The Epic of Gilgamesh

In school right now, I am taking a class called Ancient World Religions and Philosophies. It is my favorite class so far because the texts we are reading are just so interesting! However, our first assigned reading was the Epic of Gilgamesh. The experience as a whole was… unique to say the least. And as my subheading warns you, Gilgamesh was a freaky, freaky, guy, and this book made me wonder if the Ancient Mesopotamians were ok. 

The story begins in the town? Village? Settlement of Uruk, where Gilgamesh happens to be king. His description is kind of strange because his measurements are given in cubits and some things are certainly bigger than they should be. Anyways, Gilgamesh was not a very good king, and he was freaking the people of Uruk out. Nobody in the town could get married without Gil ‘doing it’ with the bride and groom first. And so the people went to the gods for help. The gods decided to create a forest dude named Enkidu who could rival Gil in strength. Enkidu lived in the forest and lived like a wild animal, and soon he started causing problems for the villagers too. The townsfolk enlisted the help of Shamhat, the town prostitute, to help tame the wild man and she did, bringing Enkidu to meet Gil. The two fought a little and became the best of friends somehow after that. In fact, they may have been even more than friends because their relationship is compared to man and wife, and that is with the translator’s prejudice of more than 20 years ago.

But continuing, their best-friendship continued until Gil got the brilliant idea to go to the forest and kill Humbaba, a guy who literally did nothing to Gil. Everyone including Enkidu tried telling Gil this was a terrible idea, but Gil was a stubborn and freaky man. He sets on the journey with a reluctant Enkidu, and the forest man babysits him throughout when he gets nightmares. Finally, they get to the forest and after a fierce battle, the pair killed Humbaba who was minding his own business. Afterwards, they come back to the village in glory! After their battle with Humbaba, a goddess named Ishtar gets really flirty with Gil, a scene in which the translator’s horror seeps through the words, and Gil refuses her ‘company’. He goes on to insult her, a goddess, in very strange ways. Ishtar gets pissed, obviously, and sends a bull of heaven down onto the village. A bunch of people die, but Gil saves the day and defeats the bull. The gods were still mad about what happened though, so they cursed that Enkidu would die as Gil lived on.

Enkidu heard this in a dream, and understandably got very upset. He even started talking to a door. But in the end, he found comfort in the fact that Gil will miss him after he is gone. And so, Enkidu dies, and Gil grieves. In his process of grief, Gil becomes something of a forest man himself, because he realizes if Enkidu can die, so can he. But Gil, being the brilliant, freaky guy he is, thinks of the answer to all his problems: Becoming immortal! Gil goes on a quest for immortality, leaving Uruk and his people behind. He meets a former king who attained immortality, and here we get one of the first tellings of the Noah’s Arc story. This guy says if Gil can stay awake for seven days, he could get immortality. But Gil is not the smartest protagonist ever written. He falls asleep for all seven days. And so he missed his chance for attaining immortality. But, there was another option. There was a plant that would bring back his youth, and so he set out to get it. Once Gil finally got the plant, his brilliant, brilliant, brain told him to take a bath. While bathing, a snake took away the plant of youth. Immortality slipped out of Gil’s hands again. But then, Gil realizes he doesn’t need immortality. The glory of ruling over Uruk and its walls was enough. So, Gilgamesh goes back to his town, theoretically having become a wiser and better person.

This poem was so fascinating to me because this is the earliest epic we know of. The Ancient Mesopotamians were part of the first civilizations, and it is amazing we have this many artifacts of their culture. I can imagine being a person at that time realizing that everyone dies and wondering what comes after death. In that way, the Epic of Gilgamesh serves as a comfort to those people. Enkidu’s struggle with mortality is something anyone can relate to, that there is no need to fear death because after you are gone, the people who love you will miss and mourn you. It’s amazing how early on people were able to form such complex ideas of death and mortality. Also, reading epics like this and the Iliad makes me appreciate the translation and why it’s so important. A story can be impacted so much when the translator has biases, and it is clear with Gilgamesh. For an example, Shamhat does not seem like a morally depraved character within the story. In fact, she seems to be the person everyone goes to when they need help. It was the translator’s prejudice that used a demeaning word for her character, which is very interesting to think about.

There are also specific elements to this Epic that makes it so interesting. There is one part where Gil walks through a garden with flowers and greenery made out of gemstones. Most of the stone tablet was lost in that part, but I would have loved to know what happened in that part because it is such wonderful imagination. The path of the sun was also so cool, where Gil seemed to go through a dark tunnel and hurried through and off before the sun could come smashing through. That is actually so cool to think about, and I wish a perfect translation of the tablets could exist, but that will probably never happen. It isn’t even possible, because we could never fully eliminate bias from a human being. We couldn’t even use AI to do it, because AI is just an average of human biases. So, we just have to keep doing our best and interpreting it differently as the times change. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this epic poem though, and I will probably be writing about more works from this class!