Our Oldest Mythology
The Epic of Gilgamesh is humanity’s oldest collection of mythic stories. They date back 4,100 years and tackle timeless themes including governance and justice, urbanization and ecology, religion and death.
Hoping to entice you to read the short Epic yourself, I provide some historical context before summarizing and discussing the first of twelve tablets.
Historical Context
Gilgamesh was likely the king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, in modern day Iraq, around 5,000 years ago. At the time, the city may have had 40,000 residents, with 90,000 people living nearby. This was one of the early major steps towards urbanization.
The Epic is divided into twelve tablets, each made up of about 300 short lines. The poetic stories were written in Sumerian on clay tablets using the cuneiform script. These tablets were then baked for preservation. This medium perhaps necessitated an economy of words, making for a fast-paced story with sparse descriptions.
Tablet I — The Coming of Enkidu
The Epic begins with a description of the great city of Uruk. The territory is three and a half square miles and protected by a brick wall. Then comes a description of King Gilgamesh “the tall, magnificent and terrible”. Two-thirds god and one third human, Gilgamesh was without equal.
He abuses this power, forcing the men of Uruk to toil and the women to sleep with him. The people of Uruk complain to the gods and ask for help. The goddess Aruru hears their plight and creates, from a pinch of clay, a hairy man-like beast named Enkidu that rivals Gilgamesh in strength.
Enkidu lives in the wild where he gallops innocently in delight with the gazelles. One day, a hunter sees Enkidu and tries, without success, to capture him. Not only that, but Enkidu is preventing the hunter from killing other animals, foiling his traps and snares. In desperation, the hunter travels to the city of Uruk to tell king Gilgamesh about the troublesome beast and to seek his advice.
Gilgamesh hears the hunter’s grievance and tells him to go back to Enkidu’s watering hole and to bring with him Shamhat, the temple prostitute.
So the hunter goes back to the watering hole with Shamhat, the sacred harlot, and as planned, when Enkidu sees her, he succumbs to passion, and “For six days and seven nights Enkidu was erect, as he coupled with Shamhat.”
After this sexual act, Enkidu has gained “reason and wide understanding”. But he is also defiled. The gazelles reject him and run away. Enkidu tries to follow but no longer has the strength he used to.
So Shamhat tells him to come back with her to the great city of Uruk where there are many beautiful women and festivities. And “where Gilgamesh is perfect in strength, like a wild bull lording it over the menfolk”.
Enkidu the strong vows to challenge Gilgamesh and to “change the way things are ordered”.
Then he and Shamhat go back to making love.
Nature vs Civilization
One of the primary themes throughout the Epic of Gilgamesh is the contrast between the city and the wild. Uruk, first settled 6,500 years ago, was humanity’s first city (oldest found to date).
While the Sumerians lived an agricultural life, the memories and stories from a not-so-distant hunter and gatherer past would have been part of the collective consciousness.
The epic describes the magnificence and security of this urban centre. Surely people throughout the near-East would have been impressed when listening to the Epic and hearing of this far away place and its impenetrable walls.
But the city is also presented as a place of lust and gluttony. And at its heart resides an unjust ruler who tyrannizes his people. Did these ancient urbanites recognize a certain moral corruption in their civilized ways? Interesting that their saviour, Enkidu, is not found within the city walls, but outside, in pristine nature.
Abrahamic Parallels
There are several parallels between Gilgamesh’s parables and some of the stories of the Abrahamic faiths which were put to paper hundreds of years later. For one, the striking similarities between Enkidu and Adam.
In Genesis, “the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.” In the Epic, the goddess Aruru “[…] took a pinch of clay, threw it down in the wild. In the wild she created Enkidu, the hero”.
Adam, just like Enkidu, is later thrown out of nature — out of Eden — because he is tempted by Eve to eat from the tree of Knowledge. In the Epic, Shamhat seems to be the original Eve. Through a sexual act, she gifts Enkidu with Reason but renders him unfit to rejoin the nature from which he comes. (I wonder if this is a not-so-subtle recognition that women planted the first seeds of agriculture.)
Enkidu’s coupling with Shamhat, whereby he is reborn a civilized creature, lasts six days and seven nights. In Genesis, once again, God takes just as long to create heaven and earth.
Perhaps the most well known similarity between the two mythologies is from the eleventh tablet. In it, Gilgamesh meets the sole survivor of the great deluge. Just like Noah, this man built a giant boat to save all living things from a terrible flood. It is indeed this particular story that, once translated, propelled the Epic to fame in the 1870s as it suggests a far more ancient origin to the Flood myth told in the Bible.
The Distant Mirror
The rest of the Epic contains other teachable stories including a fight between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, an imperial battle against Humbaba the ferocious guardian of distant natural resources, foolish squabbles with gods, and the vain search for immortality.
Like a distant mirror, the Epic reminds us how little the human condition has changed. The lessons are timeless and worth revisiting.
Additional Resources:
- I recommend the Andrew George translation of the Epic. It is available for free via the Internet Archive.
- BBC has a great discussion about the Epic of Gilgamesh here:
- Harvard has an excellent lesson on the Epic which you can access free via EdX.
