The story of Gilgamesh was carried beyond the confines of Babylonia.[1002] Gilgamesh, to be sure, is not identical with the Biblical Nimrod,[1003] but the Gilgamesh story has evidently influenced the description given in the tenth chapter of Genesis of Nimrod, who is viewed as the type of Babylonian power and of the extension of Babylonian culture to the north.
The Gilgamesh epic is not a solar myth, as was once supposed,[1004] nor is the Biblical story of Samson a pure myth, but Gilgamesh becomes a solar deity, and it is hardly accidental that Samson, or to give the Hebrew form of the name, Shimshon, is a variant form of Shamash[1005]—the name of the sun in Babylonian and Hebrew. The Biblical Samson appears to be modelled upon the character of Gilgamesh. Both are heroes, both conquerors, both strangle a lion, and both are wooed by a woman, the one by Delila, the other by Ishtar, and both through a woman are shorn of their strength. The historical traits are of course different. As for the relationships of the Gilgamesh epic to the Hercules story, the authority of Wilamowitz-Möllendorf[1006] is against an oriental origin of the Greek tale, and yet such parallels as Hercules' fight with a lion, his conquest of death, his journey and search for immortality (which in contrast to Gilgamesh he secures), certainly point to an influence exercised by the oriental tale upon the Greek story. It is not surprising that the elements contributed through this influence have been so modified in the process of adaptation to the purely Greek elements of the Hercules story, and, above all, to the Greek spirit, as to obscure their eastern origin.[1007] Most curious as illustrating the continued popularity of the Gilgamesh story in the Orient is the incorporation of portions of the epic in the career of Alexander the Great.[1008] In Greek, Syriac, and Rabbinical writings, Alexander is depicted as wandering through a region[1009] of darkness and terror in search of the 'water of life.' He encounters strange beings, reaches the sea, but, like Gilgamesh, fails to secure immortality. Such were the profound changes wrought by Alexander's conquests that popular fancy, guided by a correct instinct of appreciation of his career, converted the historical Alexander into a legendary hero of vast dimensions.[1010] The process that produced the Gilgamesh epic is repeated, only on a larger scale, in the case of Alexander. Not one country, but the entire ancient culture world,—Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, Arabia, Judea, and Syria,—combine to form the legendary Alexander. Each country contributes its share of popular legends, myths, and traditions. Babylonia offers as her tribute the exploits of Gilgamesh, which it transfers in part to Alexander. The national hero becomes the type of the 'great man,' and as with new conditions, a new favorite, representative of the new era, arises to take the place of an older one, the old is made to survive in the new. Gilgamesh lives again in Alexander, just as traits of the legendary Alexander pass down to subsequent heroes.
FOOTNOTES:
[844] See above, pp. [245]-247.
[845] Or Gishdubar or Gishtubar.
[846] Babylonian and Oriental Record, iv. 264. For previous readings of the name, see Jeremias' article on 'Izdubar' in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexicon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, ii. col. 773, 774.
[847] Historia Animalum, xii. 21.
[849] In the Oriental legends of Alexander the Great, this confusion is further illustrated. To Alexander are attached stories belonging to both Izdubar and Etana. See Meissner's Alexander and Gilgamos, pp. 13-17 (Leipzig, 1894).
[850] See, e.g., Perrot and Chiplez, History of Art in Babylonia and Assyria, i. 84.