Prisons in Ancient Mesopotamia: Confinement and Control until the First Fall of Babylon by J. Nicholas Reid;

Author:J. Nicholas Reid; [Reid, J. Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192666345
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2022-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

[Gilgameš] opened his mouth to speak,

saying to Enkidu:

“[Why,] my friend, are we trembling like weaklings,

[we] who came across all the mountains?” (V:34–36)53

The awe-inspiring context of the forest caused fear to seize Gilgameš and Enkidu, much like the incantation above that deals with entering into the palace. While the ominous approach and subsequent slaying of Ḫumbaba as well as the destruction of the forest serve a number of literary functions in the story, the fear of the forest (in this case Ḫumbaba’s court) may be connected to the literary imagery of the forest described as a “big house” through the earlier Sumerian tale of “Bilgameš and Ḫuwawa.” This connection is represented in the proverb above, where the “big house,” or palace, is a forest and the king is a lion. The lion was a powerful threat in the forest, and so also was the king in his palace. Bringing the strands of this connected imagery back together, entering into the court of the king or into the presence of Nungal was intended to inspire awe.

All of this also has a religious coercive element, as the king is meant to be the chief agent of justice for the gods, and Nungal was a goddess as well. The terror felt upon entering into the judicial process was intended to encourage honesty and provide a coercive element to the process. The forest serves as apt imagery with its ability to cover over a person together with its many dangers. With this contextual perspective, oath-taking and the River Ordeal are considered in what follows, as they relate to the judicial process and imprisonment and further elucidate the intersection between the religious and judicial in early Mesopotamia.

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