Week 7 of my humanities crash course had me exploring ancient Mesopotamia with a side trip to northern India. I also watched an Iranian film that had me pondering the meaning of life.

Readings

This week, I read two short ancient texts: the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Dhammapada. Let’s tackle them in order.

I’d never read any ancient Mesopotamian literature, so this was all new to me: the pantheon, story, style, etc. were thrillingly unfamiliar. Gilgamesh is around 1,500 years older than Homer, and it shows: there are lots of repetitive passages and what felt like archaic writing. But human nature hasn’t changed much in 4,700 years. People still love, hate, drink, eat, etc. – and they still fear death.

Gilgamesh is the awe-inspiring, despotic king of Uruk. The gods answer his beleaguered subjects’ prayers in the form of Enkidu, a rival who becomes Gilgamesh’s friend. They embark on several heroic exploits and end up pissing off the gods. As a result, they condemn Enkidu to death.

Despondent and fearing for his own death, Gilgamesh goes in search of the secret of immortality. His travels take him to Utnapishtim, immortal survivor of the great flood. Our hero finds a plant that restores youth, but loses it. By the end of the story, he accepts his fate as a mortal.

The story moves fast and is surprisingly engaging. It includes early versions of ideas that would resurface later in the Bible. (Most obviously, Noah and the flood.) There’s also some material that probably wouldn’t pass muster in our prudish time.

The Dhammapada is one of the central Buddhist scriptures. I was familiar with several of these texts but hadn’t read the whole thing. Gioa notes that he recommended it because of its length, but there are also obvious connections with Gilgamesh.

For example, several verses in the Dhammapada deal with attachment. For example, here’s verse 215:

From affection comes grief;
From affection comes fear.
If you’re freed from affection
You’ll have no grief, let alone fear.

Gilgamesh suffers from such an attachment. Here’s the moment of Enkidu’s death:

He touched his heart but it did not beat, nor did he lift his eyes again. When Gilgamesh touched his heart it did not beat. So Gilgamesh laid a veil, as one veils the bride, over his friend. He began to rage like a lion, like a lioness robbed of her whelps. This way and that he paced round the bed, he tore out his hair and strewed it around. He dragged off his splendid robes and flung them down as though they were abominations.

He wishes to hold on:

Then Gilgamesh issued a proclamation through the land, he summoned them all, the coppersmiths, the goldsmiths, the stone-workers, and commanded them, ‘Make a statue of my friend.’ The statue was fashioned with a great weight of lapis lazuli for the breast and of gold for the body. A table of hard-wood was set out, and on it a bowl of carnelian filled with honey, and a bowl of lapis lazuli filled with butter. These he exposed and offered to the Sun; and weeping he went away.

You can probably relate if you’ve ever lost someone dear. Human nature.

Audiovisual

Gioia recommended Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Wagner’s Overtures. I’m very familiar with both so I didn’t spend much time with either this week. For a new take on one of these familiar classics, check out Fazil Say’s astonishing piano version of the Rite of Spring. Here’s a short portion:

Gioia also recommended looking at ancient Mesopotamian art. I didn’t spend as much time on this as I would’ve liked. That said, this introductory lecture provided context while highlighting major works of art and architecture:

I took a different approach to cinema this week. Rather than go by an AI recommendation, I went down the old-fashioned route. (I.e., Google.)

Specifically, I thought this would be a good opportunity to check out Iranian cinema. I’ve heard good things about Iranian films, but had never seen one. Googling led me to this article on Vulture. After reading through the list, I picked Abbas Kiarostami’s TASTE OF CHERRY.

Yet again, I’ve gravitated towards a film about a middle-aged man in despair. (Is the Universe trying to tell me something?) Kiarostami effectively uses a minimalist style to explore what makes life meaningful despite (or perhaps because) of its finitude.

Reflections

There’s a pattern here. This week’s works dealt with core issues people have grappled with since we became people. The big one: how do we deal with death? Not just the impending death of everyone we love, but our own.

Gilgamesh offers the traditional “Western” answer: “I can’t even.” So, fight it! He looks for a MacGuffin that’ll let him go on living and perhaps brings his loved ones back. It’s an idea that has had many progeny in our mythologies. And it’s not just the stuff of fiction: the impulse is still alive and well. (Pardon the pun.)

The Buddha offers a different approach: non-attachment. It’ll be easier to let go if you don’t become enmeshed with things, people, and your own sense of being. So you train your mind so it won’t hang on. (Even the idea of “your mind” is suspect.) The price: not feeling either extreme. No despair, no elation.

Kiarostami’s film suggests a third approach: accepting the inevitability of death while reveling in the experience of being alive. (You could argue this is part of the Buddhist way as well.) I won’t say more in case you haven’t seen TASTE OF CHERRY, but suffice it to say the film employs a clever structural trick to wake you from your slumber.

Grappling with these kinds of issues is the point of studying the humanities. Yes, I know you’re busy. I’m busy too. But some day, the busyness will stop – as will everything else. I’m committed to living an examined life, and that requires thinking about stuff we’d rather put aside so we can get on with the next Zoom meeting.

Notes on Note-taking

I’m also committed to the other point of this humanities project: learning how to learn better in this AI age. This week, I continued tweaking my note-taking approach.

I took notes in the Drafts app as I read, building an outline as I go through the week. I wrote down the main points I learned and things I’d like to share with you. I then elaborated this outline on one of my morning walks. My mind works better when my body is moving and clear from the day’s detritus.

I also tweaked my note taking approach around the readings. I had an LLM summarize the reading and then used that as a refresher to write a summary in my own words. I’ve done the same in previous weeks. What’s different now is that I then pasted my summary into a ChatGPT window with a simple prompt:

I read The Epic of Gilgamesh. What is wrong with this description of the story?:

Gilgamesh is king of Uruk. He’s described as the strongest and most beautiful man in the world. He’s also something of a despot. He befriends Enkidu, a wild man who is almost as strong as Gilgamesh. They go on several adventures, which entail opposing the wishes of one of the Mesopotamian deities. Eventually, the gods are angered and decree Enkidu must die. Grief-stricken, Gilgamesh goes in search for the secret of eternal life, only to learn that human lives are limited. He returns to lead his people with this newfound wisdom.

The LLM offered a helpful response that clarified nuances I’d missed:

  • Gilgamesh wasn’t “something of a despot”; he was a tyrant. The gods created Enkidu as a counterbalance to answer his subjects’ calls for relief.
  • The taming and channeling of this force of nature through initiation into human pleasures is an important aspect of the story I’d left out.
  • Details about Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s transgressions against the gods. (These seemed less relevant for a high-level summary.)
  • The fact Gilgamesh isn’t just searching for immortality because he’s grief-stricken over Enkidu’s death; he’s also fearing for his own life.
  • The end of my summary was wrong; the book doesn’t suggest Gilgamesh changed as a result of his experiences.

This last point is important. In writing my summary, I made stuff up that wasn’t in the book. I attribute my error to the fact I expect closure from my stories. Gilgamesh precedes Aristotle’s Poetics; its authors were under no compulsion to offer the hero a redemption arc.

Which is to say, humans hallucinate too – and LLMs can correct us.

Up Next

Next week, we’re reading ancient Egyptian literature. I couldn’t find an ebook of the text suggested by Gioia, so I’m going with another Penguin book, Writings from Ancient Egypt. I studied some Egyptian architecture in college, and look forward to revisiting this part of the world and its history.

Check out Gioia’s post for the full syllabus. I’ve started a YouTube playlist to bookmark all the videos I’m sharing in this course. And as a reminder, I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment.