ხეთური „გილგამეშიანი“

Abstract

The Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, is often cited as the oldest known piece of literature with an indubitably long history stretching across 17 centuries (from about 1750 to 100 BC) and a wide area of distribution: the cuneiform texts, describing the exploits of Gilgamesh, the protagonist of the epic, have been revealed not only among the ruins of Assyria and Babylon, but also in different regions of the ancient Middle East – in Anatolia, Ugarit, Emar and Megiddo. Next to two Akkadian versions, the manuscripts in Hurrian and Hittite have been also discovered at the Hittite capital Hattusa (present-day Boğazköy). As G. Beckman has rightly noticed, the archaeological excavations at Hattusa have yielded more textual material for Gilgamesh than is known from all other Late Bronze Age sites combined. Opinions differ, however, regarding the place the Epic of Gilgamesh would have been held in the Hittite culture: was it solely used in scribal instruction, or did it also serve as a literary work among the Hittite “elite”? Also controversial is the question about the origins of the Hittite version of the Gilgamesh Epic, whether it is a text reflecting an oral tradition or an independent composition that is not based on earlier Akkadian (or Hurrian) texts. One thing is indisputable: the texts written in Akkadian, Hurrian, and Hittite languages found in Boğazköy are of great importance for the reconstruction of the development of the Gilgamesh epic, since these texts include the material of the period which is quite fragmented and sparsely preserved in the Mesopotamian tradition itself. Moreover, the Hittite version is the only source that can be used to fill a gap in Tablet V of the final, “canonical,” version of the epic. In addition to what has been said, studying the textual material from Boğazköy related to the Gilgamesh Epic could shed light on the spread of narrative traditions in the ancient Near East and their contacts with the Greek epic tradition.
The present article contains the first Georgian translation of the three tablets (CTH 341.III.1, III.2, III.3) representing the Hittite version of the Epic of Gilgamesh.