the
Zhusandala steppe, that extends east of the present southern side of the
lake. As is the case for many at bottomed lakes in central Asia, navigation
is often extremely dangerous due to the low level of the waters. Once a
boat gets stuck in the muddy bottom, putting it again in motion may be
an almost impossible task, because the soft bottom is extremely dangerous
for anyone who would jump in the waters trying to push the boat. For a
graphic description of what can happen in so called quick sands or quick
muds, recall the death of the friend of Carriere, the author of Papillon,
30
who slowly disappeared in a muddy mangrove shore. This navigational
problem was remarked by Sven Hedin, see Hedin (1943), and was his main
problem during the exploration of the new Lop Nor, the at bottomed lake
where the Tarim ends, which at the beginning of the 20th century, after an
unusually rainy season, changed its location by about 200 km, reoccupying
an area that had been the ancient location till about 2000 years ago (at that
time the change of location led to the abandonement of the important city
of Lou-Lan, where many perfectly conserved mummies have been found).
This navigational problem suggests that the "stone stelae" that looked so
important to Urshanabi and that Gilgamesh had broken might have been
magnetite, and could have been used as a compass (recall that compass
comes from China, and that actually many elements of Chinese culture
and science have their original source in the heart of Asia). This would also
explain why Urshanabi was still able to navigate using apparently fragments
of the broken stelae, since they of course would still maintain their dipole
characteristics.
There is however an even more interesting possibility. If the water level of
lake Balkash at Gilgamesh time was about 150 meters higher than now, the
lake would extend into Zungaria ooding the pass of the Zungarian gates
and would come close to the present city of Urumchi. Now near Urumchi,
precisely on the northern side of the Bokhda-Ula mountain range, there is a
huge solfatara, with a perimeter of some 25 km at the beginning of the 19th
century, see Marmocchi (1856), where large amounts of poisonous gases are
emitted, killing every being, birds included, that would attempt to cross the
area. The gases would escape from the waters and kill anyone on a boat.
We are presently unable to ascertain the actual coastline of the Balkash at
Gilgamesh time, but the phenomenon here described would provide a perfect
explanation of the "waters of death" described in the epic.
If our localisation of the crossing point is correct, then it is likely that Urshanabi
took the boat beyond the Ili river. From here there are two ways towards the
heart of Asia. One follows the Ili towards Kuldjia (now named Ining). The
Ili valley is cut among very high mountains, reaching 7345 meters in the soviet
named Peak of Victory, ancient name Khan Tengri, but entrance into Zungaria is
possible via a pass elevation about 2000 meters. The second way skirts for about
350 kilometers the Zungarian Alatau range and meets the other way near the
Ebinur/Aipi lake. From this point the distance to our proposed Mount Mashu is
about 2000 km, along a series of oasis and high plateaus steppes, with plenty of
game and of water.
7. Mount Mashu and the return to Uruk
According to a recent proposal by Temple (see Hera Magazine, n.1, 2000), Mashu
31
means "the place where the sun rises in the orient". This interpretation ts
perfectly with our identication and the considerations that we will put forward in
a forthcoming paper about the original land of the Sumerians. Now, to introduce
our identication of Mount Mashu, let us recall some bellic events of the 20th
century.
At the beginning of 1949 the armies of Mao Tsedong were already in control of the
whole eastern part of continental China. On the western part Tibet in the south
was still dreaming it could keep its former practically complete autonomy, while
in the north, along the corridor Xining-Lanzhou, a rather large and combative
muslim army led by general Ma Pufang was waiting to check the advance of a
Chinese army led by the great general Lin Biao, the man who, with He Long,
Peng Dehuai and Chu Teh, implemented in military terms the strategy devised
by Mao Tsedong. The muslim army was soon wiped out and Ma Pufang escaped
for a golden exile as a guest of his friend King Faruk of Egypt, taking with him
600.000 ounces of gold (perhaps some of it from the graves of Lou Lan) and a
rather large number of young girls, presumibly attractive and not particularly
expert in military techniques. Xinjang, where attempts had been made several
times in the course of last century to gain independence, returned under the rm
control of Beijing and was later subject to a policy of Han immigration, that is
going to reduce the local Turkish population to a minority, as is going to happen
also in Tibet. The way was then opened for the Chinese army to enter Tibet, via
the eastern, warriors inhabited, Kham and Amdo regions.
During the few months when Ma Pufang army still hoped to stop Lin Biao,
Leonard Clark, acting as a secret oÆcer of the US army, operated behind the lines
of the muslim army with the aim to ascertain whether it would be possible to
continue resistence against the communists from the northern Tibetan territory.
This meant in particular evaluating the food reserves available locally, quite poor
in fact, since in practice that would have meant stealing the animals (horses,
sheep, yaks) bred by the local tribes. Clark made a quite extensive recognition
of northern Quinghai, particulalry of the Tsaidam Basin (Quaidam Pendi), rich
of rivers and lakes, including two lakes, Gyaring Hu and Ngorin Hu, formed by
the Yellow River at about 100 km from its multiple sources. This region was
inhabited by a local Tibetan tribe called the Ngolok (also spelled as Gu-Lok,
Go-Log, Mgo-Log). Among the interesting features of these people:
they still practiced the ancient Tibetan pre Buddhist religion, named Bon-
Po. Clark once visited the tent of a chieftain and noticed that 108 lamps
were burning in front of a divinity statue; see Patten and Spedicato (2000)
for a proposed explanation of the "sacrality" of 108, and of 54, 27, 216..., in
ancient religions throughout the world
they were excellent horsemen and superb ghters; neighbours considered
them as bandits
they were very diÆdent, in view also of continued incursions into their territory by both Mongol and Turkish tribes.
32
The territory of the Ngolok included a huge mountain range that had never been
explored before by westerners and that some geographers had claimed might
include the highest mountain in the world. The height of this mountain range is
not given in the quoted 1974 Times Atlas, but is given at 6282 meters in the 1992
Revised 6th Edition of the National Geographic Atlas, this gure most probably
having been taken from the 1989 Atlas of the People's Republic of China (APRC),
Foreign Languages Press, Beijing. The whole mountain range was sacred to the
Ngolok and entrance to it was strictly prohibited to foreigners. The range is
over 300 km long and, except for the northern part, is surrounded by the Yellow
River that denes its border for over 800 km. As noted before, this huge sacred
mountain has escaped attention of apparently all people who have studied sacred
mountains.
The name of the mountain is so given in the following atlases:
ANYE MAQEN SHAN, in the quoted APRC Atlas and in the quoted 1992
National Geographic Atlas
AMNE MACHIN Range and ANI MACHING Shan, in the quoted 1974
Times Atlas
AMNIE MACHIN, in the Grande Atlante Geograco, M. Beretta and L.
Visintin editors, Istituto Geograco De Agostini, 1927
AMNIA MACHER, in the book Dach der Erde, Berlin, 1938, quoted by
Messner (1999).
in Richardson (1998) the mountain is spelled as A-MYES RMA-CHEN and
the local name of the Yellow River is spelled as RMACHU
The Yellow rivers, which embraces most of the range, has also a special local
name, written as follows:
MACHU, in The Times Atlas, 1895 (notice that no local name is given in
the otherwise rich in information 1974 edition)
MAQU (read as above), in the APRC Atlas.
From the APRC Atlas we also notice a small river named MEQU entering MAQU
in a marshy area, and that the administrative capital town of the district is named
MAQEN (previously DAWU).
Now one can linguistically accept the equivalence between MAQU=MACHU with
the Gilgamesh epic word MASHU, especially since these wordings do not completely characterize the exact local prononciations, which moreover certainly has
local variations and changes in time. The term ANI, ANYE (ANY-E ?, E turkishlike dative suÆx?) is intriguingly suggestive of the Sumerian name of the god
ANU, the head of the Sumerian pantheon. Changes from I to U are indeed linguistically well documented, e.g. in the well known iotization underwent by modern
versus classical Greek and in some transitions from Arabic to Farsi in personal
33
names (e.g. ADHUB becomes ADHIB, HAMUD becomes HAMID....Adhib and
Hamid are two of my iranian collaborators, Adhub and Hamud were friends of
Laurence of Arabia...). Hence on linguistical grounds the sacred mountain of
the Ngolok can be equated with the sacred Sumerian Mashu, and this relation is
reinforced by the additional reference to ANI=ANU. Thus we conclude that the
sacred mountain of the Ngolok ts the basic requirements for an identication
of Mashu (a sacred place; a place in the east; a place named Mashu) and we
propose, using also Temple's claim, the following translation of the name/names
of the sacred mountain
ANYE MAQUEN = ANU MASHU
= the place of god Anu, where the Sun rises
Having thus identied the nal destination of Gilgamesh second trip, let us make
an educated guess on his route from the Zungarian Gates.
(a) In a general east-east-south direction, for about 3000 km, pointing to the
"great sea" in the Hittite text translation by Friedrich, that we can now
identify with a real great sea, namely the Pacic Ocean
(b) Skirting the northern side of the Tien Shan for about 500 km. This part
of Zungaria has several oasis and rivers and at Gilgamesh time was probably even more rich in water than now. The recently completed railway of
Xinjang passes here allowing a shorter way between Moscow and Beijing.
Notice that the name Zungaria comes from the Mongolian JA'UN-GHAR
and corresponds to the Chinese PE-LU, which is Northern Road. Zungaria
produces rice, many fruits and till the beginning of last century even tigers
were living there.
(c) Crossing into the Turfan depression by way of an easy pass where the city
of Urumchi is now located. The Chinese name of Urumchi is TIWA or
TI-HOUAS (see Atlas Classique de Geographie, Monin, Paris, 1839-1840).
Allowing by metathesis the change TI in IT and noting that W = HOUA
is a liquid vowel, essentially a consonant, we can claim the virtual identity
of TIWA with ITLA, thereby retrieving the information in the Hittite text
according to Friedrich. Notice moreover that the present name Urumchi
may be considered equivalent via the allowed transition fron R to L to
ULUMCHI, the ULUM being intriguingly similar to the name of the god
ULLU to which the place was sacred, according to the Hittite text.
(d) Reaching Tun Huang, about 1000 km to the south-east, by way of the great
oasis of Hami (also called Kumul or Khamil), which produces the best melons in the world, and by way of Anxi (An Hsi). Notice that Dun Huang
(Tun Huang) is an historically very important town, famed for the One
Thousand Buddhas, but more importantly for the invaluable cache of some
60.000 scrolls by chance found hidden behind a wall in a monastery around
34
1920, many of them about 2000 years old, some of them written in Tocarian. It has been fortunate that most of these scrolls were taken out of China
to western collections. Thus they probably avoided the fate of ending in
ames that aected the great libraries of the Tibetan monasteries, 99% of
which were utterly destroyed during the Great Cultural Revolution (Tucci
estimated that at least 200.000 dierent manuscripts of very great antiquity were contained in the Tibetan libraries. Notice that less than 1000
books have come to us from the Greek-Roman world, less than 1% of the
important books! The destruction of the Tibetan libraries will certainly be
considered by far the greatest crime committed during the Great Cultural
Revolution, the loss of perhaps 20 million people in mainland China having
been more than overcame in demographic terms by a population increase
of two hundred millions, due to the collapse of the one child policy in that
period).
(e) From Dun Huang there are several ways into the Tsaidam Basin and then
to Any-e-Machen, a distance of about 1000 km. It is a region of elevation
between 2000 and 3000 meters, rich of marshes, lakes, rivers, game and minerals. Lakes should be noted (or so were at the time Clark saw them) for the
incredible transparency of their waters, allowing to see their bottom at great
depths, and for the beauty of big richly coloured sh, never taken or eaten
by the local population (Clark could easily catch them with his hands; curiously the same full respect of sh life, not a feature of the Chinese who came
after Lin Biao, was practiced by several tribes on the Atlantic seaboard of
Canada when Europeans rst arrived there; possibly these American tribes,
who migrated not several millennia before from northern Asia, had ancient
ties with northern Tibetan tribes). This region, as is true for most of Tibet, is also full of aromatic medicinal plants, the so called Chinese herbal
medicine having originated in the plateau of Tibet (the Tibetan School of
Medicine was one of the very few Tibetan institutions to escape whole destruction during the Great Cultural Revolution). The area is also rich in
rare minerals, including uranium ore. Perhaps these special features may
explain certain "esoteric" details characterizing the region where Gilgamesh
met Utanapishtim.
From Any-e-Machen the return to Uruk can be accomplished over water. First by
following the Yellow River, which is a rather peaceful river, without the dangerous
gorges and currents found for instance in the Yang Tze-Kiang (the Blue River
also called now the Chang Jang). Then by coasting China, Indochina, India and
Makran to Uruk via a short stretch of the Euphrates. Certainly a rather long
trip, some 15.000 km, but without any real great diÆculties, the main danger
after Gilgamesh years for this trip coming from piratery, a profession certainly
not yet developed at Gilgamesh times.
We end this section with a remark on Pettinato's translation in XI, 195, reading,
in Italian, "alla foce dei umi", i.e. at the "exit of rivers into the sea". In
35
Sitchin and other authors this passage reads as "the mouth of rivers", leaving
untranslated the original word "mouth". From our identication the meeting
with Utanapishtim took place in a mountain very far away from any sea or
ocean. In fact we will discuss in a future paper that Utanapishtim story is
unrelated to the Noah story, except for the fact that both men were survivors
of the same Great Flood. Notice that Talmudic and Midrashic sources quoted
by Velikovsky (1999) state that there were several "Noahs" and that many boats
were built to survive the Flood, most of which were recked in the violence of
the event. As already it was suggested in Spedicato (1984) Noah's ood should
be located, as also Rohl does, in the region between lake Van and lake Urmiah,
i.e. in eastern Anatolia-Azerbaijian, while the original Sumerian Ziusudra's story
(perhaps Ziusudra original name was changed to Utanapishtim by semitic scribes
who knew Noah's story and believed the two persons were the same) must be
located much more to the east. In a future paper we will be able to pinpoint
the exact place where Ziusudra boat stopped. This localisation suggests also
that a reason for the survival was the fact of being right in the heart of Asia,
where a huge tsunamic wave washing south from the Arctic Ocean had already
spent much of its fury. From the above observations, we suggest that the term
"mouth" should be read as "source", i.e. the place where the river "drinks, gets"
its waters. Moreover an inspection of the Qinghai map in APRC shows that
the Yellow River, locally now and possibly already at Gilgamesh times called
MAQU/MASHU, has several sources, none of which can really be pinpointed
as the longest one, no less than 9 of them being located west of the village
of Horgorgoinba. This interesting geographical feature may explain the plural
"rivers". Additionally we may also note that, in a stretch of land no more than
500 km long south-west of the Yellow River in the Any-e-Machen region, several
huge rivers are found, that wash almost half of Asia, namely the Yang Tze Kiang,
the Mekong and the Brahmaputra. This region was historically eastern Tibet,
but in the course of the last 150 years most of it has been added to the Chinese
provinces of Yunnan, Szechuan and Quinghai. Present Tibet now covers less than
half of what it was when the Mongols, as Chinese Yuan emperors, for the rst
time added it to the Chinese (more precisely then the Mongolian) empire. We
will claim in a next paper that Tibet was originally even larger, arguing for the
identity TIBET=TILMUN.
8. Final remarks
The above paper is based upon a quite limited amount of documentation. We
believe that more research and use of documents from Central Asia will shed
more light and, we believe, will give further conrmation of the thesis defended
here.
In the course of this research it suddenly dawned to this author that the proposed
itinerary of Gilgamesh is associated with an apparently never before proposed
36
identication of Eden, that appears to be a perfect t with the biblical data,
while several discrepancies are easily noticed in both the Salibi (1988) and Rohl
(1998) proposals. Moreover our Eden identication leads naturally to identifying
the route taken by Adam when he left Eden, Cain land of Nod and what is
the special sign left to his descendents, Aratta, Dilmun and the original place
of the Sumerians (it will be clear that they arrived in Middle East only after
the Flood). Salibi and Rohl's identications are however valuable because they
relate to two dierent places where the ancestors of the Hebrews moved in the
course of their long peregrinations, when, reaching a new land, they renamed
places according more or less to the geographical conguration in their previous
territory, exactly as the Danai/Achaioi did when they came to the Mediterranean
from their original Baltic lands, as Vinci (1998) has so convincingly claimed.
These new identications will be presented in a forthcoming paper, Spedicato
(2000).
Acknowledgements
This paper would never have been written without the following contributions:
the corpus of all Gilgamesh texts provided by Pettinato and several com
ments by him
important comments by Pettinato's collaborator D' Agostino
the Hittite text version of Friedrich used by Sitchin (our itineraries are quite
dierent from those proposed by Sitchin)
the relation of LBN with "milk, dairy products" and the rendering of PRT
as PAROT is due to dr. Lia Mangolini
the information on the Hunza valley has come via dr. A. Agriesti, who, having studied many languages, also helped much in the analysis of etymology
of some words and made a very careful search for misprints in the text
the information on Any-e-Machen would never have been found without the
suggestion of my aunt A. Risso and without my late uncle Umberto Risso
unquenchable thirst for buying and reading books (till a stroke destroyed
his brain area controlling reading)
the information on the solfatara near Urumchi comes from Mariuccia Risso's
inspection of the Marmocchi's four volumes, bought years ago by my uncle
Umberto Risso.
To all the above persons my warm thanks are given.
37
Appendix 1: on some numbers in the epic
Numbers are given in the text in term of "talents". The Sumerian talent had
a huge value, corresponding to 1800 kilos. This would make the weight of Gilgamesh and Enkidu's axes 5.4 tons, which is an unrealistic value. We think
that the talent referred to in the Yale paleobabylonian tablet, circa 1800-1600
BC according to standard chronology, but circa 1670-1370 BC according to Rohl
(1997), must already be taken as the value corresponding to the Homeric and
classical talent value, about 27 kilos. We base this claim on the fact that rst it
leads to load that, while still huge, will be shown to be acceptable in the context
of unusually strong men; secondly because the recent revolutionary work of Vinci
(1998), by dating the Homeric world to the full of the bronze age before 1600 BC
(and locating it around the Baltic and the North Sea), implies the antiquity of
the talent, that may have substituted at the beginning of the second millennium
BC the talent in Mesopotamia, after Indoeuropeans arrived to Iran and the Caucasus (at least one indoeuropean tribe reached even southern Arabia, the Shihu,
who live on the mountains of Sharjia, see Bibby (1970)).
Let us start by recalling that Gilgamesh and Enkidu were tall and strong men,
Enkidu perhaps the strongest, since he had beaten Gilgamesh in the ght that
made the walls of the Uruk houses shake. While the gures for Gilgamesh given
in the Hittite version ("he was taller than 11 "arus", his chest was 9 spans wide,
his phallus was 3 ? ") seem to be exaggerated (but perhaps again here the unit
of measure was no more the ancient original Sumerian measure) and would have
led to some practical problems in his implementing of the "primae noctis ius",
it does not appear impossible that his stature would have been well over two
meters, such sizes being not a feature only of our age. This would correspond
to a body weight of possibly over 150 kilos. The equipment of Gilgamesh and
Enkidu included 3 axes (about 80 kilos assuming our late value for the talent)
and more than 10 talents (over 250 kilos) of weapons. This would give a total
load of over 300 kilos, about twice the estimated weight of their body. Now that
man can make long hours of walk or of work under loads that are over his body
weight is quite a common fact, as we show again by a few examples.
My father in law, Antonio Campanile, in his prime was a short man about
150 cm tall and 45 kilos weight. He worked as a specialist mason. He used to
carry on his shoulder blocks of "tufo" stone weighting 90 kilos over ladders
reaching the top of church towers, this feat several times a day.
At the end of the 19th century the carriers in the port pf Gallipoli, Puglia,
were famous for their strength, carrying normally 150 kilos, many of them
even 200 kilos. They were men generally of low stature and worked over 10
hours a day. See Le cento citta d' Italia. Supplemento mensile illustrato del
SECOLO, 28-2-1901.
In his book "Se questo e un uomo" (Einaudi, 1958) Primo Levi, a Jew who
spent over one year in one of the Auschwitz lagers, writes that one of his jobs
38
was carrying, with the help of a companion, a sack of cement, weight not
specied (usually cement sacks are now of 30 kilos). They found the work
very hard, being also underfed. In their team there was a very short man,
a real dwarf, with a stout body full of bulging muscles (well visible when
they took the common cold shower...) named Elias Lindzin, lager number
141565. He usually carried four sacks at a time, with no sign of fatigue,
jumping the sacks from one hand to the other, a load almost certainly over
twice his body weight.
As stated above from Polybius, Roman soldiers could carry a load well over
their body weight for 50 km a day.
39
Appendix 2: on the meaning of KA
It is now believed by many language specialists, in the aftermath of the
seminal work done by professor Joseph Greenberg of Stanford University,
that all human languages descend from a single original language, paralleling the recent discovery, by sophisticated genetic analysis (of mithocondrial
DNA and of the Y gene), that all present humans descend from a single
woman and a single father, who lived an estimated circa 200.000 years ago.
The work of Greenberg and coworkers has led to group the existing and the
known extinct languages in dierent levels of families and superfamilies, one
of which, called the Afroasiatic family, includes hamitic, semitic, indoeuropeans, turkish and other previously dened families. Here we claim that the
syllable KA should be related to an afroasiatic word vowel - K - vowel with
the general meaning of people, clan on the basis of the following instances:
{ the great anthropologist Luca Cavalli Sforza, of Stanford University,
spent many years researching a tribe of Pigmees living in Cameron; as
many other "primitive" people, these pigmees called themselves AKA,
a word meaning simply "people"
{ there are four main tribes in Ghana who speak a common language,
whose name, AKAN, means "of the people"
{ a very interesting "primitive" tribe of hunters, living on a sacred mountain at the border of Uganda, Sudan and Kenya, which was led to extinction when the British prohibited their ancestral way of life based on
hunting, called themselves IK, presumibly meaning "people", albeit the
meaning of this name is not given in Turnbull (1972), the anthropologist
who studied them. This tribe had anthropometric features unrelated to
those of the surrounding Bantu tribes and a language apparently close
to ancient Egyptian
{ the work IK means "clan" in several dialects of the Berbers and in
Guanche
{ the Khazars had two leaders, one, the Bek, involved in administrative
matters, another, the Kagan, involved in religious matters. Now the
acceptable equivalences KA-GAN = KA-HAN (a Hebrew name) = COHEN (a high priest in Levi's tribe)= KA-HN (the king of Mongols) =
CAC- ANUS (the latin name used by Paulus Diaconus with reference to
the chiefs of the Avars, by him related to the Huns) seem all to have the
same original meaning, that we interpret as AN = divine light, KA =
of the people, in perfect correspondence with the actual role associated
with these names
{ as above, perhaps the original meaining of the term Inca is IN-CA=ANCA, = "divine light of people"
{ the Afghani are divided into dierently named tribes, but share, or at
least shared till about half of last century, the common name Aklai
40
= AK-LAI, where the exact meaning of LAI is not clear to me (perhaps by metathesis it is related to AK-EL, i.e. "divine people", "people
of the gods"); in a future paper we will argue that the land where
Sargon II relocated most of the 10 tribes deported from Samaria was
Afghanistan/Kashmir, hence explaining the proposed origin of the word
Aklai and the presence of many clearly hebraic words in local topography and in the pashtun language
{ one of the tribes living in Swat (a mountain province of Pakistan, whose
name derives from sanscrit Suvasto, country of the beautiful buildings)
is called locally Assaka, the Assakenoi of the Greeks, see Tucci (1978).
Now ASSA (prascrit) = ASVA (sanscrit) = ASPA (old Persian) means
"horse", implying, with our interpretation of the word KA, the expressive meaning people of the horses. It is known that the Chinese called
the invading Mongols of Gengis Khan the People of the Horses. In
Spedicato (1997) it has been argued that the real meaning of the word
Hyksos, the erce warriors that invaded Egypt at the end of the 13th
dynasty, is also people of the horses, from HYK = AK and SOS = SUS
(hebrew) = HORSE.
41
Appendix 3: on the cedars in the world
Cedars grow naturally on the vast expanse of land from the mountains of
Morocco up to the Himalayas, an arc of over 10.000 km. Cedars are denominated as belonging to dierent species, but in fact are now considered to
be all a same species, which has developed varieties. In fact, the following
is a statement from The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (1992): Distinction
between the four species of true cedars are often diÆcult to dene. Interbreeding occurs, and some authorities consider the four to be geographical
variants of one species, namely the cedar of Lebanon. Or, perhaps, the
original species was the Cedrus Deodara, see below, that could have been
brought to Lebanon by Phoenicians.
Here are some information on cedars, taken from Emciclopedia Treccani,
1953 edition.
{ Cedrus Atlantica (Manetti, 1842): grows in Morocco and Algeria, between 1000 and 2000 meters
{ Cedrus Brevifoglia (Hook, 1880): is found in Cyprus between the villages of Kykko and Irka, elevation about 1300 meters
{ Cedrus Libanotica (Linneus, 1831): grows in southern Anatolia and
Siria, including Lebanon. Maximum height about 40 meters, but branches
can spread to 100 meters, making it cumbersome for timber production.
The rst Libanotica was brought to England and planted in Chelsea in
1683, was rst planted in Italy at the Botanical Garden of Pisa in 1787
{ Cedrus Deodara (Roxb, 1832; Laws, 1838, who called it Pinus Deodara):
grows in the Hindukush, in Afghanistan and in Beluchistan, between
1100 and 4000 meters, optimal growth occurring between 2000 and 3000
meters. It has leaves longer than in the Libanotica, a straighter trunk
and less massive branches (I had one such tree in my garden: it suered
due to the climate of the north Milano region and died after some 20
years of unhealthy life). Deodara's timber is locally called the wood of
gods. It is used in Asia to build temples and to produce religious statues.
Reasons for this privilege may include its reddish colour and the facts
that it is insect repellent and extremely resistent to weathering (the
zapote tree, whose wood is heavier than water, while cedar is rather
light, and which also does not rotten in humid climates, was similarly
used in Central America, but is not found in Asia). Notice that Tucci
(1978) quotes the existence of supporting wooden beams (type of wood
not specied, I would guess cedar) 30 meters long in the Mosque of
Calam in the Swat, a Kashmir region. I am not aware of what is the
maximum lengths of beams in Asian temples, in particular if there are
any corresponding to the length of the cedar cut by Gilgamesh.
42
Appendix 4: Yetis in Africa? In ChioÆ (2000) a translation is given of
the integral text of a voyage by Hanno, a Carthaginian general, who followed
the coasts of Africa at least up to the region of the great Cameroon volcano,
which was in full eruption. The voyage description is preserved in a 10th
century manuscript and contains intriguing description of some creatures
whose behaviour is strongly reminiscent of the yetis. Here are the relevant
passages:
{ VII:...Further away from the shore there are unhospitable Aethiopians
who live in a region full of wild animals and closed by great mountains.
They say that the river Lixos is born there and that in the mountains
live troglodytes of strange aspect who, according to the Lixiti, can run
faster than horses
{ IX:...there began very high mountains full of wild creatures covered
with skins of wild animals, who threw stones at us, making landing
impossible
{ XVIII:...there was an island full of wild creatures. Most were females
with hairy bodies; our interpreters called them "gorillas" (?). We hunted
for them, but we were unable to catch any male, since they were skillful
in climbing over crevices and defended themselves by throwing stones.
But we caught three females, who bited and hit those who were carrying
them. So we killed them and brought their skins to Carthago.
Do gorillas throw stones?
At least Gilgamesh did not skin Khubaba. Killing yetis with guns and
skinning them seems to be, nowadays, a passatempo of the Chinese soldiers
in Tibet, see Messner (1999). Homo homini lupus.
43
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44
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45