Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [53]
The grief-stricken were expected to lay aside their good garments, to remove their head-covering, and go about unkempt, unbathed, and un-groomed. Fasting also plays a role in public sorrow, as does flagellation and laceration. But after the end of the official mourning period, there were ceremonies of purification and return to normal dress and grooming.
With Enkidu’s obsequies completed, Gilgamesh sets out to find immortality. The funeral has not really brought Gilgamesh peace of mind. Because he still grieves for the loss of his friend, his battle companion Enkidu, he frames a new quest, to find a way to restore him to life. But he also grieves for himself for he now knows and understands that his fate will be the same.
For Gilgamesh, his friend’s demise is the beginning of wisdom. At the beginning of the epic he encouraged Enkidu with the brave words that we should all fight bravely for only the gods live forever. Since we all die, we must seek fame before we go to the grim kingdom. He had clearly known that death was a danger in their combats but had not understood exactly what death would mean. Now, with his friend gone, he begins to realize that life means eternal loss. By the end of the epic, he learns what he has already stated at the beginning but without full understanding: Only the gods live forever. Death is the lot of humanity. It is one thing to know about death in the abstract; it is another thing to affirm it after the death of a loved one with the parallel recognition that we too must die. Gilgamesh thus comes to knowledge of his state of mortality. For the ancient Near Eastern mind, wisdom and mortality were two fundamental aspects of the human predicament, two sides of the same coin. The Biblical story of Adam and Eve says the same.
Strangely enough, Gilgamesh learns this from the human Utnapishtim, who has been rewarded by the gods with immortality because of his conservation efforts. He is a Babylonian Noah who built an ark to protect humans and animals from the flood. Utnapishtim has avoided going to the underworld as an eemmu. But the epic does not thereby dissolve in a logical morass, because myth typically moves forward by playing with opposing forces. We must accept that the human Utnapishtim casually has attained what the whole epic is saying is impossible for humanity. We can sympathize with the frustrated Gilgamesh who cannot get what Utnapishtim has-immortality. Thus, Utnapishtim belongs undeniably to the transcendent realm, though he started as a man, while Gilgamesh belongs to our realm, where age and death take their toll.
In a seemingly playful way, Utnapishtim challenges Gilgamesh to a trial by ordeal in which Gilgamesh can earn the immortality that he is seeking. Utnapishtim dares Gilgamesh to stay awake for a week. But Gilgamesh comically and miserably fails, falling asleep almost as soon as the suggestion is offered and sleeping an entire week away. So unconscious is he of the time that the week has to be measured for him in the moldy remains of his uneaten meals. Seven days of bread stand in front of him, each in a more decayed condition. Perhaps this is a reference to funeral offerings. Nevertheless the plot contains the observation that the need to sleep and eat are two things which make us mortal, an observation that will later fuel ascetic disciplines designed to mimic immortality in other cultures.
The Gilgamesh Epic, as myth and literature, served in its own day as the quintessential guide for grieving to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia. For us as well who can hardly be unmoved by its stark elegance, the epic illustrates one means of coping with the inherently human problem of moral meaning that always eludes us in grief-inevitably raising the question of one’s own