Siduri

Summary

Siduri is the keeper of a tavern on the shore of the sea at the end of the earth, the last person Gilgamesh meets on his way to Utnapishtim. The epic calls her sābītu, the woman who keeps an alehouse and sells beer, and gives her name only at the start of Tablet X of the Standard Babylonian version: "Šiduri was an ale-wife who lived by the sea-shore." She had potstands and vats, and she was wrapped in hoods and veils.

Gilgamesh came to her after the death of Enkidu, dressed in animal skins, with the flesh of the gods in his body and sorrow in his heart, his face like one who had travelled a distant road. She saw him from afar and said to herself: this is a slayer of wild bulls; where has he come from, straight to my gate? She barred her gate and went up on the roof. He threatened to break the door, she asked about him, and he told her how he and his friend had destroyed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, then said: "My friend, whom I love, has turned to clay, my friend Enkidu, whom I love, has turned to clay. Shall I not be like him and also lie down, never to rise again?" He asked her the road to Utnapishtim, and she answered: there never was a way across, and since the days of old no one has crossed the ocean; the one who crosses it is the hero Shamash, and apart from Shamash who can cross? The crossing is perilous, and in between are the Waters of Death that lie across the way. Then she pointed him to Urshanabi, Utnapishtim's boatman, who had the Stone Ones with him in the middle of the forest: go and let him see your face; if it may be done, cross with him; if not, turn back.

In the Old Babylonian version on the Sippar tablet she has no name and a longer speech. Shamash first tells him: "O Gilgamesh, where are you wandering? You cannot find the life that you seek." Then the ale-wife says the same words and goes on: "When the gods created mankind, for mankind they established death, life they kept for themselves. You, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full, keep enjoying yourself, day and night. Every day make merry, dance and play day and night. Let your clothes be clean, let your head be washed, may you be bathed in water. Gaze on the little one who holds your hand, let a wife keep enjoying herself in your lap. Such is the destiny of mortal men." Gilgamesh will not accept it: my heart is sick for my friend; you dwell, ale-wife, on the shore of the ocean and are familiar with all [..]; show me the way, and if it can be done I will cross the ocean.

The idea her story turns on is that she stands on the line where the land of people ends. Behind her is the garden whose trees are precious stones, into which Gilgamesh came out of the dark road of the sun; before her is the sea that only the sun crosses. Her house is a tavern, a place of food, drink and rest, and her speech in the old version is the whole life of a household: a full belly, clean clothes, a child holding your hand, a wife. She accepts death, and shows the man the life that was given to mortals. When he insists on crossing, she shows him the way. In the Standard version the advice has gone from her lips and the guidance remains, so that she becomes the one who knows the boatman and the crossing.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. It is written si-du-ri, and in another copy ši-du-ri with the sign for a deity before it. Take away the final vowel and s, d and r remain, the Arabic root s-d-r. Lane records sadir as one of the names of the sea, found in a poem of Umayya ibn Abī al-Ṣalt; sadira is said of a man dazzled by what he looks at until he turns his face away, confounded and unable to find his course, and from it comes a giddiness that takes hold of a voyager at sea; and sidrat al-muntahā is the lote-tree in the seventh heaven beyond which neither angel nor prophet passes. On this reading Siduri is "she of the sea": she lives on its shore at the limit that only the sun passes, and the man who reaches her has just come out of the darkness of the sun's road into the glitter of the jewelled trees. This is a reading proposed on the method, not one found in the essays. The Sumerian essay reads the same letters in the name of Ziusudra, the flood survivor who lives beyond her sea, taking sudra from s-d-r, length and extent. Her title sābītu is Arabic sābiʾa: one says sabaʾa al-khamr of buying wine to drink it, and the sabbāʾ is the wine-seller.

Linguistic Root

The title: sābiʾa

The title is clearer than the name. Sābītu is the feminine of sābû, which the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary defines as innkeeper and beer merchant, whence bīt sābî, "alehouse"; the same dictionary records sabû, "beer", in the lexical lists. In Arabic sabaʾa al-khamr and istabaʾahā mean to buy wine in order to drink it, and Lane notes that the verb is used of buying only for wine; sibāʾ is wine and the sabbāʾ its seller. S and b are the same in both branches, the final glottal stop dropped in Akkadian as its gutturals do, and the t marks the feminine. The ale-wife of the epic is the sābiʾa of the Arabs.

The name: the root s-d-r

The name is written with s in one copy and š in another; Akkadian s answers Arabic s, and š answers s, sh or th, so both spellings allow s. D and r remain unchanged. Lane gives three senses of s-d-r that meet at the tavern: sadir, a name of the sea, rare and found only in a poem of Umayya ibn Abī al-Ṣalt; sadira, to be dazzled by what one looks at, as by the glare of the sun, so as to be confounded and lose one's way, and from it the giddiness of a sea voyager; and sidrat al-muntahā, the lote-tree beyond which angels and prophets do not pass, which shades the water and Paradise. The first is closest to what the tablet says: "who lived by the sea-shore." Lane, s-d-r.

The limit of this reading is that the final vowel is not explained, that this name of the sea is rare, and that the glossary of the electronic Babylonian Library refers the name's derivation to a study by W. G. Lambert that we have not seen. "Siduri" sounds like Arabic sayyidatī, "my lady", but the r has no counterpart in sayyida, so that comparison is weaker.

Historical Context

The ale-wife is a known figure of Babylonian society. Hammurabi's laws punish a woman tavern-keeper who will not take grain by weight in payment for drink but takes money, when the price of the drink is less than that of the grain; they put her to death if conspirators meet in her house and are not captured and delivered to the court; and they burn a priestess who opens a tavern or enters one to drink. The tavern was a house where strangers met and news passed, which is why Gilgamesh says to her in the old version: you dwell on the shore of the ocean and are familiar with all [..].

The Old Babylonian tablet that keeps her advice is known as the Sippar tablet and is now in two pieces, VAT 4105 in Berlin and BM 96974 in London; the Sources of Early Akkadian Literature project gives its findspot as unknown and Andrew George's 2003 edition as its edition. On it Utnapishtim's boatman is called Sursunabu, and Utnapishtim himself Ūta-naʾištim.

Key Mythic Narratives

The garden before the tavern

Before he reached her house Gilgamesh entered Mount Māšu, which guards the rising and setting of the sun, past the scorpion-men at its gate, and walked twelve double-hours along the sun's road inside it, in a darkness where he could not see what was behind him, then came out ahead of the sun into brilliance and saw "the trees of the gods": a carnelian tree hung with bunches of grapes, a lapis lazuli tree lovely in leaf and fruit, crystal instead of thorns, and shells of the sea. Tablet IX ends: "As Gilgamesh walked about, she lifted up her head to watch him", and Tablet X begins with Siduri.

What changes between the versions

In the old version the same words, "you cannot find the life that you seek", come first from Shamash and then from the ale-wife, so that both the sun and the woman say them. In the Standard version Gilgamesh asks her for the "landmark" of the road, and she answers with the boatman and the Stone Ones; he repeats the same exchange with Urshanabi and then with Utnapishtim, and the question of death moves into Utnapishtim's speech.

Symbolic Reading

The essays do not read Siduri herself. The Babylonian rereading essay reads the journey to Utnapishtim as a sea expedition across the Gulf, so that on this reading Siduri's tavern is the last house on the coast before the sea route, as taverns in Hammurabi's laws were houses where strangers met. The text supports a second reading from people's lives: the ale-wife sells drink and knows the roads, and what she urges is what a household stands on, food, washing, a child and a wife; what Gilgamesh refuses is that household itself, until he comes back to it at the end of the epic with the boatman, looking at his city's wall.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Odysseus asks Circe to send him home, and she tells him he must first go to the house of Hades; he answers, "To Hades no man ever yet went in a black ship", and she teaches him the way across Ocean. Siduri tells Gilgamesh that no one has crossed the ocean since the days of old, and then teaches him the way.

Her advice in the old version comes close in its words to Ecclesiastes: "Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy.. Let your clothes always be freshly washed, and your head never lack ointment. Enjoy happiness with a woman you love." Food, clean clothes, an anointed head and a wife are in both texts, and both say it to someone who knows he will die.

She stands on the road to the survivor of the Flood, and the Waters of Death beyond her sea are a limit the living cross only with a boatman, as in the stories of Descent to the Underworld.

In China King Mu travels west to the Queen Mother of the West, who sings to him at the Jasper Lake that mountains and rivers lie between them and that if he does not die perhaps he will come again; see the Queen Mother of the West.