The Epic of Gilgamesh Assignment, Essay Example

The Epic of Gilgamesh, while not the most accessible nor well-known of ancient tales, survives in the popular consciousness well over four thousand years after its origin because key elements of it resonate within modern men. The heroics and battles with divine beings, reminiscent of Homeric tales, remain compelling adventure material. However, it is in the flawed humanity of the character of Gilgamesh that the power to endure is found, and the Sumerian king of legend is a man as riddled with vice and self-interest as any avaricious Greek deity. His redemptive quality lies only in his devotion to his friend, Enkidu, and in his pursuit to find an afterlife on that friend’s behalf, and it is his classically masculine obtuseness that renders him highly identifiable today.

An overview of the life of Gilgamesh, as derived from the twelve stone tablets found with the remains of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the 7^th century BC, is a well-known story in terms of both hero and exploits. All the components of later Greco/Roman and Norse myth are reflected; Gilgamesh is a king, he is at least half-mortal, and he presides over, and contributes to, great unrest within his kingdom. Succinctly put: “As King of Uruk, Gilgamesh has too much power for the good of his community. He deflowers the virgins, consumes the young men in war, works the elders to death building the city walls…” (Rexroth 2). Mighty and feared, Gilgamesh is nonetheless the archetypal ‘lost man’, desirous of being a great leader and unaware of how his flagrant abuses of power are destroying his people and undermining his reign. He is in essence a set-up waiting for divine intervention, which will either help to redeem him or crush his authority.

This intervention arrives in the form of the wild man, Enkidu, who becomes the sworn companion to Gilgamesh after, notably, they battle over Gilgamesh’s perceived right to invade a bridal chamber. In classic form, one echoed in life by the relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion, the bond between the two men becomes all, eclipsing former desires. Not unexpectedly, historians over the years have pointed to a distinctly homoerotic nature at play in the friendship, but such speculations miss the substance of this relationship. What is essential in it is that it humanizes Gilgamesh, diverting him from his ordinary path of random consumption. “It seems inappropriate, in any case, to apply the modern European concept of homosexuality to an ancient text” (Jackson XVII).

The adventures embarked upon by the friends are, not unexpectedly, Herculean in scope and in the array of mythological forces at play. They first trek to the Cedar Forest to kill a semi-divine monster, Humbaba, and they do this for glory and prestige. After fantastic dreams come to torment Gilgamesh, the men eventually reach their goal, succeeding only with an assist from the god Shamash. This event in turn precipitates further calamities and perils as in, again, an Odyssey. As per global mythological formulae, one god’s actions invoke the rage of other gods, and Enkidu is fated to die, partially because of his audacity in helping to slay Humbaba, and not a little because Gilgamesh rejects the advances of the powerful goddess Ishtar. Ultimately, it can be inferred that the friend must die because the goddess sees him as an obstacle to her love.

Enkidu’s demise is much heralded, and exists more as a primary force in the life of Gilgamesh than did their living friendship. Dreams foretell it, and it appears that all the elements of the universe are making its coming known to both men. It is to be the epic turn of Gilgamesh’s life, and Enkidu’s death through a divinely-orchestrated wasting away prompts a lamentation from Gilgamesh that never actually ceases. Coming to terms with his friend’s passing is not an option, and Gilgamesh single-mindedly pursues an immortality that will save him from this horror of dying he has witnessed.

In this reaction to Enkidu’s death is the core of both Gilgamesh’s enduring life as an epic ‘hero’, and the smallness of his nature. In contrast to the Orpheus/Eurydice myth, or the determination of the Greek goddess Ceres to rescue her daughter Persephone from Hades, it is apparent that the motive born from the grief of Gilgamesh is, ultimately, utterly self-serving. He does not seek to reunite with his beloved friend, nor return him to the living. He wants only the secret to never dying, and this frightened and primitive impulse strikes a chord with every culture that has ever sought to defy an inevitable end.

Historians and scholars have perpetually extolled the sad beauty in the pessimism of the Epic of Gilgamesh, while marveling at its undeniably heroic passages, although ‘heroism’ in this instance refers more to grandeur than to courage. “The quest of Gilgamesh is the basic human search. Only at the end of Gilgamesh’s journey do we sense that the purpose of the journey may have been the journey itself…” (Cunninghamn, Reich 8). No culture in mankind’s history has refrained from intently delving into possibilities of an afterlife, and the ancient tale of Gilgamesh surely serves to underscore how atavistic this impulse is.

It is nonetheless worth noting that the character of Gilgamesh itself is deeply flawed, and not at all admirable. His motivation are self-centered, both before and after his abiding love for Enkidu is forged, and the closest parallel to this epic ‘hero’ may be found in the Greek’s Hercules. Semi-divine of birth, both men exemplify a brutish forcefulness, and this very aggression seems to appeal to even the modern reader on levels perhaps best left unexamined.

Works Cited

Cunningham, Lawrence S. & Reich, J.J. Culture and Values: a Survey of the Humanities. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.

Jackson, Danny P.  The Epic of Gilgamesh. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc., 1997. Print.

Rexroth, Kenneth. Classics Revisited. New York, NY: New Directions Books, 1986. Print.