Gilgamesh

I recently finished reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, as “interpreted” by Stephen Mitchell (Gilgamesh, A New English Version).  Mitchell cannot read the cuneiform, Sumerian, or Babylonian language and did not have access to the original tablets, so what he did was simply reinterpret what prior authors had done, resummarizing it in a more coherent and sensible fashion than the prior attempts.  The initial work, however, was most of the heavy lifting: the original tablets had been lost for thousands of years and only found in the 1800s by various archeologists digging around in what we now know of as Iraq.  The original scholars had to decipher a dead language in a unique alphabet with no one around to help them out.  Eventually they put the pieces of the puzzle together and figured out what we could consider the “epic” of Gilgamesh, a fictional hero dating back 5,000 years ago or more.  Parts of it, concerning a great flood, coincide with parts of the Old Testament of the Bible.

 Gilgamesh was the ruler of Uruk, a large city southeast of Babylon and northwest of Ur.  The cities of this area and of modern Iraq follow the so-called “fertile crescent” of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.   

 “It’s Good to Be The King”.  Apparently Gilgamesh’s leadership style was heavy handed and unpopular.  Among the most objectionable of his policies was assertion of the right to take the virginity of new brides.  As we know, it was only relatively recently that even modern, industrial Western societies abandoned the presumption of virginity at marriage.  Presumably this was the case in Iraq 5,000 years ago.  Gilgamesh demanded – and received – the prerogative to be first to bed the bride; the groom had to wait patiently while the King nailed his wife.

  I’ve never been married, but from what I can tell, grooms are as likely to be nervous on their wedding nights as brides.  Any groom less than 100% confident in his abilities as a lover will probably appreciate a virgin bride who has no basis for unfavorable comparison.  This is completely negated by having your new bride get nailed by none other than the Hero King Stud, Gilgamesh himself.  How can you follow that?  So I suspect it was the grooms of Uruk who were more upset with this policy than the brides.

 The unhappy citizens of Uruk pleaded with the gods to send them some relief from this terrible man upsetting their wedding plans.  The gods sent a somewhat unfinished product, Enkidu. 

Enkidu is described as a virtual duplicate of Gilgamesh, though a bit shorter.  He starts off as a wild man living in the wilderness, running around with animals, naked, unclothed, “raised by wolves” so to speak.  In this condition he’s not particularly suited to his job of fixing the Uruk problem.

 Ishtar & Shamhat.  The temple of Ishtar was run on a very interesting basis.  The priestesses, far from being celibate nuns, were in fact sacred prostitutes who supported the cult by sleeping with the congregation or the general public for a fee.  Presumably this was considerably more effective (and popular) than bake sales or raffles.  One of the priestesses, Shamhat (there’s a feminine name) is assigned the task of civilizing Enkidu.

 She approaches Enkidu, strips naked, and begins masturbating in front of him.  This gets his full attention, and he proceeds to “get the idea” for the next full week.  After this marathon lovemaking session (apparently making up for 20-something years of abstinence in the wild) Shamhat shaves him, dresses him in elegant clothing, and feeds him “people food” (including a good amount of beer, which he likes).  At this point he is “civilized” and the animals no longer recognize him as their buddy – similar to the bachelor hooking up and alienating all his single buddies. 

Bromance.  Enkidu enters Uruk, and right away there is trouble.  Sure enough, he and Gilgamesh fight, with destruction following around them – I’m imagining that commercial where the robots fight and smash up the guy’s apartment while he casually and indifferently moves from room to room and cooks and eats his bachelor food.  Finally Gilgamesh prevails, but only after Enkidu had put up a big fight.  They emerge from the ruckus as best friends…maybe a bit more than that (Mitchell’s footnotes observe that the tablets imply a romantic relationship exists between the pair).

 Humbaba.  For some reason Gilgamesh gets it into his head to go west to the forests of Lebanon to defeat a mighty volcano monster called Humbaba.  The elders of Uruk, and Enkidu, think this is a really bad idea and try to dissuade him, with no success.  He goes off west, and persuades Enkidu to follow along.  Having done so, now he starts having second thoughts – a series of terrifying nightmares – and it’s up to Enkidu to change his mind and interpret the dreams with a very counterintuitive and implausible but positive spin (maybe Enkidu should have been a lawyer). 

 They meet Humbaba, who is just as fearsome and powerful as they feared, but somehow they are able to reduce him to begging for mercy.  While Gilgamesh is inclined to spare his life, Enkidu persuades him to finish off Humbaba.  This earns him a curse from the gods, whose “plan” apparently was for Gilgamesh to defeat, but not kill, Humbaba.  Enkidu comes down with a nasty, mysterious illness which strikes him down in the prime of life.  This stuns and demoralizes Gilgamesh (see below).

 Ishtar & the Bull.  When they return to Uruk, the love & war goddess herself, Ishtar, courts Gilgamesh.  But Gilgamesh is not impressed, and he rebuffs her advances with zero tact or discretion.  Basically his argument is: every lover you take, you eventually grow tired of and dispose of in a particularly nasty fashion.  You sent one of your ex-BF’s to Hell.  Thanks, but I’m not interested in winding up like they did.  Incensed, as you can imagine, Ishtar gets the gods to send her a Bull to fight Gilgamesh to punish him for his arrogance, but Gilgamesh kills the Bull and laughs in her face. 

 Enkidu Dies.  As noted, Enkidu suffers a disease which weakens and kills him; despite having faced down Humbaba and the Bull, Gilgamesh is powerless to save his friend from this threat, and loses him.  When his prayers and grief fail to save Enkidu or resurrect his cold, inert, lifeless body, Gilgamesh soon realizes the same fate ultimately awaits him someday.  He becomes obsessed with learning the secret to immortality.

 Upnaptishim.  Gilgamesh seeks out the sole mortal to have gained immortality, Upnaptishim.  Here is the Bible angle:  Upnaptishim is the epic’s equivalent of Noah, who survived a mighty flood by building a huge ark and filling it with pairs of animals.  Ultimately this man tells Gilgamesh, “I’m sorry, but one day you will die.  Everyone dies.  It’s part of life.  I can’t fix that or give you immortality, no one can.  All I can tell you is to enjoy life as much as you can, while you can.”  End of story.