Famous Phonies

by Brianna DuMont

  Maybe imagining Gilgamesh as a real king wasn’t so crazy. Later excavations turned up pottery shards with his name as well as other names from the king list. Archaeologists even found walls around Uruk dating to the time when Gilgamesh supposedly had them built.

  At the very least, these findings suggest that a king named Gilgamesh may have existed, become extremely famous, built walls to defend his town, and as these things tend to happen, accumulated legends and admirers like barnacles on a ship. He was deified by 2500 BCE, and since then, the world has never known what’s fake, and what isn’t.

  The truth is, there are no contemporary sources from Gilgamesh’s time to prove his existence. Unless more evidence turns up, the reality of Gilgamesh could go either way. But scholars will probably argue about it for years to come, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

  All those tablets do confirm something: Mesopotamia had a lot of kings.

  It’s Not Done Yet!

  Remember all those stacks of tablets in the British Museum that were found in the 1870s? Well, they’re still there, and many are waiting patiently to be deciphered. In early 2014, the assistant keeper of cuneiform tablets at the British Museum, Irving Finkel, announced he found the blueprint to the Babylonian ark. Turns out, Utnapishtim’s ark would have been round and a bit smaller than a soccer field. The “blueprint” is really just another clay tablet describing the dimensions of the boat that Gilgamesh’s poets decided to leave out, probably so they didn’t bog down the excitement of Gilgamesh’s week of sleep. Some think this is where the writers of Noah’s ark got their idea—from Utanpishtim’s ark.

  Who knows, you could be the next person to discover a huge breakthrough in the legend of Gilgamesh. It could be you who jumps up and down and takes your shirt off in celebration—just like George Smith.

  Getting into the Legend Business Isn’t Easy, but Someone’s Got to Do It

  So if Gilgamesh was a real king, and not some legendary phony, how did he turn into a superhuman character in an epic story?

  Enter a king with a head for business.

  Shulgi was the second king in the third dynasty of Ur, which means he ruled the city from 2094–2047 BCE.

  third dynasty of Ur:

  Lots of big stuff happened in the third dynasty of Ur (monsters and demi-gods not included). Most of it happened thanks to Shulgi, who created a standing army, a calendar, and standardized boring administrative records—dull, but necessary, if you’re going to be a successful ruler.

  He had a big man crush on Gilgamesh, whose name was still floating around six hundred years after his supposed reign. Since we have no existing fragments from this period, we don’t know exactly what people were saying about Gilgamesh, but clearly they were talking. All Shulgi wanted was for people to think about Shulgi when they told Gilgamesh stories.

  Ancient Mesopotamia circa Shulgi the Avenger’s reign.

  What better way to have his lowly subjects make the connection between Gilgamesh and himself than more stories? Shulgi decided to write Gilgamesh’s stories down, but he wanted to be in them too; otherwise writing them down would be useless. The whole point of the stories was to give two thumbs way up to Shulgi’s kingliness.

  So Shulgi squeezed himself into an epic as Gilgamesh’s brother, and he changed the curriculum of scribal schools to include poems and hymns praising his own awesomeness. The image wouldn’t be complete without an appropriate nickname, and thus Shulgi the Avenger was born, minus any superhero’s cape. He didn’t wait till he was dead to have people sing his praises; he commanded it while he was alive, proving just how fuzzy the lines between history and legend can get in the greedy hands of a dictator.

  Gilgamesh got the last laugh, though. Shulgi might have used his name and abused his memory for his own purposes, but it’s Gilgamesh that people still remember. (Which is a shame, really, since Shulgi was the first to use writing for things other than keeping track of goats and grain—those boring administrative records at work!)

  After that, Gilgamesh had a new history—his legend. It was tweaked orally and re-tweaked in writing over and over and over again until we had a bunch of different versions of the story. And like any bestselling novel, The Epic of Gilgamesh has been translated into different languages throughout its long history, changing to fit new audiences whom embellished and expanded the old stories. The Babylonians went further; they strung the Sumerian tales together into a cohesive story, added in new story bits (Utnapishtim and the Flood), and upgraded Enkindu’s servant status to best friend status.

  Before there ever was a New York Times bestseller list, there was the original: Gilgamesh.

  The First at Everything

  When you’re the world’s oldest civilization, it’s easy to be the first at everything. The first to read, the first to write, the first to build cities and canals, the first to use a plow, and so on. It comes as no surprise, then, that this ancient Sumerian culture gave us the first epic poetry and the first superhuman character.

  Of all the epics to come out of Mesopotamia—and there are quite a few—Gilgamesh’s are the most widespread and the most copied. They were found all over the present-day Middle East, ranging in date from Shulgi’s literary reforms until the second century BCE. That’s 1,900 years! It’s possible that archaeologists might find even older copies someday.

  epics:

  Including epics about characters with equally awesome names like Sargon, Lugalbanda, and Etana.

  Since the world wasn’t isolated in the Bronze Age, even faraway places like Greece and Rome knew about the badly behaving Gilgamesh. Wars, trade routes, migrant workers, travelers, and mercenary jobs all brought these cultures into contact with each other. People did all the sorts of things people do when they get together: shared stories, married, and killed one another. (Isn’t that your typical picnic gathering?) As a result, Gilgamesh and his tales spread far beyond Mesopotamia, influencing cultures throughout the known world.

  cultures:

  Even the monsters in the epic found themselves in the limelight. The epic’s forest monster, Huwawa, is also mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the medieval work by the Manicheans known as Book of the Giants.

  The biggest debate between scholars is how much Gilgamesh influenced One Thousand and One Nights (a.k.a. Arabian Nights) and also Homer (The Iliad and The Odyssey—see chapter 9).

  Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War, and Gilgamesh could be twins, they’re so alike. Both are sons of a goddess and king; both are so close to immortality that they could practically taste it; and both are so messed up emotionally that they’re the world’s first manic-depressives.

  One minute they were weeping bitterly, and the next they were ready to cut off heads and party like it’s the end of the world. Both had close buddies who died, forcing them to talk about their feelings, and eventually they both realized that no matter what, death would come for them. Oh well—carpe diem! (Which has nothing to do with fish, but with seizing the day.)

  It’s possible that the Greek bards who traveled around various Greek cities singing and performing Greek stories heard Gilgamesh’s stories themselves from narus.

  narus:

  The Near Eastern version of bards—storytelling singers—but can also refer to the type of boast-filled stories about kings that filled tablets.

  They may have even heard the stories from captured soldiers, who were turned into slaves after wars. Maybe they remembered bits of stories and thought, “Perhaps I’ll just adjust it a bit for my audience.”

  There’s no reason to assume that the Greek bards straight plagiarized from Eastern traditions, but there’s no reason to think they didn’t get a bit of inspiration, either. Too many of the same themes, motifs, and characters are present in both traditions. The same thing happens today for writers everywhere. As it’s been said: there’s nothing new under the sun.

  A Merry-Go-Round of Opportunity

  Mortality, friendship, and the acceptance of death�
�these themes can be found in modern books today, but they all began with Gilgamesh.

  When Gilgamesh was uncovered in Victorian times, it didn’t immediately take the world by storm. At first, only angsty poets, artists, and psychoanalysts—like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung—salivated while reading about Gilgamesh. Upon reading the epic, the famous Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke exclaimed, “Gilgamesch ist ungeheuer!” which means something like, “Gilgamesh is the man!”

  Gilgamesh for the People

  The Mesopotamian idea of the afterlife was scarier and crueler than a surprise pop quiz on a Friday afternoon. Nothing grew in the Netherworld, and the dead only drank brackish water and ate stale bread. The dead spent their days hoping the Queen of the Dead, Ereshkigal, didn’t notice them moping about and send her demons to punish them. And that was the afterlife for people who had been good and obeyed the gods’ whims their whole life. It’s no wonder Gilgamesh thought dying was a raw deal. His quest for immortality ultimately gave the Mesopotamian people hope. At the end of Gilgamesh’s story, the gods grant him a form of immortality—he becomes the greeter of the dead (like Saint Peter in Christian culture) and the judge of the dead (like King Minos in Ancient Greek culture). Gilgamesh’s story finally gave Mesopotamians something to look forward to after death—they would be able to meet their hero, the great king!

  It wasn’t until after WWII that Gilgamesh managed to infiltrate the rest of the world and capture its attention. Today, Gilgamesh is the star in many media forms, including textbooks, theater, ballet, videogames, novels, comic books, anime, and radio broadcasts. There’s even a Gilgamesh-themed restaurant located in London.

  All in all, Gilgamesh of the epic tale is fake. It’s even possible that Gilgamesh of Uruk is a fraud, too. Scholars just don’t know. If he did exist, he wasn’t running around for 126 years like the Sumerian King List says he did. But his legacy does exist, and it helped shape Western and Eastern literature for centuries. That’s some pretty legendary stuff.

  Chapter

  6

  Major William Martin

  Operation Mincemeat

  Lived: 1943, Britain

  Occupation: Fake Dead Mailman during World War II

  Every Good British Spy Story Needs a Little James Bond

  No one expected a corpse to change the course of World War II, but then again, no one expected a dead man to be promoted to major in the British army, either. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and World War II was desperate times.

  It was none other than Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, who helped the Allies invent one crazy (the British would say barmy) deception scheme after another. At the outbreak of war in 1939, Fleming worked as a personal assistant to an admiral. (Hardly a glamorous job for a would-be famous author, but Fleming made the best of it by later turning all of his superiors into characters in his novels.) Together, he and the admiral drafted a top-secret document nicknamed the “Trout Memo,” which is a weird name when you think about it. Inside, the dynamic duo listed fifty-one ways to trick the enemy.

  As anybody who has ever seen a James Bond movie knows, Ian Fleming had a fertile mind. Today, one might call it an overactive imagination. Most of the ideas in the “Trout Memo” were too flashy—and others, plain crazy. But one idea in particular, #28, hit just the right note. Appropriately, Ian Fleming entitled it: “A Suggestion (not a very nice one).”

  Idea #28 was ambitious and bold. In order for it to work, the British and Americans would need cover stories for their cover stories. They would also need near perfect planning. But if they pulled it off, #28 could change the course of the war. And no one but the Nazis wanted to spend the rest of their lives saying “Heil Hitler.”

  “Everybody But a Bloody Fool Would Know It Was Sicily”

  The war wasn’t going as well as the Soviet Union, Britain, and America had hoped by 1943. Despite their super catchy, super cool nickname—the Allies—there were still dictators running roughshod all over Europe. The Allies needed to end the war soon, and taking the fight to Hitler’s doorstep seemed the best way.

  When trying to break a strong chain, it’s always best to go for the weakest link. In this case, the weak link was with Hitler’s Fascist friend and Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini. Together with Japan, Hitler and Mussolini were the Axis Powers—another catchy nickname. The Allies wanted to invade Italy first, and to do this, they needed to secure Sicily—that funny-looking island always getting kicked around by Italy.

  The Axis Powers used Sicily as a base for German Luftwaffe bombers to launch surprise attacks on the rest of Mediterranean Sea, destroying anything that flew or floated past. It was a real problem, and if Britain and America intended to win the war—and they did—they needed to secure Sicily and smash those death-dealing bombers. The Allies just needed to convince the Axis Powers that they weren’t going to do exactly that.

  England’s Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, even quipped, “Everyone but a bloody fool would know it was Sicily.” And even if Hitler and Mussolini were dumb as dirt, they would catch on rather quickly when 160,000 Allied troops started assembling in that general area. Something like that is hard to miss.

  Don’t be a bloody fool.

  So the British generals realized they needed a daring plan. In order to gain the element of surprise, they needed to pretend their next target wasn’t Sicily by pretending that it was Sicily.

  Confused yet?

  That’s where Ewen Montagu entered the story. Despite the fact that his own brother was a Russian spy, Ewen Montague loved his country. He drank his tea, ate his crumpets, and served as a British spy. He also realized that idea #28 would be a perfect fit for the Sicily invasion. Of course, he later claimed that he didn’t get the idea from Ian Fleming’s memo, but that’s all in the past now.

  So, what was idea #28, this not very nice suggestion?

  Number 28 called for the Allies to use a dead body as a fake spy in order to plant false information in the mind of the enemy. Bogus spies were nothing new in WWII. Legions of fake “sub-agents” roamed Europe, “operating” under the employ of real spies. Having hundreds of fake spies running around distracted the enemy from the real spies, and they also helped validate false information. As you’ve probably noticed, spying isn’t just about stealing secrets or keeping secrets safe. It’s also about getting the enemy to believe things that aren’t true. That’s called disinformation, and #28 is a perfect example of that.

  disinformation:

  Intentionally leaving a false trail.

  According to the plan, a corpse would wash up on a beach, presumably after a fiery plane crash in the Atlantic. Attached to the corpse would be documents of a sensitive nature. These top-secret letters—fake, of course—would refer to a plan to invade Greece, but they would also joke about using Sicily as a cover-up.

  If the scheme worked, the Germans would get a hold of the letter, re-divert troop strength to Greece, and leave Sicily wide open. Not only that, but the Germans would see any build-up of American and British troops around Sicily as a trick—as part of the “cover-up” referenced in the letter. That would allow the Allied Powers to prepare for their real attack on Sicily without any suspicion on the enemy’s part.

  Faker than a $3 bill.

  Pretty slick, huh?

  As the finishing touch, Ewen Montagu dubbed their plan Operation Mincemeat, since, well, the corpse was kind of like mincemeat pie, minus the flaky crust.

  And the Plot Thickens . . .

  Before the British could put the plan into action, there were plenty of hurdles to overcome. First, Operation Mincemeat needed a good corpse, which was harder to come by than you’d think during a war where over 60 million people died.

  Sure there were lots of bodies—just not the perfect body. The corpse had to be a man who was freshly dead and young. He also had to look like he belonged in the military, but he couldn’t have died in combat. They needed the Germans to believe that he had died in a watery plane crash.


  Also, he couldn’t have any family back home. Mothers typically want those bodies back. A suicide would work—there were plenty of those in Europe during the difficult times of World War II—but most methods, such as ingesting chemicals and hangings, would be discovered during the inevitable autopsy.

  autopsy:

  Cutting open a body after death to figure out how they died.

  Luckily for the British, a slightly deranged Welshman named Glyndwr Michael swallowed enough rat poison to kill himself in January 1943. Rat poison, you see, is undetectable in hair samples after death, unlike arsenic and other types of poison. The Germans would never know that’s how the man really died.

  Ewen Montagu and team put the corpse on ice and began working on the next step in the plan—creating a fictional man to go with the body. He and his staff flipped through their war files and found a name: Major William Martin—a real British pilot. It had a certain ring to it, they decided. They bought the corpse a sharp uniform and took pictures for his ID.

  Dead men aren’t exactly photogenic, so they got a guy in the office to pose for Major Martin’s ID card.

  Just in case the Germans looked into Major Martin’s past, they even made up a fake engagement between him and a real woman and put it in the papers. Luckily for her, she didn’t have to go on any real dates with him.

  Finally, they assigned the major to the Combined Operations. His new role: to transport the personal letters of Lieutenant General Archibald Nye. Now, it wouldn’t look suspicious when the Germans found the officer’s letters attached to Martin’s arm.

  Meanwhile, the real Major Martin didn’t have a clue. He spent his days in Rhode Island, teaching the Americans how to fly, which was probably for the best. That way, he’d never hear about his name being used, which he might not be so keen on. Sure, there was the small issue of his death notice, which would probably appear in the local newspapers back in Britain. His friends and family would believe he had died. Maybe they’d even hold a funeral for him. But Ewen Montagu and his team figured they could clear all that up after Operation Mincemeat succeeded. After all, this was war, and sacrifices had to be made.