Opening Passage:
I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning as he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story.
When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body. Shamash the glorious sun endowed him with beauty, Adad the god of the storm endwed him with courage, the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others, terrifying like a great wil bull. Two thirds they made him god and one third man. (p. 61)
Summary: Gilgamesh was born of a mortal man and a goddess, and the gods have made him two-thirds divine and one-third mortal. Therein lies his greatness and his tragedy; the god Enlil has laid upon him the destiny that all his gifts should be for being king, and none for being immortal. When our story opens, Gilgamesh, having wandered the world, has become king of the city of Uruk, and he seems a little lost. He is overwhelming, and seems to have the listlessness of the bored because of it. The people of Uruk pray to be relieved of him, because he is brutal and lustful and does not act like a shepherd for his people. The gods hear the lament of the people of Uruk, and to the goddess Aruru is assigned the task of making his equal. The man she makes is Enkidu, who lives as a wildman in the wilds. A trapper, finding that Enkidu is defending the wild beasts and ruining his game, sends to Uruk to bring a harlot, who seduces Enkidu, who more than anything wants someone who could understand his heart. She convinces Enkidu to go to Uruk to overthrow Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh, who is prone to prophetic dreams, dreams that a meteor lands that is more attractive to him than anything else, and that it becomes his brother; he dreams again that he finds an axe that became more valuable to him than anything else. This, his mother tells him, is the wildman. Rumors of these dreams come to the harlot, and thus Enkidu comes to Uruk to challenge Gilgamesh. In strength they are perfectly matched, but Gilgamesh, perhaps because he has more experience than Enkidu, finally manages to throw him. The two have found what they wish more than anything else: a second self, someone who can understand their hearts. They become fast and loyal friends.
Nonetheless, it is hard being the most gifted men in the world, and they soon begin to turn their thoughts to what might be a task adequate to their greatness. It is the same problem: immortality is denied them, so what deed can possibly be adequate to their divine greatness? Gilgamesh comes up with an idea: they will the Country of the Living, the vast forest of cedars, and slay its guardian, the giant Humbaba, so that the timber of the forest may become available to the people of Uruk. Enkidu, however, knows something of Humbaba; he has been gifted by the gods with seven splendors so that no man may defeat him. But, reluctant as even Enkidu is to face him, Gilgamesh convinces Enkidu to go. If they succeed, it is a great deed. If they die, what better way to die?
Partly by catching Humbaba by surprise, before he can fully arm himself with all seven splendors, they defeat them. Humbaba begs for mercy, and Gilgamesh is inclined to give it, but Enkidu will hear nothing of it, and he kills Humbaba. This infuriates the god Enlil, who takes back Humbaba's seven splendors and curses Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
By now, Gilgamesh has begun to be a glorious king, and catches the attention of the goddess Ishtar, who proposes that he become her lover. He knows, however, how fickle her loves are. Gilgamesh, remember, wants someone who will understand him, and Ishtar will simply use him and throw him aside. Ishtar is infuriated, and decides that Gilgamesh must be destroyed. She convinces Anu, the father of the gods, to give her the Bull of Heaven, and sends the Bull against Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The plan fails, because Gilgamesh and Enkidu, by working together, defeat the Bull of Heaven, and Ishtar curses Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The gods decide that one of the two must die. This, of course, is not an arbitrary thing. One like Gilgamesh was a handful; Gilgamesh and Enkidu working together as allies are an overwhelming force. Gilgamesh alone could not have defeated Humbaba; Gilgamesh alone probably could not have defeated the Bull of Heaven. But the two friends together are beyond anything else in the world, and they have twice done things that overturned the plans of even the gods. One must go.
So Enkidu is cursed with sickness and dies. Gilgamesh, of course, is devastated, and takes it into his heart to find the secret of immortality. To this end, he sets out to find Utnapishtim, who survived the flood that the gods sent to destroy humanity, and who lives in the sunrise-lands of Dilmun as the only man who has received the divine secret of immortality. It is a long and difficult journey, but he eventually finds Urshanabi, the ferryman of Utnapishtim, and, seizing him, convinces him to ferry Gilgamesh to Dilmun to meet Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim is willing to talk to Gilgamesh, What he says is not encouraging, however:
Utnapisthim said, 'There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand forever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep for ever, does the flood-time of rivers endure? It is only the nymph of the dragon-fly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory. From the days of old there is no permanence....(pp. 106-107)
But Gilgamesh insists that he wishes to know how Utnapishtim received the gift of immortality, so Utnapishtim tells him the story of the Great Flood. The god Enlil wished to destroy all of humanity, and convinced the gods to go along with it, but the god Ea, who of all the gods is greatest of counsel and foresight, warned Utnapishtim to tear down his house and build a boat to save his family and the beasts of the field. When the Flood comes, it is so devastating that even the gods are terrified, but in the boat Utnapishtim and those with him survive. When the Flood recedes, Ishtar convinces the gods to accept the sacrifices of Utnapishtim. Enlil is infuriated that the gods have connived to let some mortals escape his wrath, but Ea convinces him not to pursue the matter further. Instead, Enlil does what might be interpreted as saving face in the court of the gods: he accepts that Utnapishtim can live, but only by removing him from the human race. Utnapishtim and his wife are made immortal and required to live forever in the sunrise-lands.
The point, of course, is that Utnapishtim's exception was a one-time thing, a by-product of the machinations of the gods, and not something that can ever be achieved by a mortal. Utnapisthim challenges Gilgamesh to a trial: if Gilgamesh wants to defeat death, let him see if he can defeat sleep, which is like death but lesser, for six days and seven nights. Gilgamesh fails, and begins to accept that his goal is out of reach. But Utnapishtim has one more lesson to teach. He tells Gilgamesh of a magical plant that grows under the water; its stem is thorny, and therefore will wound the hands, but if he perseveres and takes it, it has the power to restore youth. So Gilgamesh ties heavy stones to his feet so he can walk under water to retrieve the plant, saying that he will bring the plant back to Uruk so that the old men might become young again, and then, when the old men have eaten, he will partake as well and restore his youth. He gets the plant, but as he journeys back (with Urshanabi, who has been fired as ferryman), the plant is stolen by a serpent, who disappears into the waters. And thus Gilgamesh comes to accept, finally, his destiny: that his greatness is to be king and not to be immortal.
He comes back to Uruk with Urshanabi, appreciative of the glories of Uruk, built like no other city out of extraordinarily crafted brick and filled with gardens and fields and palaces. He engraves his story in stone, lives as a king, and dies. The people of Uruk raise up sacrifices for him, and his praise is forever.
Much of what makes this story work so well is that we see Gilgamesh grow as king. He is practically a wildman himself at the beginning, king of a city, but hardly civilized. The people of Uruk regard him as a tyrant. Meeting Enkidu changes him utterly; he becomes a better king almost immediately, for the first time in his life truly considering not merely himself but another. His great project with Enkidu is to do something that they primarily do for their own greatness, but which will also greatly benefit the city. But it is only with the death of Enkidu that Gilgamesh begins to face the great obstacle to being a truly great king: he really does not regard his own impermanence. Yet, although this self-centered streak has still remained in him, we find that when he seeks the plant of youth, he does it first and foremost to benefit his city. It is only when he accepts that his own immortality is impossible, however, that he fully becomes king. And thus we find in the Epic of Gilgamesh a complete rendering of one of the most important truths of human life: We are not gods, and therefore our potential for greatness can only be achieved in the context of friendship and civil society.
Favorite Passage:
Gilgamesh said, 'I dreamed again. We stood in a deep gorge of the mountain, and beside it we two were like the smallest of swamp flies; and suddenly the mountain fell, it struck me and caught my feet from under me. Then came an intolerable light blazing out, and in it was one whose grace and whose beauty was greater than the beauty of this world. He pulled me out from under the mountain, he gave me water to drink and my heart was comforted, and he set my feet on the ground.' (p. 78)
Recommendation: Highly Recommended. Every version of the Epic is a bit different, because there are many versions, and whichever you treat as dominant, you will have to reconstruct part of it from other sources. N. K. Sandars does a good job of making a coherent story out of disparate pieces and sources, and her translation is a very good one.
****
The Epic of Gilgamesh, N. K. Sandars, tr. and ed., Penguin Books (New York: 1972)
