#WingedWordsWindsday: 11/24/2021 -- Welcome to Orion, Warrior-Hero of the Night Sky!

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 4: November 24, 2021

 

 

Welcome to Orion, the Warrior-Hero of the Night Sky!

Editor’s Note

                The constellation Orion the Hunter is rising in the East by midevening now – one of the most prominent figures portrayed on the sky’s dome by our distant ancestors. Probably modeled on Gilgamesh, the legendary King of Uruk in Mesopotamia (early 3^rd millennium BCE), Orion is one of the most easily recognized constellations, appearing as a giant warrior-hero in the night sky. Here are three classic poems (followed by an article about Gilgamesh) to welcome Orion back into the evening sky.

 

“The Winter Scene: Part II” by Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

Out from the silent portal of the hours,

When frosts are come and all the hosts put on.

Their burnished gear to march across the night

And o'er a darkened Earth in splendor shine,

Slowly above the world Orion wheels

His glittering square, while on the shadowy hill

And throbbing like a sea-light through the dusk,

Great Sirius rises in his flashing blue.

Lord of the winter night, august and pure,

Returning year on year untouched by time,

To hearten faith with thine unfaltering fire,

There are no hurts that beauty cannot ease,

No ills that love cannot at last repair,

In the victorious progress of the soul.

 

“Stars” by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall (1883-1922)

Now in the West the slender Moon lies low,

And now Orion glimmers through the trees,

Clearing the Earth with even pace and slow,

And now the stately-moving Pleiades,

In that soft infinite darkness overhead

Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread.

And all the lonelier stars that have their place,

Calm lamps within the distant southern sky,

And planet-dust upon the edge of space,

Look down upon the fretful world, and I

Look up to outer vastness unafraid

And see the stars which sang when Earth was made.

 

“Winter Stars” (1920)

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I went out at night alone;

The young blood flowing beyond the sea

Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings —

I bore my sorrow heavily.

But when I lifted up my head

From shadows shaken on the snow,

I saw Orion in the east

Burn steadily as long ago.

From windows in my father’s house,

Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,

I watched Orion as a girl

Above another city’s lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,

The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,

All things are changed, save in the east

The faithful beauty of the stars.

 

“Leadership Lessons from Gilgamesh, the World’s First Superhero” by Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Expanded from Cursus Honorum VII: 4 (November 2006)

Read an English translation of the Gilgamesh Epic @ https://www.jasoncolavito.com/epic-of-gilgamesh.html and its epilogue at https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1813.htm.

                The Gilgamesh Epic is the oldest extant epic poem in world literature. Based on a series of Sumerian heroic poems from the late third millennium BCE, the epic was compiled in Mesopotamia during the 18th century BCE in the Akkadian language. The plot of the epic revolves around the adventures of Gilgamesh, an early King of the city-state of Uruk (reigned ca. 27th century BCE). The compilers of the epic wove together a tapestry of heroic tales that had gathered around Gilgamesh into a single action-packed narrative.

                According to the epic, Gilgamesh was the son of the mortal human King Lugalbanda and the goddess Ninsumunak. The narrative opens with the story of how King Gilgamesh met the wildman Enkidu and describes how the two heroes be-came steadfast warrior-companions. The poem continues with exciting battle sequences, in which Gilgamesh and Enkidu destroyed the ogre Humbaba in the Cedar Forest of Lebanon and slew the Bull of Heaven when it went rampaging through the streets of Uruk.

                The gods were angered by the slaying of the Bull of Heaven, so they afflicted Enkidu with a fatal illness. Gilgamesh was devastated by his warrior-companion’s death and set off on a quest to find the secret of immortality, lest he suffer the same fate as Enkidu. The King of Uruk passed through many perils as he journeyed to a faraway eastern land, near the gates of the sunrise. There, Gilgamesh met Siduri (an immortal sage and seer), Urshanabi (the boatman who ferried Gilgamesh across the Waters of Death), and finally Utnapishtim (the Mesopotamian equivalent of Noah), who along with his wife had been granted immortality after the great Flood.

                Gilgamesh found and then lost the secret of eternal youth on his way back home to Uruk, but he returned to his native city a wiser man. He had discovered – through finding and loss – that true friendship can change one’s life forever. Gilgamesh had also learned that although death is unavoidable for mortals, we should celebrate life while it lasts and undertake heroic deeds to benefit others. At the end of his long reign as King of Uruk, Gilgamesh died and was buried, and the Divine Council of the gods made him the Prince of the Otherworld, where he was reunited with his beloved family and with his warrior-companion Enkidu. As the Prince of the Otherworld, he meted out justice and mercy to the dead based on the wisdom and understanding that he had gained during his lifetime on Earth.

                Gilgamesh has become a pop culture hero in recent decades, as his epic story (which was lost for over 2000 years) has now been translated into several modern languages. Whatever historical truth may lie behind his legend, Gilgamesh is remembered still today because the leadership lessons that he exemplified are timeless truths that appear again and again throughout world literature. Mortality will come to us all, Gilgamesh would say, but while life lasts, let us spend it in service to others through heroic deeds and teaching wisdom by example. As the Akkadian epic poets wrote of the world’s first superhero, some 4000 years ago:

 

“He who the heart of all matters has proven, let him teach the nation, He who all knowledge possesses, therein shall he school all the people, He shall his wisdom impart and so shall they share it together. Gilgamesh — he was the Master of wisdom, with knowledge of all things, He it was who discovered the secret concealed. Aye, he handed down the tradition relating to things prediluvian, He went on a journey afar, all aweary and worn with his toiling. He engraved on a tablet of stone all the travail.”

à Prologue to the Gilgamesh Epic (Slightly Modernized by the Editor from the 1929 Translation by R. Campbell Thompson)

 

The Editor (costumed as Taliesin, a time-traveling bard from Welsh mythology) performed an original story entitled “The Lost Years of Gilgamesh: Before the Epic” at the iSchool’s annual Storytelling Festival in April 2017. The constellation Orion (at right) was identified in ancient Mesopotamian skylore with Gilgamesh, the world’s first superhero. (Photo Credit: iSchool Staff)