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Book Review:
'Imaginative Worlds' sweeps across four books

Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative

Herbert Mason, 1970

Author's note: 

This article "Imagining 'Human': The Epic of Gilgamesh," is the third in a series, "Imaginative Worlds." The first article in the series was a review of David Pena-Guzman's book, When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (2022); the second a discussion of the Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists (2007), by Gregory Curtis. For this article, I have primarily depended on Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative (1970) by Herbert Mason. 

 

There are many different versions of the epic of Gilgamesh, sometimes described as the world's oldest story, which dates to the end of the third millennium B.C.E.  What remains from the earliest written versions is a collection of fragments which translators and scholars have organized in various ways to achieve thematic unity and strengthen the power of the narrative, resulting in an epic influenced by various oral and written accounts and subject to the ideas and artistic taste of modern scholars. Mason's version puts front and center some verses and excludes others. He is most interested in Gilgamesh's bitter struggle against the finality of the death of his boon companion, Enkidu, a death decreed by the Gods for the pairs' killing of the Bull of Heaven, an enigmatic entity whose symbolic meaning is not adequately clarified by either the text or book's commentary. The epic's theme:

 

"It is is the story 

Of their becoming human together." 

 

 The story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the world's oldest story (or one of the oldest) is an imaginative account of what it means to be human, an adventure that joins together powerful men from different eras of humanity struggling against the acceptance of mortality.      

 

Gilgamesh was a Sumerian King who lived after the great flood, the subject of the Biblical story of Noah's ark and of Babylonian myth.  The epic of Gilgamesh was given its narrative structure by Babylonian scholars. On a literal level, it is a story of two heroes, Gilgamesh (two-thirds God, one-third human) and Enkidu, a man whose power derived from his association with animals. "He (Enkidu) ran with the animals and:

 

 “Drank at their springs 

Not knowing fear or wisdom 

He freed them from the traps 

The hunters set."

 

Enkidu is not fully separated from powerful animals: 

 

"The creature was all covered with hair 

And yet his hands had the dexterity of men's;

He ran beside the freed gazelle 

Like a brother  

And they drank together at a pond

Like two friends.

Sharing some common journey

Not needing to speak but just continue." 

 

The epic of Gilgamesh is an ancient story, but in the figure of Enkidu it harkens back to an era many thousands of years before kings and empires when humans were not psychologically separated from animals, a period of 20,000-30,000 years I discussed in my review of The Cave Painters.  This was an era when (at least initially) "people were insignificant, hanging on as best they could at the edges of a world that belonged to animals, teeming swarms of animals." Curtis believes that cave paintings "are the evidence of the moment when people began to conceive of themselves as different from animals, the very moment, that is, when we became human." However, as the description of Enkidu makes clear, there was no such moment; rather there was a psychologically difficult transition to the meaning of 'human' that took thousands of years to achieve.  

 

Enkidu is summoned by Gilgamesh's subjects:    

 

"As king, Gilgamesh was a tyrant to his people 

He demanded, from an old birthright, 

The privilege of sleeping with their brides 

Before the husbands were permitted. 

Sometimes he pushed his people half to death 

With work rebuilding Uruk's walls, 

And then without explanation let

The walls go unattended and decay,

And left his people dreaming of the past 

And longing for a change. 

They had grown tired of his contradictions 

And his callous ways." 

 

Enkidu is a throwback to an era many thousands of years before kings and empires emerged when animals in herds of thousands "threatened the livelihood of men." Enkidu lived as "one of them," and was not afraid of death in the way familiar to modern humans focused on our individuality.  Enkidu is seduced by a prostitute: 

 

"It made sounds like he had never heard,

Not like the sounds of his friends, the animals.

And he was afraid." 

After he has sex with the prostitute:

"He felt a strange exhaustion 

As if life had left his body.

He felt their absence...

His friends (the animals) 

Had left him to a vast aloneness 

He had never felt before." 

 

In this ancient story, woman is a temptress who through sexual pleasure separates Enkidu from his emotional and psychological intimacy with animals. The  prostitute declares to Enkidu: 

 

"Why do you still want to run with the animals? 

You are a human being now, not like them. 

You are like a god, like Gilgamesh.

I will lead you to Uruk 

Where you belong  ...

Where Gilgamesh rules over his people 

...and you will recognize 

Yourself in him." 

 

In this version of 'human,' Gilgamesh is a man-god. There is no clear boundary between human and divine. Gilgamesh is contemptuous of death, though he recognizes that he may die in fights to the death with monsters he undertakes with Enkidu.       

 

Before Enkidu is introduced to Gilgamesh, he must be socialized to human culture. He abandons the animal skins in which he has been clothed and: 

 

"He let her clothe him in a portion

Of her scarlet robe and lead him 

To a shepherd's house 

Where he was welcomed and taught to eat bread 

And drink the liquor that the shepherds drank. 

His soul felt new and strange." 

 

Enkidu's body hair is shaved off and:

 

"She washed him with perfumes and oils 

And he became a man."   

 

"People said: He looks like Gilgamesh 

But he is shorter and also stronger;

He has the power of the Steppe, 

The milk of the animals he sucked. 

They hailed him as the equal of their king."   

 

In this ancient story, Enkidu's intimacy and psychological enmeshment with animals is undone by sexual pleasure and the domestic arts, i.e. by women, a flagrant distortion of what occurred to transform the meaning of 'human' and the imaginative preoccupations of cave painters. Homo sapiens exterminated the megafauna, i.e., large animal species, an astonishing reversal of fortune that took at least 20,000 years to complete. In Becoming Earth (2024), Ferris Jabr states: "recent evidence from the fossil record and archaeological digs has revealed that wherever humans migrated during the Pleistocene -- wherever they brought their spears, arrows, and packs of dogs -- large mammals promptly went extinct.  As humans spread throughout Europe and Asia roughly 50,000 years ago, dozens of giant mammal species were extinguished." (p. 28) For more than a million years, humans and their hominid ancestors had been the prey of large animals; but through sharp pointed weapons and social organization had hunted many large animal species to extinction and consumed the meat of other species in large quantities. The Enkidu's of ancient societies became domesticated because male hunters had undone the economic basis of societies of hunters in some (but not all, e.g., in North America) areas of the world. 

 

One of the many fascinating elements of this story is the description of how these two powerful men bond through violence, initially directed at one another and then in the killing of monsters. 

 

"They fell like wolves 

At each other's throats, 

Like bull's bellowing,

And horses gasping for breath ...

 

In and out between their legs,

A child screamed at their feet 

That danced the dance of life

Which hovers close to death. 

 

And quiet suddenly fell on them 

When Gilgamesh stood still, 

Exhausted. He turned to Enkidu who leaned

Against his shoulder and looked into his eyes

And saw himself in the other, just as Enkidu saw 

Himself in Gilgamesh. 

In the silence of the people, they began to laugh 

And clutched each other in their breathless exaltation." 

 

In this story, there is a fine line between love and hate; love is seeing oneself in the other. Few emotional bonds are stronger than those forged in combat. This part of the story takes on increased resonance when read as a joining of heroes from different phases of human development, i.e., thousands of years of struggle to survive among incalculable numbers of large powerful animals, developing the ability to kill these animals and terminate entire species through weapons fashioned by human hands (the symbol of human power in cave art) and a period of kings and empires economically dependent on agriculture. The epic of Gilgamesh is a story about humans in a new phase of history embracing their ancient roots and bringing their absolute rulers to an acceptance of the limits of mortality. 

  

     

A world in which a physically weak and vulnerable species had developed the ability, not just to kill huge numbers of large animals but to eliminate multiple species, is the historical context for the epic of Gilgamesh and this king's arrogance. One of the most surprising elements of this story is the disdain both heroes show for the gods. Prior to embarking on their hazardous endeavor to slay the monster, Humbaba, "the slave who did work for the gods," Gilgamesh consults his mother, Ninsun. As their journey begins, Gilgamesh remembers his mother's voice: 

 

"When every trace of origin seems left 

And one has almost passed into a land 

That promises a vision or the secret   

Of one's life, when one feels almost god enough

To be free of voices ... " 

 

Gilgamesh decides, with Enkidu's help, to kill the monster who plagues his people without asking for a god's permission or favor. Enkidu is afraid, but Gilgamesh is unafraid:

 

"... Pleasure             

seemed to grow from fear for Gilgamesh,

As when one comes upon a path in woods 

Unvisited by men, one is drawn near 

The lost and undiscovered in himself; 

He was revitalized by danger."  

 

In the way of conquerors throughout human history, Gilgamesh is inspired by grandiosity and is driven to find the limits of his power. After the heroes succeed in killing Humbaba, Gilgamesh is visited by Ishtar, "Goddess of love" who hints "that the gods had grieved Humbaba's loss," i.e., their loss. Ishtar offers to intercede with Anu, the most powerful of the gods, on Gilgamesh's behalf if he will marry her. To which Gilgamesh replies: 

 

"Gilgamesh shook off what were to him

Unwanted dreams; 

What would I gain by taking you as wife?

 

"Love, she said, and peace." 

  

Gilgamesh replies: 

 

"Your love brings only war!

You are an old fat whore ..." 

 

"She stuttered she was so enraged 

And flew to the protection of her father (Anu)."  

 

Anu accedes to Ishtar's demand that Gilgamesh be punished. 

 

"The Bull of Heaven descended 

To the earth and killed at once

Three hundred men, and then attacked 

King Gilgamesh ... " 

 

Enkidu to protect his friend slays the Bull of Heaven. 

              "The goddess stood on Uruk's walls, and cried aloud: 

                Grief to those who have insulted me

                And killed the Bull of Heaven." 

 

This is a remarkable turn of events, i.e., two human heroes representing different eras of humanity, slay powerful beings who are instruments of the gods without seeking permission to do so, or making amends through sacrifice, and then insult a goddess, referring to her as "an old fat whore;" and then:

 

"When Enkidu heard Ishtar's curse

He tore the right thigh from the bull's flesh

And hurled it in her face, and shouted: 

I would tear you just like this 

If I could catch you!" 

 

It cannot be a surprise that Enkidu is sentenced to death by the gods for killing the Bull of Heaven. The puzzle is that Gilgamesh is spared. 

Enkidu, who was wounded in the fight with Humbaba, becomes deathly ill; he says: 

 

"The gods have said that one of us must die 

Because we killed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven.

Enlil said I must die, for you are two-thirds god  

And should not die." 

 

Gilgamesh is crushed. He sits: 

 

"... trying to find 

The gesture to reverse the gods'

  Decision or relieve 

  A close companion's pain. 

  Gilgamesh, though he was king, 

  Had never looked at death before... "  

 

Gilgamesh, arrogant and fearless even in respect to the gods, is humbled by his impotence to keep Enkidu alive or bring him back from the dead. He discovers his vulnerability to loss of a beloved friend, and undertakes a search for a means to overcome death. He is devastated by the death of the beloved in a way radically different than the gods' reaction to death. After all, the immortal gods can bestow life or take it away as they please. To be 'human' is to be subject to the bitter pain of loss, yet Gilgamesh is never reconciled to the loss of Enkidu. 

 

"... The only nourishment 

He knew was grief, endless in its hidden source 

Yet never ending hunger." 

"For being human holds a special grief 

Of privacy within the universe.  

That yearns and waits to be retouched

By someone who can take away

The memory of death." 

"He was no more a king 

But just a man who now had lost his way"

          

"Mad, perhaps insane, he tried 

To bring Enkidu back to life

To end his bitterness

His fear of death.

His life became a quest 

To find the secret of  eternal life

Which he might carry back to give his friend." 

 

Gilgamesh is warned off this quest by the Scorpion man: 

 

"You will learn nothing that we do not know. 

You will only come to grief." 

 

"I have been through grief, Gilgamesh screamed." 

 

He is allowed to pass through the gates of the mountains of Mashu:

 

"Whose peaks reach to the shores of Heaven

And whose roots descend to hell ..." 

 

"A valley came in view

Sprinkled with precious stones 

And fruit filled vines." 

 

However, he is forced to recognize that: 

 

" ... the valley was deaf 

To loss known only to himself." 

 

At the sea, he encounters a barmaid, Siguri: 

 

'' ... she saw him as 

half crazed. “

 

Siguri attempts to teach Gilgamesh as she would a child: 

 

"Yet who she knew would go on to repeat

Repeat, repeat the things men had to learn.

The gods gave death to man and kept life for 

Themselves." 

 

With the help of a boatman, Urshnabi, Gilgamesh sails across the sea of death where he finds Utnapishtim, an older man, benign and wise, blind in his right eye. Utnapishtim offers Gilgamesh a surprising wisdom he cannot grasp: 

 

"Many years ago, through loss I learned   

That love is wrung from our inmost heart

Until only the loved one is and we are not.

You have known, O Gilgamesh, 

What interests me, 

To drink from the Well of Immortality."

 

"I think love's kiss kills our heart of flesh 

It is the only way to eternal life ..." 

"It is enough for one who loves 

"To find his Only One singled in Himself.

And that is the cup of immortality." 

 

The wisdom of Utnapishtim prefigures the spiritual wisdom of later centuries: immortality can only be found through self loss in God, which is available to humans in the selfless love of the beloved, who may be a human being.  This is a message Gilgamesh is not prepared to hear or understand. He seeks a way to bring back Enkidu from the dead, not to lose himself in God, an idea with no emotional meaning for him. 

 

Utnapishtim has one other reflection that resonates for me: 

 

" ... I would grieve 

At all that may befall you still 

If I did not know you must return 

And bury your own loss and build 

Your world anew with your own hands. 

I envy you your freedom." 

 

If I was making the artistic decision of where to end this astonishing story, I would end it with this verse; but this is not what happens. It seems that Utnapishtim was not completely forthright with Gilgamesh. His wife guilt trips the wise man into telling Gilgamesh how to find the plant of immortality: 

 

"There is a plant in the river. its thorns 

Will prick your hands .... 

But it will give you new life." 

 

Gilgamesh finds the plant in the river, but then leaves the plant unguarded while he bathes in the river. A serpent (believe it or not) comes along and devours the plant. Gilgamesh has lost both Enkidu and immortal life to a serpent! Fortunately, there is not a woman in the vicinity to blame for his carelessness.   

 

This ending is dramatically weak, but has the advantage of reflecting humanity's search for a means to renew life without death getting in the way. The idea that modern humans are reconciled to death is false. The most recent fantasy is that humans within a generation will be able to extend life to a thousand years through large numbers of microchips in the body and brain, and then program our brains into computers. This absurd idea has become the subject of discussion among those who believe that silicon is the avenue to the immortality of brain function. But why not? I can only hope that Elon Musk will transport this idea to Mars in a real-world experimental trial.   

 

The epic of Gilgamesh is an indication that for thousands of years, the meaning of 'human' has been a subject of dramatic art, discovered in conflict between and among humans and humans and the gods, however conceived. This part of cultural history suggests that the challenge of defining 'human' as AI leads to human/ computer hybrids and to robots that become increasingly able to mimic human behavior will not be settled by science or philosophy, but by dramatic art that generates emotional responses to painful dilemmas.           

The series "Imaginative Worlds"

When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness

The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists 

Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative 

-- Dee Wilson

 

deewilson13@aol.com

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