Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [56]
A further incident, the death of Gilgamesh, is much easier to understand with the newer, more complete text from Tell Haddad.38 It continued to exist as a separate story, likely because it was used in funeral lamentations. Enlil tells us that Gilgamesh must die, even though he is partly divine. Though he will descend to the netherworld, he will be commemorated by annual funeral wrestling games. He will rule in the underworld. Then we witness the death of Gilgamesh, who suffers terribly from a disease before he succumbs. His deeds are recounted and the value of the knowledge he learned from Utnapishtim (Sumerian: Ziusudra) about mortality and the flood is emphasized. Then the lamentations are chanted, the funeral rituals are celebrated, the entombment is accomplished, and the memorial images are set up, followed by the first of the annual games.
The text is unfortunately too fragmentary to provide answers to the many questions we wish to ask. Gilgamesh witnesses the rewards for proper burial: He sees a scene in the underworld where all banquet together without rank or social privilege, which is also mentioned in several other texts. We shall return to the banqueting motif later, because it is an important ritual to commemorate the dead in Mesopotamia and Canaan. Many have assumed that the magical objects in the twelfth tablet also have a cultic importance in the preparation and disposition of the dead or in the funeral games thereafter. What is undeniable is that Gilgamesh, after his death, can be depicted as a judge of the underworld. And that is quite a contrast to the lesson he is taught by Sidduri in the old Babylonian version.
Motifs Compared
IN IMPORTANT ways, Gilgamesh and Enkidu are a couple, similar to the primal couple Adam and Eve in the Bible, ironically almost the “Adam and Steve” of televangelist polemics against homosexuality. But these similarities only underline the interesting contrasts. Enkidu was created covered with shaggy hair “like a woman” (1.2.36) and looks like Nisaba, the goddess of grain. He roams naked, like the primal couple in the Bible, paralleling their innocence by conversing with animals, with whom he enjoys enormous sympathy. Like Adam and Eve, he leads an idyllic, childlike existence, though he is more like a willful two-year-old than they are.
Enkidu’s education is not exactly like the education of the Biblical primal couple. In order to tame his wildness, the shepherds and Gilgamesh send a prostitute to him. Innocence ends at puberty; it is time to learn the technology of civilization.
And the result is quite similar to Adam and Eve’s temptation. After his first, weeklong, sexual encounter, Enkidu is described as wise and godlike: “You are wise, Enkidu, you have become like a god” (1.4.34). The conelusion is drawn that wisdom is divine, and we can share it with the gods. But, to it is melded the knowledge of our own mortality in both stories. In addition, Enkidu is saddened to discover that the animals now run from him. The lesson then is: When we are young, we are like animals in our innocence but we become wise when we recognize our own mortality. In the Bible, the original couple is innocent and free, though they become like gods, knowing good and evil, as a result of their disobedience. They evidently have sex in the garden in their innocent state (Gen 2:24), as marriage is validated before the fall. So sexuality is coupled with innocence here, part of nature not culture.
The parallels between the Gilgamesh story and the Adam and Eve story support the notion that the original intent of the Biblical story was just like the Gilgamesh story-to see the “fall” both as unfortunate, in the sense that innocence was lost, and as fortunate, at least in respect to the notion that humanity