The Epic of Gilgamesh by Ria Dunn

The Epic of Gilgamesh

BY RIA DUNN ILLUSTRATED BY MICHAEL NEMORIN

The Sumerians were the oldest known civilization to ever have existed. It was a civilisation which for a long time its very existence remained a mystery until archaeologists finally revealed that Mesopotamia was once the cradle of a civilization, “Archaeological excavation of the sites of the ancient cities in the Tigris-Euphrates valley has shown that this region […] was inhabited as early as 4000 B.C. by people known as the Sumerians” (Hooke, 1963: 18).

This history of the civilisation matched the geographical region of the area irrigated by the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. Archaeologists found that the wild growing wheat was what enabled the Sumerian population to expand and find its civilisation. This fertility of the region was due to the patterns of rainfall, which were to do with the location of the mountains and down land planes, along with the irritability of the land between the two rivers. The discovery of wheat around 15000 BC, along with the Sumerian’s taming of their water source through the invention of the wheel, led to the cultivation and storage of grain. These accidental geological, geographical factors therefore, allowed the Sumerians the settle down in one place. The Sumerians had developed a way of life that dominated their natural world in order to make it serve their own survival. The emergence of this agricultural civilisation thus presents the transition from a nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary lifestyle. This transition is encapsulated through the journey of Enkidu in The Epic of Gilgamesh, a myth written by the Sumerians around 2500 BCE as, “the story of Enkidu tells of the gradual

transformation of a purely natural into a cultural being” (Jager, 2001). The epic refers to the Sumerian temperament as their exposure to the hazards of nature made them conscious of the fragility of life. It is thus believed that the epic is an allegory about the tensions between Nomadic and sedentary forms of life and the permanent binary oppositions between nature and culture.

Claude Lévi-Strauss identifies that these binary oppositions are inherent in the structure of myths. “For Lévi-Strauss myth is outright scientific because it goes beyond the recording of observed contradictions to the tempering of them. Those contradictions are to be found not in the plot or myth but in what Lévi-Strauss famously calls the ‘structure’” (Segal, 2004: 31). His extrapolations of these ideas are manifested in his book The raw and the Cooked, a study of South American Indian myths where he finds tensions and conflict between the raw, representing nature, and the cooked, which represents civilization and culture. His book therefore forms the basis of the theme identified in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Thus this essay will explore the oppositions between nature and culture in the epic, adopting Levi-Strauss’s structural analysis.

The oppositions of nature and culture are revealed through the opposing characters in The Epic of Gilgamesh. It is a myth of a mighty warrior King of Uruk who is abusing his power and challenging his people as he “behaves abominably, sleeping with all the wives and the pretty girls and constantly summoning the young men to corvée duties or worse” (Kirk, 1970: 135). The people of Uruk finally cried out and begged the gods to create a counterpart to Gilgamesh in order to absorb his energies and restore his balance to become a better king. Consequently, “the goddess Aruru fashions from clay the figure of Enkidu, a wild human creature of the steppes, of surpassing strength” (Hooke, 1963: 50). Enkidu is a wild man that “grazed the fields […] and drank alongside the animals at their watering holes” (Jager, 2001). After a confrontational brawl, the pair become like brothers and “the two swear eternal comradeship” (Hooke, 1963: 51). This friendship becomes an apt metaphor for culture vs. nature, the duality in which Lévi-Strauss claims lives inherently within us, “The contradictions expressed […] in myth are apparently reducible to instances of the fundamental contradiction between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, a contradiction which stems from the conflict that humans experience between themselves as animals, and so part of nature, and themselves as human beings, and so a part of culture” (Segal. 2004: 115). This suggests that Lévi-Strauss relates the subject matter of myths to that

of the human mind as he is conveying here the eternal conflicts between nature and culture that plague the human conscience; the conflicts we are constantly trying to balance and establish equilibrium.

Equilibrium between nature and culture appears balanced throughout most of The Epic of Gilgamesh, however, it appears nature is marginally subordinate to civilisation. Cultures’ dominance over nature is portrayed when Enkidu is seduced by the prostitute Shamhat through a sexual encounter, which made “the beasts of the field shield away from his presence” (George, 2003: 8). The rejection he faced by the animals he once grew up with allowed him to gain self –awareness. “This is the first step in Enkidu’s humanizing and civilizing by the woman” (Bates, 2010: 7). Shamhat encourages him to let her take him to Uruk, “You are handsome, Enkidu, you are just like a god! […] Come, I will take you to Uruk- the- sheepfold, to the sacred temple, home of Anu and Ishtar” (George, 2003: 8). It appears therefore that Shamhat assists Enkidu in his journey to civilisation as she adopts the role of his teacher and also mothering figure. “He […] followed her as she gradually led him away from the prairie and from his animal existence. She introduced him to the customs of the human world and accompanied him on his journey from the wilderness to the city” (Jager, 2001). Shamhat is part of and a “member of culture, yet appearing to have stronger and more direct connections with nature, she is seen as something between the two categories” and therefore appears to be the mediator that brings nature and culture together (Ortner, 1972). The poem can therefore be read as a “meditation on the mysterious path of humanization and civilization that leads from a brutish life in the wilderness to a fully human, cultivated life in the city” (Jager, 2001).

Culture as the dominant oppositions continues when Gilgamesh persuades Enkidu to join him on a quest to kill the nature divinity Humbaba, the protector of the cedar forest, and to cut down the trees and bring them back to Uruk. Although the quest is for total masculine bravado, it is also to provide their city with raw materials to allow for its continued development. When they begin to cut down the trees, Humbaba appears and the two kill and behead him. The cutting off Humababa’s head could be a metaphor for the cutting down of the cedar forest and could symbolically mean, “the ‘glory’ of the exploit lies in part with the fact that timber was a precious commodity for the Sumerians, since the plains of Mesopotamia at the time lacked forests” (Barron, 2017). To get this rare commodity the Sumerians would travel to the moun-

tains of Lebanon to gain wood for living and building materials. This exploitation of resources meant that after the Sumerians, all the ancient civilisations gradually cut down all the cedar trees leaving them few and far between; again representing the tensions between culture and nature. This signifies that nature’s resources are evidently limited and that we are therefore bound to nature’s limitations, including morality.

Enkidu becomes aware of this mortality when he is dying as he longs for the natural infancy he grew up with and appears to reject civilization which he was secondarily introduced to. This is portrayed when he curses the prostitute for having domesticated him, which signifies his realisation that if he were living in the wild he would not be so aware of his death. It is therefore apparent that his humanisation and his transformation to the civilized and domesticated realm, allows him to become aware of what is happening to him. “We may thus equate culture broadly with the notion of human consciousness, or with the products of human consciousness (i.e., systems of thought and technology) by means of which humanity attempts to rise above and assert control, however minimally, over nature” (Ortner, 1972). The idea portrayed here is that through conscious thought and technology we assert control over nature. However, Enkidu’s consciousness of dying, and that fact that he is dying, clearly portrays nature’s inescapable control over him. It is his awareness and consciousness that causes him so much despair; “The divine element in mankind’s creation explains why, in obvious distinction from the animals, the human race has self consciousness and reason” (George, 2003: xl).

The idea that death is associated with culture is again signified when, “Gilgamesh refuses to accept the reality of Enkidu’s death” as he “finally responds to the situation by moving over to the world of nature and rejecting culture entirely” (Kirk, 1970: 149). Enkidu’s death results in Gilgamesh questioning his own mortality for the first time, “his rejection of the world and of the appurtenances of culture is a rejection of death itself” (Kirk, 1970: 151). As Gilgamesh mourns the death of his friend, he realises the extent of his own mortality and does not want to share Enkidu’s fate. He therefore, sets out on his quest to surmount nature and become immortal. He heard about Utnapishtim, who escaped mortality and achieved eternal life and so he hires a boatman who knows how to navigate and cross perilous waters in order to get to the land which he lives. After failing to stay awake for seven days, as instructed by Utnap-

ishtim in return for immortality, Gilgamesh is left with a compromise. This compromise consists of the chance for him to rejuvenate and renew himself by collecting a plant that acts as a fountain of youth, explained by Utnapishtim,

“Let me disclose, O Gilgamesh, a matter most secret, to you [I will] tell a mystery of [gods.] ‘There is a plant that [looks] like a box-thorn, It has prickles like a dogrose, and will [prick one who plucks it.] But if you can possess this plant, [you’ll be again as you were in your youth.]” (George, 2003: 98).

Gilgamesh received the plant and claims, “To Uruk-the-Sheepfold I will take it” before placing the plant down and taking a bath in a pool of water (George, 2003: 98). A snake then caught scent of the plant and ate it leaving Gilgamesh distraught as he realises all his life-threatening efforts were for nothing. Therefore, we reach the denouement of the myth, Gilgamesh and his boatman return back to the city of Uruk and Gilgamesh declares Ur-shanabi to,

“Climb Uruk’s wall and walk back and forth! Survey its foundations, examine the brickwork! Were its bricks not fired in an oven? Did the Seven Sages not lay its foundations?” (George, 2003: 99).

This ending of the epic portrays a “rebellious young king on his way from savagery to civilization and from narcissism to generosity and wisdom” as Gilgamesh appears to shows Ur-shanabi the boatman his great achievements of the walls of Uruk, symbolising his return to the structure of kingship and sovereignty and responsibility (Jager, 2001). Gilgamesh’s return to Uruk not only “signifies his resignation to death, but he also seems to imply that culture is not […] to blame for disease and the lingering aspects of mortality- or at least that man cannot avoid them, that there is no point in altering one’s life because of them” (Kirk, 1970: 151). Ultimately, Gilgamesh has gained the knowledge that no matter how strong, mighty or powerful you are, you are unable to surmount nature and escape death and that therefore you must live life in happiness and not despair. The parallels between the epic and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias are striking,

“‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away” (Holloway, 1967: 36).

The poem depicts the history of urban civilised societies in the middle east of Iraq and Mesopotamia; the history that politically it is a series of rises and falls of great empires. ‘Mighty and despair’ is a classic statement used to convey the idea of the vanity of power. Ozymandias, the great brutal king, has erected this giant statue of himself to prove his omnipotence and his immortality. However, the king’s boasts have ironically been disproved as his work and his civilisation has become a wreck of dust due to the destructive power of history. The poem’s conclusion thus parallels The Epic of Gilgamesh as both convey the idea that there is always intractable nature which culture is unable to overcome.

It could be interpreted however, that the stories establish immortalisation and revelation through literature, as the survival of the Ozymandias and Gilgamesh’s name is the fame. The poet therefore becomes the great immortaliser as the stories live on.

The ultimate revelation made by Gilgamesh is that you must accept and live with the tensions between culture and nature and this from Lévi-Strauss’s point of view is exactly what myths are for. “Rather than resolving the contradiction between death and life, a myth makes death superior to immortality, or eternal life” (Segal, 2004: 117). Lévi-Strauss thus believes myths exercise these tensions between nature and culture as models that provide solutions for these paradoxical oppositions that cloud the minds of mankind. Myths are believed to be a way of therefore accepting the natural world as by “telling stories about their mutual relations in terms of human psychology, the Sumerians were able to understand and accept the workings of the natural world in a manner that would have been impossible on a purely logical and descriptive basis” (Kirk, 1970: 89).

To conclude, The Epic of Gilgamesh act as an allegory for civilization; the idea that no culture lasts forever and that we should, instead of trying to resist and surmount nature, just accept the fate that nature holds for us. The tensions between nature and

culture, that the epic dramatises for us, are however still an ongoing debate in society today as the wish to surmount nature through culture is still a really powerful idea. The epic establishes that there is always intractable nature and our embodiment means that we die and we can never escape death. However, the fantasy of eternal life is still very powerful for people today. This fantasy is portrayed through Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge scientist, who believes that there are now some humans alive today that will live for another ten centuries. He deems that the ongoing research into “repairing the effects of ageing” will ultimately “create preventative treatments that mean humans would be able to consistently re-repair and live as long as 1,000 years or possible even forever” (Austen, 2017). Another modern idea that continues this theme of eternal life is technological singularity. It is the belief that we will reach a point where artificial intelligence is able to map the world and the human mind to a point where an artificial cognitive structure will be possible. So effectively, we are on the verge off uploading all of conscious experience to an autonomous and digital field that will bring about unfathomable change to the human culture. Thus, in the same way that in the very first work of literature there is someone searching for eternal life, this is still the case today.