Lugalbanda

Summary

Lugalbanda is a king of Uruk in Sumerian tradition, the father of Gilgamesh and the husband of Ninsun. The Sumerian King List calls him "the shepherd" who ruled after Enmerkar for 1,200 years, and two Sumerian poems tell how as a young man he was left sick in a mountain cave and came back as the swiftest of runners.

In the first poem Enmerkar son of Utu, king of Uruk, marches with his army against Aratta, a distant land of mountains. In his army are seven brothers, captains, and Lugalbanda is the eighth. Halfway along the road "head sickness" strikes him; he jerks like a snake dragged by its head and cannot lift his feet. His brothers make him an arbour like a bird's nest in a mountain cave, put dates, cheese, beer and incense by his head, with his axe of tin and his dagger of iron, and leave him as an old bull is left in the cattle pen, and march on weeping. He calls on Utu: "Let me not come to an end in the mountains like a weakling!", then on Inanna when the evening star rises, then on Suen the moon, who gives his feet the power to stand; in the morning Utu sends his rays and the god who had struck him steps aside. He comes out of the cave, bites the plants of life and sips the water of life that the rivers bring, and darts over the mountains like a wild ass. Then he strikes two stones together until they spark and kindles a fire that shines over the waste like the sun; "not knowing how to bake bread, not knowing an oven", he bakes his dough on seven coals. He catches a wild bull and two goats; sleep overcomes him "by means of Ninkasi's wooden cask", that is, with beer; the god of dreams tells him to sacrifice them, and he does so at sunrise and invites An, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursag to the banquet.

In the second poem he is alone in the Zabu mountains and resolves to win the favour of the Anzud bird. He finds its nest in Enki's "eagle-tree" on top of Inanna's mountain, feeds the chick, paints its eyes and adorns the nest; the bird rejoices and grants what he asks, and he asks for the power to run in his thighs, and the bird grants it and shows him the way to his brothers' army. The army besieges Aratta for a whole year while stones rain down from its walls, and Enmerkar looks for someone to go back to Kulaba, Inanna's city in Uruk, with a message for her; no one says "I will go" but Lugalbanda, who insists on going alone. His brothers bark at him as at a foreign dog and say he will not return from the great mountains from which no one who walks alone comes back. He crosses five, six, seven mountains and reaches Kulaba before midnight; Inanna looks at him as she would look at the shepherd Ama-ušumgal-ana and speaks to him as she would to her son Šara, and he gives her Enmerkar's message. She answers with what the king must do for Aratta to fall: cut the lone tamarisk by the river and make it into a bucket, catch the fish in the water and offer it, then carry off Aratta's metalworkers and stonemasons.

The idea his story turns on is that the youngest and weakest of the brothers, left for dead, comes back by what he finds alone: fire, bread, sacrifice, and the favour of the bird that guards the door of the mountains. Then his gift becomes carrying the word between the army and the goddess, his feet joining two lands seven mountains apart. Later he became a god by whose life people swore, and to whom his son Gilgamesh dedicated the horns of the Bull of Heaven.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. It is written lugal-banda. In the Sumerian dictionary lugal is "king, lord, owner", also written lu-gal, "great man", and the Sumerian essay reads it "the man who is jalīl", great: gal from Arabic jalla, Arabic j answering Sumerian g. Banda in the Sumerian dictionary is "junior, child", and also "wild, fierce"; we read it, as a reading proposed on the method, as Arabic ibn, "son", plural banūn. Lugalbanda is then "the great one, the son", which is what the two poems make of him: the eighth and youngest brother, who tells Anzud "you shall be my father" and his wife "you shall be my mother", whom Inanna addresses as her son, and who becomes the father of a king.

Linguistic Root

Lugalbanda: jalīl and ibn

The Sumerian essay reads lugal as lu, man, and gal, great, and then says that gal itself may be Arabic jalla, to be great, ranking this reading "very likely" because Arabic j answers g across the branches of the tongue. Lane: jalla a thing, it was great; jalla a man, he was great in estimation, rank or dignity; jalīl, great; ajall, greatest. The Sumerian writing lu₂-gal recorded in the dictionary supports the essay's division of the name into "man" and "great".

The essay does not read banda; we read it on the method as ibn: b and n are the word's letters in every branch, Arabic ibn and banūn, Hebrew ben, Akkadian binu. Lane says the son is called ibn because he is his father's building, and that the word goes back to banaw or banay. The sense "junior, child" of the Sumerian word agrees with "son". The limit of the reading is the final d: the scribes write it as a separate sign after banda₃, and write the word syllabically ba-an-da, so it belongs to the word and ibn does not explain it.

Historical Context

Lugalbanda's name appears as a god's from Early Dynastic III, and an Early Dynastic literary text from Tell Abu Salabikh tells of his marriage to Ninsun, though it is hard to understand. The kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur made him their father and Ninsun their mother, so that Gilgamesh became their brother: Shulgi says in his hymn, "I am a child born of Ninsun", and in one copy swears "by the life of my father holy Lugalbanda". The couple received offerings at Nippur at the lunar festivals, and at Uruk.

Family and connections

Key Mythic Narratives

Gilgamesh's father and god

The Sumerian King List says that Gilgamesh's father was "a phantom", but the Akkadian epic calls Gilgamesh "wild bull of Lugalbanda", and after Gilgamesh and Enkidu have killed the Bull of Heaven Gilgamesh fills its horns with oil and dedicates them "for the anointing of his god, Lugalbanda", hanging them in his bedchamber.

The oath by his life

In the Sumerian poem Gilgamesh and Huwawa Gilgamesh swears to Huwawa again and again, "By the life of my own mother Ninsun and of my father, holy Lugalbanda!", until he has taken his seven auras one by one.

"Hero-fortified-by-Anzud"

When Anzud asks who adorned his nest, he promises that if it is a man he will fix his fate and let him have no opponent in the mountains: "You shall be 'Hero-fortified-by-Anzud'." Then he warns him to tell neither his comrades nor his brothers what has been decreed for him. When his brothers ask how he crossed the rivers alone, he says he stepped across them and drank them as from a waterskin.

Symbolic Reading

The project's essays do not read Lugalbanda's story, and the Sumerian essay reads only the title lugal. The two poems themselves give a way to read it: Lugalbanda kindles fire by striking stone, bakes on coals before he knows an oven, slaughters and offers, so in the poem he is the first to make these things alone in the wilderness. His road is the real trade road between Uruk and the eastern mountains: the second poem ends with Aratta's battlements of green lapis lazuli, its red bricks made of tinstone dug out in the mountains, and the metalworkers and stonemasons to be carried off from it. The messenger who crosses seven mountains in a night carries the road that joins the plain to the metals of the mountains.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Shahnameh Zal is left alone on Mount Alborz, and the Simurgh raises him in her nest and gives him a feather to call her with. Lugalbanda is left by his brothers in the mountains, and Anzud grants him from his nest what brings him back to them. Both birds give the abandoned youth what returns him to his people.

Prometheus brings fire to humans after stealing it from Zeus, while Lugalbanda strikes fire himself from stone in the wilderness and then bakes on it. Fire in the Greek story is a stolen gift; in the Sumerian story it is a craft a man discovers alone.

In the North Frigg asks who will ride to Hel to ask for Baldr's return, and Hermóðr volunteers and rides nine nights through dark valleys. As no one says to Enmerkar "I will go" but Lugalbanda, no one takes the road to Hel but Hermóðr, and each goes alone as a messenger to a distant land, carrying a plea to the lady who rules it.

His fire and his bread on the coals belong to the culture heroes; Anzud's nest in Enki's tree is an image of the world tree with the bird at its top; and Inanna's mountain on which the tree stands is an image of the sacred mountain.