Giants/A named giant
Named in Aramaic, letter for letter
Gilgamesh
The king of Uruk is written into the Watchers’ family. His walls will not help him. In the fragments that remain, he is the giant who knows he is overmatched.
Also named glgmš, Gilgameš.
- Office
- The frightened hero
- Father
- Unnamed Watcher
- Tradition
- Qumran
- Cited
- 4Q530 2 ii 1–3; 4Q531 22
This is not a similar name. It is Gilgamesh, spelled in Aramaic as the Mesopotamian king is spelled. A Jewish book of the third or second century BCE has taken the oldest hero in world literature and seated him in the assembly of the Nephilin, among Ohyah and Hahyah, waiting for a flood.
What the two surviving mentions actually do with him is quieter than polemic. 4Q531 measures his strength against heaven and finds it wanting. 4Q530 has Ohyah report Gilgamesh’s words; a sentence is spoken against a life; the Great One curses princes. One reading: Ohyah tries to hang the coming punishment on Gilgamesh alone, the way he tried with Azazel. The book will not allow a single scapegoat.
If the Epic of Gilgamesh is a story about a king who cannot become immortal, the Book of Giants is a story about a giant who cannot become exempt. The wall of Uruk is not mentioned. Fear is.