Gilgamesh

Thoughts on the Epic of Gilgamesh

          

 

At times when the ties holding societies together become frayed and are in danger of breaking, it is not a bad thing to consider what a society is and where it came from.  The earliest known complete work of literature is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Much of it is concerned with the struggle between a powerful individual and the needs of a community.

King of strong walled Uruk, son of a goddess, the first of a series of semi-divine heroes that will extend through literature to the New Testament, Gilgamesh is the hero of the oldest surviving work of literature.  The opening limes of the epic depict a man reveling in his physical strength. An autocrat he terrorizes his people who plead to the gods for help.  Any civilization is a communal affair, Individuals joining together for the common good.  Gilgamesh for all his physical prowess, or because of it,   seeks only his pleasure.  He ravishes young women and seizes young men for their labour.   Gilgamesh possesses the strength of a god but lacks wisdom.  The story is concerned with his gradual realization of man’s true destiny.

The people of Uruk pray to the gods for aid. The gods respond to the prayers of the people by sending to Gilgamesh the wild man Enkiddu.  Not to punish Gilgamesh but to make him realize the limits of his strength. Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and Enkidu, the man of the wild, have much in common.  They both revel in their physical strength.  Instead of chastening Gilgamesh Enkidu joins him in defying the Gods.

The gods reply by condemning Enkidu to die of a fever.

Utanapishtim:   Man is snapped off like a reed in a canebrake.

For all his power Gilgamesh cannot save Enkidu. With the death of Enkidu Gilgamesh understands that at the end of life there is sorrow.

“You are lost in the dark and cannot hear me.”

“Seven days and seven nights he wept for Enkidu.”

  “Bitterly Gilgamesh wept for his friend Enkidu.”

Distraught with grief and terrified that Death will also come for him Gilgamesh wanders in search of Utnapistim, in the land of Dilmun, survivor of the deluge the only man granted immortality by the Gods.  From him Gilgamesh hopes to find immortality.

Utnapishtim disillusions him There is no permanence. Man can not live forever.  Gilgamesh is wasting his time and is failing in his duty to his city.

“As for you Gilgamesh, who will assemble the Gods for your sake so that you may find the life for which you are searching?”

However he offers Gilgamesh a test. He must not sleep for six days and seven nights. Gilgamesh fails and now must return to Uruk.  As a consolation Utnapishtim tells him of a plant that will restore vigour to old men.  Gilgamesh secures it from the bottom of the sea and elated with the gift sails back.  However  before reaching Uruk Gilgamesh stops to have a bath. While he is bathing a serpent swallows the  flower.  At this point one wonders why the tale is not called Gilgamesh the fool.

Gilgamesh has failed.  He has failed as a king in antagonizing his people. He has angered the gods and could not protect his friend Enkidu from their anger. He fails to find immortality or in even safeguarding its substitute.  If the story had ended there it would have been little better than a farce.  An epic however is not concerned with just the trials of it’s hero/heroine.  It isconcerning with the hero gaining greater understanding from, those trials. Gilgamesh leaves Uruk a semi-divine. He returns as a man.

Man’s life is compared to that of a mayfly, brief, fated to perish into oblivion. .  Only the Gods can hold immortality. But Gilgamesh has attained something. As he surveys his city he understands that  it is in the communal life of the city that man attains immortality.  In the city man learns to be human, The individual without the city is a savage unable to live with other men as a civilized being.

He who saw the deep, a man in search of immortality.

Instead he finds wisdom.

His journey to Dilmun has failed to bring him the secret of eternal life but as he reaches Uruk Gilgamesh now understands that immortality was never his destiny.  His destiny was to be king of Uruk and to rule it justly.  Yes, he has failed in his quest, but all men fail. Every human being has limitations.  What Gilgamesh has realized is that, great as he is,  he is a man like other men.  For that is what an epic is. The hero endures trials and from them gains a new understanding of themselves and of others.  Whether he or she gains anything else is beside the point.

       Kicking Up Dust, Gilgamesh

Author's Note

Thoughts on the Epic of Gilgamesh