Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [75]
Shamhat eagerly and provocatively introduces this savage man to the arts of lovemaking. After seven days (!) of fairly nonstop and wild sex, Enkidu is tamed—all that sex has civilized him. As Stephen Mitchell translates the poem, “He knew things now that an animal can’t know.”
Told that Gilgamesh is sleeping with all the young maidens before they are married, Enkidu is outraged and sets off to challenge the much-reviled king. The two wrestle, but then realize that they are meant to be friends—some authorities suggest that their friendship, like that of Achilles and Patroclus of the Iliad and of the biblical David and Jonathan, may be homosexual. They join forces to fight the giant of the pine forest, a fearful creature named Humbaba. With the help of the gods, Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the forest monster, decapitate him, and put his head on a raft that floats back to the city.
Back home, the freshly bathed and robed Gilgamesh catches the eye of the love goddess Ishtar (Inanna), who wants this hunky hero for a lover. But Gilgamesh is all too aware of the unfortunate fates that have befallen most of Ishtar’s other lovers. He turns her down, politely at first, but later calling her an “old fat whore.”
It’s not nice to call the love goddess names like that. In a “woman scorned” rage, Ishtar demands that her father, Anu, destroy Gilgamesh. So Anu sends Inanna back down to Uruk with the Bull of Heaven. The bull roars, and the earth opens, swallowing hundreds of Uruk’s young men. When the divine bull roars a second time, hundreds more fall into the chasm, including Enkidu. But Enkidu grabs the bull by the horns—literally—and tells Gilgamesh to kill it with his sword. Gilgamesh kills the divine Bull of Heaven, and the two friends ride in triumph through the streets of Uruk.
In a series of dream visions, Enkidu foresees his own death, which comes after he falls ill and suffers for twelve days. Distraught over the loss of his friend, and obsessed by his own fear of death, Gilgamesh sets off in search of the secret of immortality. After more adventures, he meets his distant ancestor, Utnapishtim, who, with his wife, had been the only survivor of a great flood, and is now immortal. He reveals to Gilgamesh the secret of a plant that grows underwater and gives eternal life. Gilgamesh finds the magical plant and retrieves it, but sets it down while he bathes. Drawn by its scent, a serpent devours it and is rejuvenated—a mythic explanation for why the serpent sheds its skin.
Gilgamesh realizes that immortality is not to be his, except in posterity through the achievement of the great city walls he has built.
The poem Gilgamesh was unknown until it was discovered in the mid-nineteenth century. It was unearthed in the temple library and palace ruins in Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire, which had taken control of most of Mesopotamia. Based in the northern valley of the Tigris River, the Assyrians were powerful warriors who came to dominate the Mesopotamian area in the ninth century BCE. Their military innovations included mail armor, armored charioteers, and the earliest use of siege warfare. They soon conquered most of the modern Middle East, dominated Babylon, and even subdued Egypt (in 669 BCE). This was the temple of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE), last great king of the Assyrians, who were ultimately defeated by an alliance of their enemies. Nineveh and another great Assyrian city, Nimrud, were destroyed in 612 BCE.
Approximately three thousand lines long, written on twelve tablets—some of them only found as fragments—the poem may have been composed in southern Mesopotamia before 2000 BCE. Fragments of copies found