Shamhat

Summary

Shamhat is one of the women of Uruk attached to the temple of Ishtar, of the class Akkadian calls harimtu, and it is she who brought Enkidu out of the wild into the city. Aruru made Enkidu from a pinch of clay she threw into the wild, and he lived with the gazelles, eating grass and drinking with them at the water-hole, filling in the trapper's pits and pulling up his snares. The trapper complained to his father, who told him to go to Gilgamesh, and Gilgamesh said: go, hunter, take Shamhat with you.

The trapper and Shamhat travelled three days and sat by the water-hole one day and a second, until the herd came to drink with Enkidu among them. She bared herself to him, he came to her, and he stayed with her six days and seven nights. When he was sated he turned back to his herd, but the gazelles saw him and ran, the animals of the wild moved away from him, and his legs were heavy so that he could not run as before; "but he had reason, he was wide of understanding." He came back and sat at her feet, and she said: you are handsome, Enkidu, you are like a god; why do you range through the wild with the animals? Come, I will lead you to Uruk, to the holy temple, the dwelling of Anu and Ishtar, where Gilgamesh lords it over the menfolk like a wild bull. Her words found favour, and his heart, now wise, sought a friend. She told him the dreams of Gilgamesh, which his mother Ninsun had interpreted.

Then she divided her garment, dressed him in one part and put on the other, and took him by the hand, leading him like a god, to the shepherds' camp. The shepherds set bread and ale before him, and he did not know how to eat bread or drink ale. She said to him, in the Old Babylonian version: "Eat the bread, Enkidu, the thing proper to life; drink the ale, the lot of the land." He ate until he was sated and drank seven jugs; his mood was freed, he sang, his heart was merry and his face shone. The barber treated his hairy body, he anointed himself with oil "and became a man", put on a garment and took up his weapon against the wolves and lions, and became the shepherds' watchman. Then he went to Uruk with Shamhat following him.

When the gods decreed Enkidu's death he cursed the trapper and then Shamhat: may you never found a household to delight in, nor sit in the young women's chair; may the crossroads be where you sit, the ruins where you sleep, the lee of the wall where you stand; may drunk and sober strike your cheek, because you made me weak when I was pure in the wild. Shamash called to him from heaven: why do you curse Shamhat, who gave you bread fit for a god, ale fit for a king, dressed you in a great garment and gave you Gilgamesh for a comrade? His anger calmed, and he said: come, Shamhat, I will fix you another destiny; the mouth that cursed you shall bless you: may governors and noblemen love you, may they give you obsidian, lapis lazuli, gold and earrings, and may Ishtar bring you into the house of a man whose stores are heaped high.

The idea her story turns on is that she is the door between the wild and the city. She brought Enkidu in by the body, by words, by bread and by clothing, so that the man who came out of clay became human through what people's hands make. The change had a price: the gazelles fled from him and he could no longer run with them. Enkidu's curse describes what he lost and the lot of a woman without a household, and his blessing describes what he gained and what she might gain. Her story is civilisation with both its faces, as a dying man sees it.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Šamḫat is a feminine form of the Akkadian adjective šamḫu, growing, abundant, flourishing, from the verb šamāḫu: to grow thick, to flourish, to reach extraordinary beauty or stature. Akkadian ḫ is Arabic kh, so the word is Arabic shamakha: a mountain shamakha when it was high and lofty, a man shamakha bi-anfihi when he was proud, shāmikh is lofty, and a lineage can be shāmikh. Both branches hold the sense of rising: in Akkadian the rising of plants, stature and splendour, in Arabic of the mountain and the nose. Shamhat is "the lofty one", the woman abundant in beauty and tall in stature, and the same word names a class of Ishtar's women. This is a reading proposed on the method, not one found in the essays.

Linguistic Root

Shamhat and "the lofty one"

The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary defines šamḫatu as a woman connected with the temple, lists its forms šamkatu and šamuḫtu, and refers it to the verb šamāḫu: to grow thickly and abundantly, to flourish, to attain extraordinary beauty or stature. From it comes the adjective šamḫu: lush of vegetation, prosperous of people. The word appears with the same sense elsewhere: in Tablet VI Ishtar gathers the three kinds of temple women, the kezrētu, šamḫātu and ḫarimātu; Erra and Išum describes Uruk as the city of these women; and Šamḫatum is a woman's name in Old Babylonian documents. The dictionary of the electronic Babylonian Library notes that it is a personal name in Gilgamesh and that, as a name, it means "voluptuous".

The correspondence is regular: š with sh, m with m, Akkadian ḫ with Arabic kh, since old kh kept its place in Akkadian. The k of the Old Babylonian Šamkatum is an alternation inside Akkadian itself; the dictionary cites šam-kat for the same verb in a copy of Enūma eliš. Lane: shamakha of a mountain, it was high and lofty; shāmikh, a lofty mountain; shamakha bi-anfihi, he was proud and raised his nose; nasab shāmikh, a high lineage.

The class: ḫarimtu

The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary says of the verb ḫarāmu, to separate, that it may be the source of ḫarimtu if the word designates women set apart socially. A document from Nuzi says, "she is not a wife, she is a ḫarimtu", and an Assyrian law says that a ḫarimtu must not veil herself. The sense meets Arabic ḥ-r-m: ḥarumat al-marʾa ʿalā zawjihā, the woman became forbidden to her husband; ḥarām, what is forbidden; ḥarīm, what is guarded and not approached. The limit of the comparison is that Akkadian ḫ answers Arabic kh under the usual law, not ḥ.

Historical Context

Shamhat tells Enkidu that in Uruk there is a festival every day with drums beating, that its harimtu women are fair of figure and full of joy, and that she will lead him to Eanna, the holy temple, the dwelling of Ishtar. Tablet VI says that when the Bull of Heaven was killed Ishtar gathered the women of her temple and set up a lament over its haunch. Shamhat belongs to a group with a place in Ishtar's cult at Uruk; the epic never calls her anyone's wife, and laws and documents distinguished a ḫarimtu from a wife.

Key Mythic Narratives

"Eat the bread... drink the ale"

The Old Babylonian version puts in two lines what the city means for Enkidu: bread, "the thing proper to life", and ale, "the lot of the land". Then come the barber, the oil and the garment, and the text says: "he became a man", awīliš īwe. The change is made with things people make and share: ground and baked grain, fermented barley, oil and woven cloth.

The road to the wedding

While they were at the shepherds' camp a man passed on his way to a wedding in Uruk; Shamhat, at Enkidu's bidding, asked him where he was hurrying, and he said that the king goes in to the bride before her husband. Enkidu's face turned pale, he went to Uruk with Shamhat behind him, and stood in the door of the wedding house, so that his first meeting with Gilgamesh was a fight.

Symbolic Reading

The Sumerian rereading essay reads Enkidu as "natural man", the hunter-gatherer before civilisation, reads Shamhat's taming of him as "civilisation taming wild man", and makes Shamhat "the knowledge and awareness" that brings man out of the wild. The Babylonian rereading essay reads the taming of Enkidu by a woman as the settling of the nomad and his passage from the wild to the city. The text supports this with particular details: what Enkidu learns is bread, ale, oil, clothing and guarding the herd, the life of herders and farmers, and then of the city. And it adds what the reading does not say: nature itself shrinks from the man once he knows, since the gazelles flee from him before he ever reaches the city.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Enkidu is a man of clay thrown by Aruru into the wild, and Shamhat completes his making as a human being: in this story clay alone is not enough until bread, clothing and speech come.

What she gives Enkidu is what many stories credit to culture heroes: bread, drink and clothing. Here it does not come down from heaven; a woman of the city carries it to one man in the wild.

Enkidu asks Ishtar to bring Shamhat into a rich house: the goddess who dwelt at Uruk is the one who protects the women of her temple, as on the page of Inanna.