Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 757 Myth and History

"Actually, this time the translation did not find much new things, at least the overall situation of the poem is not much different from what the previous generation of archaeologists discovered." After turning on the projector, Liang En pointed to the The content is introduced.

"However, since everyone wants to see what our new discovery is like, then I will give you a simple translation of the content of this poem word by word."

Although "The Epic of Gilgamesh" has been translated for nearly a hundred years, in fact, not many people have actually read it word for word, so Liang En's telling this story to everyone obviously also attracts everyone.

So in the following time, all the people who had nothing to do now sat there quietly and listened to Liang En tell the story, and even a few officers and non-commissioned officers who could understand English sat in the back of the tent.

According to the epic, the half-human-god Gilgamesh was born a king, but when he was young, he had a surly personality, bullied men and women, and the people complained.

So the gods made a strong man out of clay and sent him to restrain the king. The name of this strong man was Enkidu.

The two of them fell in love with each other after they met and fought together.After getting a new friend, Gilgamesh suddenly found the meaning of life, so he gave up his original low-level interests and decided to do some business with his friends.

So the two of them ran to Lebanon with the help of the sun god, beheaded the monster Humbaba, and cut down the cedar forest.Bring back valuable timber for Uruk.

But because this monster is the guardian god of the forest appointed by the main god Enlil, it offended the gods.At the same time, when he was returning to the city, Gilgamesh also received the courtship of Ishtar, the goddess of gold who guarded Uruk.

But Gilgamesh knew that she was romantic and passionate, and at the same time, the deaths of her previous lovers were ugly.So not only rejected the goddess, but also revealed all his dark history.

From this point of view, human beings have done the same thing when encountering emotional problems throughout the ages, and even extended this kind of content to the gods.

After all, myths are also fabricated by humans.So from a certain point of view, the actions of the gods in the myths are actually a manifestation of human practices at that time.

However, when the gods encountered emotional problems, they tossed much more than humans. Ishtar, who was rejected and slapped in the face, chose to ask his father for the bull of heaven to wreak havoc on the world.

For Gilgamesh and Enkidu, who had just killed Humbaba, it would not be a problem to kill another cow that caused the natural disaster, so Enkidu stepped on the tail of the cow from behind, and then Gilgamesh seized the opportunity Stabbed the cow to death.

The goddess Ishtar was very unwilling to face this scene, and scolded Gilgamesh.In order to stand out for his friends, Enkidu took the intestines of the bull of heaven and threw it in front of Ishtar.

At the same time, he also warned the goddess that if you harass Gilgamesh again, you will end up like this bull.The goddess left Uruk in despair.Gilgamesh and Enkidu became heroes that everyone acclaimed.

Although it seemed cool to do so, it was also on the blacklist of the God Realm, and the gods got together to discuss how to punish them.Because Gilgamesh has 2/3 of the blood of the gods and is backed by the sun god, they set their target on Enkidu.

After all, Enkidu was just a puppet made of clay by the gods, and he had no background in the God Realm, so he was naturally the best blame man, so he soon weakened and died.

Facing the death of his friend, Gilgamesh was distraught, and held Enkidu's corpse and wept for seven days and seven nights, until the corpse rotted and wormed.Gilgamesh then spent several days giving Enkidu a state funeral.

After finishing all these things, he, who was not afraid of anything, began to fear death. He took advantage of the night to turn over the Marsh Mountain leading to the sun, and disregarded the obstruction of the half-scorpion Papilsag, and exhausted 120 boats. After the oars finally crossed the sea of ​​death to reach the destination.

Utnabisiddin, who survived the great flood in ancient times, received him, but did not directly answer the question of life and death, but let him go through the trial of not sleeping for 6 days and 7 nights.

Gilgamesh did not succeed, but because of the kindness of Utnabisdin's wife, he went to the bottom of the sea to get the grass of eternal life. Under normal circumstances, a story about a hero getting immortality will be written here, but this is not written in the epic.

The following story is a bit absurd. On the way home, Gilgamesh took a bath to relax, but the aroma of the herbs attracted the snake. The herbs were eaten by the snake, and the snake completed its first molt at this time.

Gilgamesh returned to Uruk empty-handed.He finally understands that even the greatest hero will have a day of death. After seeing his dead friends on the side of the passage of life and death, he completed a transformation.

Since then, he put aside the pursuit of God and eternal life, worked hard in Uruk, and finally became a virtuous king as a mortal.

"—For us contemporary people, what attracts us the most is the part of the great flood. Because it partially overlaps with the content of the Bible." After explaining the whole story, Liang En began to talk about his own judgment.

"And in another tablet we found in the same batch, the entire deluge story is described in detail. You will find that there is a great overlap between the two stories:
A family favored by the gods built a Noah's Ark and survived. The flood wiped out all human beings; "

"It's also easy to understand why this story was popular throughout Sumerian civilization. Lower Mesopotamia must have been plagued by frequent floods.

Needless to say, this put a lot of pressure on the fragile irrigation system on which its prosperity depended, and was an inevitable natural disaster for humans at the time.

This unpredictable, inevitable, but capable of causing fatal damage to the fragile civilization of the time flood left a full impression on the mind at that time.It also makes the whole civilization full of pessimistic fatalism,"

"For example, this epic is like this. Gilgamesh has done many great things and worked tirelessly to prove his ability as a human being against the laws prescribed by the gods and convinced that human beings will fail.

But in the end the prophecy was right, and Gilgamesh had to prepare himself for death.All heroes and wise men, like the new moon, must have their ups and downs.

People will say: Who ever ruled with strength and power like him.Just like on a moonless night or when the moon is waning, as long as there is no him, there will be no light.

oh!Gilgamesh, this is the meaning of your dreams.You were given the place of king, it was your destiny; but immortality was not your destiny. "

"At the same time, this also shows from another perspective that although all the civilization of the Sumerians has completely disappeared, the knowledge we have been passing down may be largely derived from the Sumerians' myths about their own prehistory Refactoring-"

After the academic lecture time period, the officers and non-commissioned officers all left, because these things were a bit boring to them, but all the scholars listened carefully to Liang En's speech, and kept taking notes at the same time.

(End of this chapter)