Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [52]
This episode is one of the few places in myth where female sexuality is associated with culture rather than nature. Inanna is portrayed as a provocative woman throughout but one who has powerful boons to give humanity.26 Gilgamesh and Enkidu eventually become friends. The imagery suggesting marriage between them is so strong that many scholars see an explicit homosexual union to be part of their relationship, though no sexual act is explicitly described in the myth. At the very least, their relationship is homoerotic. But against the homosexual interpretation of the text is the unabashed explicitness of the depiction of heterosexual sex. Given the lack of embarrassment in describing heterosexual acts, the silence of the text about any explicit homosexual relationship between them probably means us to understand that the relationship was a deep, male-bonded, homoerotic friendship, which gives way to Gilgamesh’s heterosexual duties as king.27
At first, Enkidu provides Gilgamesh with heroic diversions and quests. The epic narrates several of these adventures binding their friendship, but their pillaging also incurs the powerful wrath of Inanna, after Gilgamesh spurns her flirtatious advances and the two kill her protected bull. Gilgamesh’s spurning of Inanna’s advances is a puzzling narrative in which Ishtar proposes marriage to the hero. At first he demurs, saying he could not possibly afford the bride price (6.22-28). But then, he launches into a long insulting harangue of the goddess, listing the many lovers whom she has loved, abandoned, and worse (6.58-63). He details the various punishments that befell her various lovers when she tired of them.
There may have been something more sinister involved as well. To have accepted the marriage proposal may have trapped Gilgamesh in the same situation of Nergal, the god of the underworld, Geshtinanna and Dummuzi (Tammuz), who must stay underground as substitute hostages for Inanna.28 Inanna’s proposal of marriage might very well result in Gilgamesh having permanent responsibilities underground. He would be hidden from human view and unable to complete his mission. In any event, it certainly valorizes the male realm of war and fame over against the realm of marriage and family and suggests that fame in battle is even better than immortality below ground, a theme that appears again in The Odyssey. 29
Ironically, in later versions of the story, Gilgamesh becomes an underworld ruler himself, though that story is not included in the epic. However other versions do show that over the long history of stories about this hero, many contradictory sides of these themes were explored. Regardless at this point in the story, the goddess vows that one of our heroes will die and that hero turns out to be Enkidu.
After Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh sets out on a quest to find the remedy for death. Before his death, Enkidu has a dream in which his final destination is described. The place to which the dead go is “the House of Darkness,” or “the House of Dust,” a place of no return:
He leads me to the House of Darkness,
The abode of Irkalla,
To the house which none leave who have entered it,
On the road from which there is no way back,
To the house wherein the dwellers are bereft of light,
Where dust is their fare and clay their food.
They are clothed like birds, with wings for garments,
And see no light, residing in darkness.
In the House of Dust, which I entered,
I looked at [rulers], their crowns put away;
I [saw] princes, those (born to) the crown,
who had ruled the land from the days of yore.
(7.4.30-40)30
In the underworld, Enkidu is transformed into a bird-like creature, similar to some of the Apkallu, which we know means that he has become an eemmu, a ghost.
Gilgamesh’s beloved friend Enkidu dies,