r/Mesopotamia

This post is just to shout out a resource I really like.

This is a paper by Halperin.

It argues that Achilles-Patroclus, Gilgamesh-Enkidu, and David-Jonathan are all part of the same Near Eastern topos of heroic friendship.

This theme uses erotic, filial and romantic language to elevate the friendship above all other relationships.

I'll give a breakdown, but I'll also provide the link so you can read it yourself.

The liminality of friendship.
Halperin notes that friendship, as a type of relationship, exists outside our more codified forms of connection.

—
“But there is another dimension to Rickie's fantasy that might be easier to grasp if we could manage to resist both the complacent joys of biographical criticism and the more insidious temptation to sexualize the erotics of male friendship. I submit that Forster has accurately understood what he calls, in the same passage, "the irony of friendship"-its paradoxical combination of social importance and social marginality, its indeterminate status among the various forms of social relations. Friendship is the anomalous relation: it exists outside the more thoroughly codified social networks formed by kinship and sexual ties; It is
"interstitial in the social structure" of most Western cultures.' It is therefore more free-floating, more in need of "labelling" (as Forster puts it), more in need, that is, of social and ideological definition.
Homer's Iliad represents an instance of precisely this sort of ideological or definitional activity; it enables us to glimpse a certain species of social relation in the very act of being labeled, of undergoing literary construction.”
—

This is how Halperin starts his case that Achilles and Patroclus’ friendship is part of an existing Topos in the Near Eastern literary tradition. Specific to that very time.

The strongest and his equal

Halperin here presents the asymmetry in each friendship.
—
“This clement can be variably materialized: in the Sumerian sources of the Gilgamesh Epic, for example. Enkidu had originally figured as Gilgamesh's servant (though even there he is occasionally termed a friend); the final Tablet of the Epic, which consists of a fragmentary translation of a Sumerian legend, similarly refers to Enkidu as Gilgamesh's servant (XII, 54). The Old Babylonian redactor transformed that tradition in the interests of his own thematic preoccupations by ostensibly equalizing the relationship: now, Enkidu is created as a match for Gilgamesh (Il, v, 27; ef. 1, ii, 31-32 (Assyrian version]), is called an equal (masil, kima), " and has complementary features (he is shorter than Gilgamesh but "stronger of bone*'?: Il, v, 15-17). But for all that, the traditional design of the material is hardly lost from view: it continues to be reflected, even in the late version of the Epic, by the relative apportionment of precedence, power, and narrative prominence among the two friends. Gilgamesh still has greater strength than Enkidu (I, v, 18), '* is older (VIII, ii, 8-9; X, i, 53-54), and is the one whom the goddess Ishtar desires as a lover (Tablet VI): he remains the protagonist of the story, whereas Enkidu becomes his trusty companion, guide, and protector-almost a mascot, an expensive pet (IlI, i, 2-12; Ill, vi, 8-11; Ill, vi, 21-28 [Old Babylonian version]; cf. VIII, ii, +6).”

“The Late Source of Samuel achieves an interesting variation on this theme by differentially distributing secular and sacred preeminence: in the secular order, Jonathan is David's superior, being the king's son and successor, whereas David is an entirely obscure person (an outsider, like Enkidu); in the sacred order, however, David is Jonathan's superior, being God's anointed, whereas Jonathan is the scion of a doomed royal house.

Homer achieves a similar effect by making Patroclus, who being the subordinate member of the relationship is physically weaker than Achilles (c.., 11.787, 16.709, cf. 16.140-42. 242-45) and socially subservient to him (11.786; cf. 1.337-47, 9.190-211, 620-21, 11.648-54), the older and wiser of the two and, hence, the one whose job it is to watch over and instruct his unruly comrade (11.787-89).”
—

In short, the story attempts to make a somewhat unequal dynamic feel more balanced. Unlike in other homosocial bonds that have a homoerotic element, here equality seems to play an important role.

The death of the friend

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“Finally, in all three stories the weaker or less favored friend dies. […] The subordinate friend is thus th expendable friend, the une whose death makes the way for the principal friend's further adventures. Death is the climax of the friendship, the occasion of the most extreme expressions of tenderness on the part of the two friends, and it weds them forever (in the memory of the survivor, at least).
Indeed, it is not too much to say that death is to friendship what marriage
is to romance.”
—

When the “weakest” friend dies, this is not only the moment of highest emotional intensity of the epic, but it completely changes who the other is and gives them the momentum to embark on their defining ultimate quest.

The use of romantic parallels in friendship

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“It is this last point that helps to account for the particular way that friendship is constructed in the Gilgamesh Epic. Gilgamesh's affection for his friend is described in terms appropriate to relations with both kin and objects of sexual desire. Enkidu is often called Gilgamesh's "brother" (abu)." Moreover, Gilgamesh's feeling for Enkidu is explicitly modelled on sexual attraction: in the two dreams that presage the arrival of Enkidu, Gilgamesh takes pleasure in his vision of Enkidu as in a woman (though he does not take such pleasure in Enkidu himself when the latter finally arrives). The crucial phrase occurs only once (in the second dream) in the extant fragments of the Old Babylonian version (i, 33-34)," but the Assyrian version picks it up and repeats it relentlessly (I, v, 36, 47; l, vi, 4, 14, 19; cf.
VIII, ii, 46).' The phrase itself has been variously rendered: E. A. Speiser translates, "[I loved it] and was drawn to it as though to a woman, Jeffrey Tigay prefers, "[I loved it, and like a wife I caressed it."* Whatever the exact meaning of the problematic term bababu," its implication is not in doubt: the word that describes Gilgamesh's anticipated attraction to Enkidu is also used to describe Enkidu's anticipated attraction to the prostitute from Uruk, with whom he mates for six days and seven nights (I, iv, 15). When Enkidu dies, moreover, Gilgamesh mourns for him like a widow (literally.
"a wailing woman": VIII, ii, 3) and veils his corpse as if it were a bride (VIII. i, 17) * The point of these analogies to kin and objects of sexual desire seems to be that Enkidu's friendship affords Gilgamesh a proleptic taste of the pleasures of human sociality, including marriage and paternity”

“[…] apostrophizing Jonathan, David says, "Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women" (2 Samuel 1:26). In context, this much-interpreted remark would seem to mean not that David had sexual motives for preferring Jonathan's love to women's but rather that Jonathan's love for David was astonishing because-even without a sexual component—it was stronger and more militant than sexual love. Jonathan's love is uncanny, reflecting as it does David's divinely conferred charisma; it makes Jonathan a collaborator in his own effacement. Instead of being David's enemy, his rival for the royal succession, Jonathan becomes, as David calls him in the words of the elegy, "my brother Jonathan"”

“The conjugal associations, however, work reciprocally: at Py troclus's funeral, Achilles, as chief mourner, cradles the head of his dead ao meto 23, 136-37), the same gesture that is performed by Andromach at Hector's funeral (24.724). So each, in a sense, is wife to cach.”

—

Halperin ends his essay by arguing that the authors of these epics use romantic (and filial) language to give the relationship social validity.

Defining friendship

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“Once again, we find that the friendship is parasitic in its conceptualisation on kinship relations and on sexual relations. That is, it must borrow terminology and imagery from these other spheres of human relations in order to identify and define itself. Patroclus performs many of the functions for Achilles that a wife or female dependent normally performs in the Homeric world":”

[…]

“The strategies employed by Homer in constructing the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus thus recall similar strategies employed to similar ends in two roughly contemporary sources from non-Hellenic cultures to the East. In all three cases, the creators of the legends appeal to conjugal relations and to kinship relations in order to define, to make familiar, and to situate (both socially and emotionally) the central friendship they wish to explore; more specifically, they appeal to these other, better established and codified sorts of human relations in order to make the friendship between the main characters into an image of sociality, of human solidarity. Sociality has, to be sure, quite different and distinctive associations in each of the three traditions, as we have seen, but we find it constructed in each literary composition out of the same, rather limited, repertory of indigenous signifiers*—namely, kinship and conjugality.”
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Obviously, some aspects of the paper are outdated. I think most scholars now tend to think of homosociality on a continuum with homoerotism rather than as two separate things. But still a foundational resource.

Supposedly it’s in the iraq museum but the object itself seems to be missing or at least highly restricted to the public eye.

Unlike most other famous artifacts, there are no recent photos/videos of the object circulating on the internet shared by museum goers. Sometimes you’ll find mediocre replicas displayed inside some museums (photos 2 and 3) but media concerning the original is confined to professional photographs taken many years ago/shortly after its discovery. Furthermore, the interior of the iraq museum in 2009 is free to explore in google street view. Noticeably missing is the copper head. It seems that it has been off display since 2003 in the wake of the Iraq war.

So what gives?

I’ve heard that it was looted in 2003 or more likely, that it’s stored within a very secure place like a vault. Since iraq is a whole lot more stable than it was in 2003, the obvious question is why isn’t the crown jewel of the museum’s collection on display?