The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Gilgamesh S 173

Lakota (or Sioux) people changed the Ghost Dance. They expected victory over whites. They also expected special shirts to make them invin cible. The Lakota dance made the American government nervous. The Wounded Knee mas sacre (1890) was the result. AIM (the American Indian Movement) revived the ghost dance in the 1970s. ghosts Shades or remnants of the departed, which take visible form and appear to living human beings. Sometimes ghosts come to bear messages, sometimes to haunt the grave or places familiar to the deceased. Usually though not always they are regarded with fear and apprehension; benign visitors from the world of the dead are more often referred to as spirits. Belief in ghosts is perhaps not a major focus of most religions, but it is related to beliefs about the AFTERLIFE , telling us that the dead can live on in another form and can still have rela tionships with the living and life on Earth. Gilgamesh A legendary king of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh may have lived in the mid-2600s B . C . E . Later the ancient Mesopotamians worshipped him as a god of the dead ( see M ESO POTAMIAN RELIGIONS ). But he is best known as the subject of an ancient EPIC . The best version of the epic is from tablets that date from the 600s B . C . E . By that time the story had been in circulation for a thousand years. As we know it, the epic explores the inevita bility of death. Gilgamesh is building the walls of Uruk when Enkidu, a powerful but wild creature appears. At first he sees Enkidu as a rival, but they become fast friends. Together they kill Humbaba, who guards a cedar forest. Then Enkidu is sen tenced to die. Distraught, Gilgamesh tries to escape death himself. He journeys to see Utnapishtim, the immortal who survived the FLOOD . Utnapish tim shows Gilgamesh that he cannot even escape sleep. He does, however, teach him about a plant of immortality. Through valiant effort Gilgamesh obtains the plant, only to lose it to a serpent in a

JHVH). Another account they call E, because it refers to God as Elohim (“God”). A third account, P for Priestly, seems to contain material that would interest priests, like the hymn of creation in Gen esis 1. Scholars have suggested that J comes from the southern kingdom of Judah after S OLOMON , E from the northern kingdom of Israel after Solo mon, and P from the exile in Babylon. Genesis itself, they suggest, was written either during that exile (587–538 B . C . E .) or shortly afterward. These are only suggestions based on the evidence that is currently available. GENESIS AND HISTORY Traditionally Jews, Christians, and Muslims have taken the stories in Genesis to be literally true. Most people know that there are disputes about the stories of creation and the Flood. But in fact, there is no evidence that any of the events recorded in Genesis actually occurred. The most that can be said is that the second part of the book mentions real places. It also presents Abraham, Sarah and their descendants as living the kind of life people lived in Canaan in the period 1800–1600 B . C . E . Ghost Dance Religious movements among indig enous Americans in the last third of the 19th cen tury ( see N ATIVE A MERICAN RELIGION ). There were two ghost dance movements. The first occurred around 1870, the second around 1890. Wodziwob, an indig enous American who lived on Walker Lake Reser vation, Nevada, led the first movement. Wovoka, a farmhand in Mason Valley, Nevada, led the second. His father had been a follower of Wodziwob. Both movements shared the same basic ideas and practices. Each man had a VISION . He foresaw the RESURRECTION of the dead, the return of the ani mals, and the restoration of the traditional way of life. Wodziwob expected whites to disappear; Wovoka expected indigenous peoples and white settlers to live in peace. To bring about this new era, men and women were to perform a certain dance on several successive nights ( see DANCE AND RELIGION ). The dance was said to be the dance of the ancestors—or GHOSTS —in HEAVEN .