by Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Fri Jul 16, 2004 11:53 am
Salvete
You may be correct that the story was a bit flat, although I didn't really noticed it. It may have been a simple story, but it tells more than most modern simplistic stories. It is one of the oldest around and it will probably remain so. I think we can assume there was at a time a historical Gilgamesh who was different from the mythical one. In the edition I borrowed, its confusing some times because one version tells that Gilgamesh is a mortal king, son of mortal parents, while another tells that he was the son of a mortal father and of a divine mother, a goddess.
Coruncane, i think you could be right. I do came to the conclusion that Gilgamesh represented civilization and enkidu nature or nomadic people. If one does see the interpretation of man against nature and that man loses, it will prove to some use of our modern society as it can remind us that man can not win against nature. nature will always be victorious over man, not the other way around as most people like to believe.
The gods create Enkidu to fight against Gilgamesh because of Giglamesh' opressive regime. Enkidu fails at defeating Gilgamesh, but Gilgamesh also fails at defeating Enkidu. The two become friends and undertake many adventures. The conquest of the cedar forest was one that invited the love of Ishtar, but her love for Gilgamesh is is unanswered as Gilgamesh wants nothing to do with her. This invited the rage of Ishtar after Enkidu also throws some insults at her and Ishtar wants to sent the bull of heaven to the two friends, if her father declined, she said that the dead will walk the earth and feast upon the mankind. The bull of heaven is released and it creates alot of carnage throughout the land. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are able to kill it, but Enkidu dies later of a diseases sent by the gods for helping to kill the bull of heaven. Gilgamesh is two-third mortal, Enkidu is all mortal, so Enkidu receives the punishment from the gods for not only killing the bull of heaven, but also for insulting a deity.
This shows that the gods will not really punish a demi- god, but they will punish a mortal for his or her sins/ crimes. Gilgamesh than seeks out a mean to escape death, because he knows that one day he will dy to, just as Enkidu. Like all living things, he's affraid of dying and wants to stop his own death. Eventually he got the means to become immortal, but doesn't trust it enough to consume it himself, he wants to try it on an elderly before he consume it. At one point, a snake consume the potion and becomes immortal sorth of speak because it sheds his skin.
Notably in this epic is the abscence of the god Marduk. He's nowhere to be found in the story, and the epic seem to favor Shamash over Marduk. Like my fellow Praetor said, the story itself is likely to be a combination of myth, history and viewpoint. The Sumerians probably thought that snakes were immortal due to their shedding of their skin. Also it is clear that the story wants to tell us that at one point Shamash, the sun god was one of the most important deities of the pantheon. To them the sun was giver of life and taker of life. They need the sun to survive, but they also realized the sun could kill them aswell. Which is true. In a desert, the sun is deadly. Cambyses' army realized this (to late) on their journey to overthrow some oases in the Egyptian desert. A combination of heat, drought and sandstorm was fatal to these soldiers as it was in the time of the Sumerians who likely had to cross deserts.
valete optime
Romulus
Quintus Aurelius Orcus
Rector ColRel
Rogator
Princeps gentis Aureliae