Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Heroic Life

Author(s): Hope Nash Wolff

Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society , Apr. - Jun., 1969, Vol. 89, No. 2
(Apr. - Jun., 1969), pp. 392-398
Published by: American Oriental Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/596520

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 GILGAMESH, ENKIDU, AND THE HEROIC LIFE

HOPE NASH WOLFF

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

A commentary on the nature of the heroic life as described in the Gilgamesh Epic, study-
ing each of the heroes and their relationship both to each other and to the contiguous worlds
of animal and god, for the purpose of forming an idea of the range and kind of possibilities
open to man according to the epic. Some of man's defining limits, as seen by the Sumerians
and, more particularly, their successors, are thus suggested. The poem is considered a
literary unit, characterized generally by a preoccupation with the idea of human fear of,
and revolt against, death, and an attendant emphasis on purely mortal glory.

IT SEEMS DOUBTFUL that the bull-man who can see that Enkidu's influence is static and pro-
wrestles wild beasts, sometimes in the company tective, and that Enkidu's advance from the primi-
of another muscular, bearded hero, in Near Easterntive to the heroic does not entail any advance in
art, can ever be identified as Enkidu. Henri the moral or intellectual character of Gilgamesh.
Frankfort, for instance, does not accept such an The poem thus separates into two parts, each
identification, although it is often assumed and more concerned with one of the heroes. The first
even claimed 'proved' (Frankfort, Art and Archi- part gives us Enkidu, who, with his friend the
tecture of the Ancient Orient, Penguin, 1963, 12; king, is a gay young man favored above all others
but cf.: A. Parrot, Sumer, Thames and Hudson, in animal strength, manly enterprise, and high
1960, 186-88; G. R. Levy, The Sword from the spirits, until suddenly he is struck down with a
Rock, Faber and Faber, 1953, 73; G. Oifner, fatal sickness in punishment for having trespassed
"l'Ipop6e de Gilgames: a-t-elle ete fixee dans once too often against the gods. At this tragedy
l'art?", in P. Garelli, Gilgames et sa Lggende, Gilgamesh loses all his unthinking self-satisfaction
Paris, 1958, 176 if.). We cannot know whether and becomes a raging, questioning Achilles; and
the Sumerians and their successors pictured yet he suffers no tragic or glorious end, but returns
Enkidu as half-animal; but however his physical quietly home, defeated in his demand for a better
appearance was conceived, the wild man whose life. The second part of the epic tapers off in this
life began on the steppe had the inclinations and unique and peculiar conclusion. It is probably
powers of an animal, and this nature of his does didactic, not based on any myth; no other heroic
not change in the epic. Gilgamesh, on the other tradition seems in accord with this, and we may
hand, does change, for he is severely affected by assume that the poet has set down his own view,
Enkidu's presence and subsequent loss, and it is that the most a man can hope for is what Gilga-
the alteration in him, the variety of form it takes
mesh almost involuntarily attains, great fame
and its meaning, which is the poem's subject. and a good long life.
What Gilgamesh learns in the course of the epic Enkidu serves, then, as an example of the hero
is enough to make him famed as "He who saw who wins fame but dies early and miserably;
everything to the ends of the land, / Who all what is the use, the poet seems to ask, in such a
things experienced, considered all!" I If we re- life? Gilgamesh, on the other hand, demands to
member that his active education begins only with know how to put a stop to death, since it has
Enkidu's death, midway through the poem, we meant for him the end of youth, love, and the
careless fulfillment of every desire. The two ques-
1 All translations of the Gilgamesh Epic are by E. A. tions are not the same, and the poet does not suc-
Speiser, in J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ceed in making us think they are. He would have
Princeton, 1950. us believe that the Gilgamesh who refuses point-

392

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 WOLFF: Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Heroic Life 393
blank to accept the fact of death can also come
home, a sadder and wiser ruler, to a quiescent
life in Uruk. Gilgamesh is the one man living who
would never learn the lesson the Old Babylonian
poet has to offer; he is the hero of an epic designed
to study his magnificent singlemindedness. The
poet betrays the hero at the close of the poem, and
in doing so he damages his own work.2
2 It is generally assumed that the Gilgamesh Epic, in
its earliest complete form, was the work of a Semitic
poet writing about 1700 BC, who drew his material from
a series of Sumerian oral poems relating the exploits of
Gilgamesh and Enkidu. I am much indebted to Prof.
Thorkild Jacobsen and Prof. Hallo for pointing out to
me how little actual evidence there is that this view is
correct; in fact, no certain proof exists that the stories
of the Gilgamesh and Enkidu traditions were combined
in a single epic poem at this particular period (the prob-
lem is briefly discussed in A. Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic
and Old Testament Parallels, U. of Chicago Press, 1946,
13-15). There are however several indications supporting
the common impression that the extant OB fragments
are the remains of the work of one author.
An example is the prominence in two OB fragments
(tablet III, iv, 3-16; tablet X, i, 7-16) of the idea of
man's fear of and revolt against death, and its attendant
emphasis on purely mortal glory; this theme is lacking
in the Sumerian versions of the stories concerned, while
later recensions, such as the Assyrian, show that a preoc-
cupation with death and fame characterizes the epic as a
whole. Again; the Assyrian version introduces Gilgamesh
as the builder of Uruk's city walls, and finishes on the notedeath. Two instances of this week-long suspension and
of his pride in this accomplishment, which is to be his
everlasting monument though he must die. A stone tablet
of the OB period records the restoring of these walls,
calling them "an ancient work of Gilgamesh" (inscrip-
tion of An-am, SAK, 222, no. 2b); thus it is clear that the Assyrian. That these important and strategically placed
historical or legendary fact which is a unifying element
of the Assyrian recension, was also common knowledge
in OB times, and it is reasonable to suppose that the
original epic, if composed at this period, might use the
fact. More tenuous to maintain than either of these sug-
gestions, are conclusions based on the view underlying
much of this paper, namely that the author of a poem so
long and made up of such oddly-assorted pieces must be
guided by at least one dominant idea, which he would
drive home by means of some discernible literary device.
Perhaps the simplest and most effective device in epic
poetry is repetition; and evidence of any recurring theme
in the OB fragments might point to an over-all plan of
composition. By this argument, the thrice repeated
juxtaposition of the space of time, 'six (or, once, seven)
days and seven nights,' with a definite change of char-
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The fatalism of the poet's view, that death is
unavoidable even for the best of men, is of course
familiar, and not at all incompatible with the
heroic ideal, as the Iliad, for example, proves.
But to expect a hero to succumb, even from sheer
fatigue, to the life of simple pleasures which
Siduri proposes to Gilgamesh, that life morally
comparable to the complacent pride in his pre-
vious accomplishments which is all that remains
for him at poem's end, is in effect to kill him, and
kill him without effect. A hero is a delicate thing
in this respect, that he ceases to be a hero when
he loses his animus, his moving force. Enkidu
in his sickness mourns his incapacity for action
until the moment he dies; who will believe that
the epic's namesake voluntarily resigns from
energetic life? Either the poet thought a man born
a hero could outgrow it, changing his allotted
fate by an act of will, which is unlikely; or his
lapse in understanding heroism was intentional,
meant to undercut it (there is no evidence of this
that I can see in the rest of the epic); or else he
acter and outlook in the person concerned (metaphori-
cally called a 'death' later in this paper, and indeed
twice directly related to death), indicates the work of an
author pursuing a specific line of thought, and we can
guess from evidence already mentioned, that a principal
concern of the OB poet is heroic life confronted with
subsequent renewal of life exist in both the OB and
Assyrian versions, Enkidu's meeting with the Uruk
woman, and Gilgamesh's mourning for his friend; the
third, Gilgamesh's fatal sleep, is supplied only in the
incidents run parallel in two cases out of three, suggests
strongly that the Assyrian version depends on an OB
epic.
Yet although these findings all seem to indicate the
truth of the assumption, they constitute nothing but
subjective evidence that one poet is responsible for the
OB fragments left to us.
A different line of reasoning from that found in this
paper is advanced by F.M.Th. de Liagre Bbhl, "Das
Problem ewigen Lebens im Zyklos und Epos des Gilga-
mesch," Opera Minora, Groningen, 1953, 234-262. After
completing the present article my attention was drawn
to another treatment of the subject, "The Structure of
the Gilgamesh Epic," in Melita Theologica 17 (1965),
1-18, by P. Serracino Inglott, which takes a stand in-
dependent of, but much influenced by, the interpreta-
tions of de Liagre Bohl and others.
394 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89.2 (1969)

showed himself a poor artist at this point, as he is a king, son of the goddess Ninsun and a
perhaps at others, by failing to carry out the epicpriest of his city, and thus "two-thirds of him is
design. god, one-third is human." He should be the
Bearing in mind the general outline and state- "shepherd" and protector of Uruk, but instead
ments already made, I should like to proceed to he behaves "like a wild ox," tyrannizing the
comment on the nature of the heroic life as de- people. If the poem had said "like a god," it
scribed in the poem, looking at each of the heroes would have made little difference in meaning; a
and at their relationship both to each other and god should behave like a wild ox in Uruk, es-
to the contiguous worlds of animal and god, pecially when his mother is "the wild cow of the
hoping in the process to form an idea of the range steerfolds, Ninsunna" (cf. T. Jacobsen, "Forma-
and kind of possibilities open to man according tiveto Tendencies in Sumerian Religion," 360, in
the epic. G. E. Wright, ed., The Bible and the Ancient
Through such a commentary we may be able Near East, Doubleday Anchor, 1965). Here,
to suggest a definition of man as seen by the Su- therefore, we have a parallel case of animal-man
merians and their successors, by drawing some of and man-god existing side by side; moreover, the
his limits. One of the oldest and simplest ways of man-god is an animal, and the circle is nearly
describing man's place in the world is to set him complete.
between animal and god; but these elements are What we would classify as three different levels
often mixed, notoriously so in ancient Near of being are here regarded, at least partially, as
Eastern art and literature. "The interval separat- interchangeable and reversible. The living forces
ing humanity from animals was almost non- within objects and beings are assigned their
existent. . ." (G. Maspero on Egypt, quoted in place, but they are not necessarily subject to this
G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Mani- classification. The Sumerians clearly felt that
festation, Harper Torchbook, 1963, 76); the primi- the spirit of a thing, the power that makes it
tive convictions of hunting and farming man what it is, might escape its category; in literature
persisted in religion and myth, and the familiar this fact is expressed by identification, the possi-
and useful, yet uncomprehending and superior bility, by simile. As an example of the change
animals were regarded as "bearers of power" from identity to simile, we might note that Enkidu
(van der Leeuw, 75). They became gods by virtue addresses the magic door which lames his hand
of being strong and non-human. Thus in the "as though it were human: 'Thou door of the
epic, formed as it is of mythological sources, woods, uncomprehending, / Not endowed with
animal merges with man, and god with animal; understanding! . . .' " Originally he probably sim-
and these combinations sometimes reverse di- ply talked to the door as that one who knew best
rection or exchange terms. of his misfortune; we are specifically told that the
As a result, there is in the poem at times a door is only a mindless object, which could not
peculiar absence of boundaries. Enkidu, for help its nature, and thus may infer that it was not
example, is born on the steppe and is something always merely a door, but a being at least as
of a genius of the animals; he lives, runs, waters, potent as a man. In one version of the expedition
and eats grass with the herds, and protects them, against Huwawa, the cedars which the heroes
for the hunter complains, wish to fell are "etres animds" and have to be
fought and killed (L. Matouy, "Les Rapports
He filled in the pits that I had dug, / He tore up my
entre la Version Sum6rienne et la Version Ak-
traps which I had set, / The beasts and creatures of
the steppe / He has made slip through my hands. / He kadienne ... " In Garelli, Gilgames et sa Legende,
does not allow me to engage in fieldcraft. 87). That the gods have animal natures which
they may assume at any time, we have already
Enkidu has no family, no ancestry or background mentioned (Jacobsen, op. cit., passim; W. F.
of any kind, no home. Gilgamesh is his opposite; Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity,

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 WOLFF: Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Heroic Life 395
Doubleday Anchor, 1957, 192-3); and likewise, I
suggest, Enkidu remains an animal in nature,
although, after his arrival in Uruk, he is fully
human, and it is from his nature that his power
as a hero springs.
The use of simile in the poem carries with it
the observation that things are discrete, and sub-
ject to one another. When Gilgamesh and Enkidu
clash, "butting like bulls," or the king mourns his
friend: "Like a lion he raises up his voice, / Like
a lioness deprived of her whelps," then we are no
longer in a primitive or fairy-tale world, but that
same heroic world in which Achilles bounds to the
door of his tent "like a lion" (I. 24. 572), or
laments "his dear friend with outbursts of in-
cessant grief. As some great bearded lion / when
some man, a deer hunter, has stolen his cubs away
from him. . ." (Il. 17.317 ff., Lattimore trans.).
Such comparisons consciously brand the heroes as
men in direct opposition to animals; for they are
men so strong as to command the powers nor-
mally possessed only by beasts. The simile ex-
presses the same sense of merged power as does
the identification, but allows for the distinction
later perceived between the sorts of being in the
world.
Enkidu's elevation from wild to civilized man
reflects this difference between the primitive and
archaic heroic views; in his early state, his protec-
tion of animals is stressed, and his common in-
terest in their welfare, since he is one of them.
He is enraged at the sight of the hunter, not from
"woe at his condition," as M. Jastrow would
have it (with A. Clay, An Old Babylonian Version
of the Gilgamesh Epic, Yale, 1920, 42), but be-
cause he is one of the hunted. However, the early
life of Enkidu is wiped out on his coming to the
city; a new story begins here, and neither the hero
Enkidu nor his friend has any notion of what it
is to be an animal or a prey. We have seen En-
kidu in his natural surroundings, and although he
is physically changed (he learns to groom his shaggy
hair, and no longer has the strength to run with
the gazelle), yet we are aware that his huge
energy is vitally animal while he lives. As a man,
Enkidu has the weaknesses of an animal, un-
touched by reflection; he kills Huwawa outright,
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in an anger as sudden and complete as the fear
he felt in approaching the monster, and as
quickly forgotten. An initiate of the animal
brotherhood, he surpasses this condition to be-
come the companion of a king, and his first act
on becoming a man is to take his weapon "to
chase the lions"; this is his entrance as a hero.
Like Herakles wearing the pelt of the Nemean
Lion, he is thereafter an acknowledged lord of
beasts (cf. H. Zimmer, The King and the Corpse,
Meridian, 1960, 126-8).
In the second and last stage of his life, Enkidu
is very much the warrior, tracker, and hunter.
It is he who leads the expedition against Huwawa,
because he knows the way through the forest.
He is afraid of "tangling with Huwawa," that
"raging wild ox," but once the monster is beaten
nothing can make him hesitate, not the gods
themselves. Both heroes are guility of hunting
a creature who serves Enlil, but whereas Gilga-
mesh would spare Huwawa once he is defeated,
Enkidu in an "excess of fury" cuts off the sup-
pliant's head (J. van Dijk, "Le D6nouement de
'Gilgames au Bois de Cbdres' ... ," in Garelli,
Gilgame?, 73). For this he eventually dies, but
not before he has torn out a piece from the corpse
of the Bull of Heaven, flung it at Ishtar and
threatened to wreathe her in the Bull's entrails.
He is, in sum, of the same character as Herakles,
that "Brute, heavy-handed, who thought nothing
of the bad he was doing, / who with his archery
hurt the gods that dwell on Olympos!" (II.
5.403 f.). Gilgamesh remembers Enkidu best as
the one who chased "the wild ass of the hills, the
panther of the steppe"; Herakles is seen in the
underworld as the great hunter, where "he like
dark night, with bow bare and arrow on the string,
glared. . . like one about to shoot. . . [On his
belt were] bears, wild boars, lions with flashing
eyes.. ." (Od. 11. 606 ff.). Herakles is amoral,
. . . the strong man relying solely on his strength,
whom a rough and lawless age created and even appre-
ciated in a certain degree, a reckless, violent character
who proceeds to extremes, even to rivaling the gods
and raising weapons against them. There is an echo
of this type in Homer.
(M. Nilsson, The Mycenean Origin of
Greek Mythology, Norton, 1963, 201)
396 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89.2 (1969)

The epic of Gilgamesh, too, looks back within about this good with some axiomatic piece of
itself to a more truly heroic age; Enkidu's ex- knowledge he has been taught by his elders.
ploits with Gilgamesh take place in an earlier When Enkidu is fearful of attacking Huwawa,
era than the adventures of the last half of the the king reproves him cheerfully,
poem. In the youthful heyday of Enkidu, as in
Who, my friend, is superior to death? / Only the gods
that of Nestor, lived "the strongest generation of
live forever under the sun. / As for mankind, numbered
earth-born mortals, / the strongest, and they are their days; / Whatever they achieve is but the
fought against the strongest, the beast men / wind!
living within the mountains, and terribly they
destroyed them." (II. 1.266 ff.) Gilgamesh assumes that of course, he himself
Between Herakles and Enkidu there is this will achieve more than "the wind". The elders
great difference, however; Enkidu may be amoral, of the city, like the Shamash of the second part,
and he certainly is punished by the gods for wrong- Siduri, and Utnapishtim, are of the poet's com-
doing, but on the other hand, it is never clear pany; they know that Gilgamesh, though a hero,
just where the gods draw the lines of morality; is an innocent, and their prayer for his success
while Herakles crosses boldly into the well- shows their admiration for, and fear and lack of,
defined precincts of Olympos. For example, from his heroism: ". . . May Shamash grant thee
the human point of view, Huwawa is a scourge, thy desire; what thy mouth has spoken may
and well destroyed (we don't know what evil he he show thine eyes! ... Childlike, mayest thou
does, but everyone seems to be glad he is dead, attain thy wish!"
even Siduri); moreover, the god Shamash sup- While Enkidu lives, Gilgamesh, like a child,
ports the venture, opposes Enlil, and complains gets all he wants. His desire for personal glory,
that to punish Enkidu and not Gilgamesh is though immense, is less than the glory showered
unjust. The gods are in conflict, and the humans on him; for instance, his rejection of Ishtar's
confused. There is a gap between the two groups advances is due not to hybris but to his innate
which no one, not even Ninsun, seems to be able rightness of mind. He does not want the further
to bridge; we see the disparity of views, but no abundance of life she offers, for he does not need
cause for it, and no solution. A hero of Enkidu's it. Thus her offer, as well as his refusal, indicates
sort has little to do with morality under any how strong his sense of security and self-suffi-
circumstances, and under these, he hasn't a ciency is, and the episode marks the highest
chance of doing right. point of his career. The gods are unwanted; only
Strangely enough, Gilgamesh does not have any Shamash (as Enlil in jealous contempt remarks),
more of a hearing among the gods than Enkidu, like 'one of the boys,' shares in the heroes' ex-
unless we accept the fact of his escape from death ploits. Somewhat as Ishtar would not be present
as a silent witness to his closer connection. Culti- to Gilgamesh were he not already blessed with
vated understanding, such as the king acquires, is the gifts she offers, so Shamash appears to urge on,
no means of approaching the workings of the advise, and speak for the friends, yet proves un-
divine mind. The gods simply act; if something able to foresee or fend off the evil consequences
goes wrong, they are against you, but you are of their acts. The god or goddess is manifest in
unlikely to guess the reason. Gilgamesh does not the particular human situation or decision, but
even try. That the major part of him is divine, his or her divine powers do not, to human eyes,
seems only an expression of the power of his per- extend beyond this moment. In contrast to these
sonality, physical and mental, and his luck. He two we have Enlil, whose force is less humanly
combines the virtues of the strongman and the manifest, but more implacable in its remoteness.
civilized servant of humanity. He does not re- It is he who has the voice in the gods' council,
flect on anything until his friend dies; he takes and thereby he expresses his commands as
life for the good it is, and responds to any doubts actual director of the final issues; he grants life

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 WOLFF: Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Heroic Life 397
to Gilgamesh and immortality to Utnapishtim.
He is a cause of events; Ishtar and Shamash are
magnified descriptions of the resulting action or
situation.
The gods naturally take a greater interest in
Gilgamesh than his friend, because he is a king
and part god. He, however, cares only to achieve
as a man, and for men; ruling is for him a serious
task, as Enkidu acknowledges in first greeting
him: ". . . Raised up above men is thy head.
Kingship over the people / Enlil has granted
thee!" He is asserting his superiority too strongly
when the poem opens; the gods relieve his sub-
jects by capitalizing on his determination to
glorify his name and incidentally benefit man-
kind. Most of his adventures have the civilized
excuse that they will "banish evil from the land,"
and although this hatred of evil seems to have no
more experience behind it than does his early
disregard of death, still it stamps him as a moral
man. That he is also a man of reflection, we learn
when, at the death of his friend, he is so moved by
fear, horror, and curiosity that he watches the
body "seven days and seven nights, until a
worm fell out of [the] nose," then abandons the
city and the life of a king to wander, perhaps
(he threatens) forever, over the steppe.
The old Gilgamesh largely vanishes in the
second half of the poem; the direct, righteous
hero, adored by all, becomes a shaggy-haired
seeker, continuously agonized by fear, who goes
alone and trembles to see lions. All his bitterness
at the blow of Enkidu's dying is swallowed up in
the need to persevere in his search for life, and
indeed, merely to survive. He learns what little
can keep him from perishing; unlike Enkidu, he
was not made for the raw animal existence, and
he had to teach himself how to remain a man in
the animals' world.
I slew bear, hyena, lion, panther, / Tiger, stag and
ibex- / The wild beasts and creeping things of the
steppe. / Their flesh I ate and their skins I wrapped
around me.
So he continues in his wretched extremity, his
despair driving him to a physical and intellectual
state which proves, by his endurance of it, his
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ultimate strength in body and mind. His emo-
tional reaction to the loss of Enkidu ("How can
I be silent? How can I be still?/ My friend, whom
I loved, has turned to clay?") does not diminish.
Nevertheless, this bitter derangement and black
melancholy, comparable to the grief of Achilles
for Patroklos, gradually gives way to the weath-
ered but persuasive and intelligent charm of an
Odysseus. Consider, for instance, his arrival at
Siduri's house, when she locks her door in panic
at his wild looks but subsequently warms to
him; the scene has much in common with Odys-
seus' meeting with Nausicaa. Shipwrecked,
naked, not knowing where he is, the Greek yet
manages to convince Nausicaa of his nobility
and sincerity; with nothing whatsoever to rely
on but himself, he must immediately show that
what seems a wild beast is in reality the most
civilized of men.
He came forth like a lion raised in the mountains,
trusting in his strength, who moves ahead though
beaten with rain and wind, and his two eyes blaze; he
goes among the cattle, or the sheep, or on the track of
the wild deer, and his belly bids him go right to the
well-built sheep-fold, to attack the flocks.
(Od. 6.130-4)
Something of Enkidu's spirit has descended on
Gilgamesh; he has gone through the apprentice-
ship on the steppe and never wavered from his
goal. Yet we can gauge the distance Gilgamesh
has come from his partnership with the man of
animal powers; he looks terrifying, like a beast,
and like a beast he can survive, but it is his
self-inflicted moral burden that has clothed him
in such lion-like ferocity.
Aside from the desire for personal accomplish-
ment which never leaves Gilgamesh, though its
scope and object change, his remarkable char-
acteristic is his capacity for love. It is equal to
Enkidu's need, and explains the closeness that
makes them "brothers". Enkidu may well over-
come Gilgamesh when they first try each other
out; he is the king's protector, not just in the
sense that Ninsun and the elders deputize him as
such, but also because Gilgamesh willingly gives
himself up to a less complex, delightfully vigorous
companion. Nominally the king leads, but the
398 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89.2 (1969)
life he leads is the life for which Enkidu is fitted.
It is Enkidu who provides the joy in this love;
he has a comic side, which is most evident in the
scene where he is introduced to food, clothing, and
strong drink. It contributes also to his astonishing
week-long affair with the prostitute from Uruk,
for he is like Herakles, "who is as immoderate in
eating as in love, who begets fifty sons by the
fifty daughters of Thespius in one night..."
(Nilsson, Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology,
202). In the Odyssey, the hero gives the Cyclops,
that grotesque mixture of child, man, and beast,
his first taste of real wine; comically, the Cyclops
drinks it off, demands it twice more, and falls
over backward, dead drunk (Od. 9.347 ff.). So
Enkidu downs seven goblets of strong drink;
"Carefree became his mood and cheerful,/ His
heart exulted/ And his face glowed." Enkidu is
the affectionate animal-friend of mythology, who
is sacrificed for the hero, to no purpose in the
present poem (Levy, Sword from the Rock, 123).
He figures, in effect, as the innocent thing which
cannot defend itself, and which demands no
recognition except through its tragedy. Gilga-
mesh, after Enkidu dies, calls him repeatedly "my
younger friend"; the realization that it is he who
should have been the protector, overpowers him,
particularly since it is accompanied by the fright-
ening knowledge that there is no longer anything
between him and death.
Three deaths within the poem indicate the
subject of its concern, through and beyond Gilga-
mesh. The first is Enkidu's lying with the girl for
six days and seven nights; he cannot return to his
true innocence afterward, but must become a
man, "godlike," as the girl tells him, and set
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events in motion. The time which follows might
be called simple and heroic. It is brought to an
end by Enkidu's death in bed; once again he is
lying down, and he feels it keenly as unheroic.
Afterward there is a pause of seven days and
nights, while Gilgamesh absorbs the fact of death.
He now, in his turn, leaves heroic innocence
behind, the unreflecting childhood he shared with
Enkidu; he is reduced to the animal state and
lives as Enkidu did, a homeless wanderer on the
steppe. He seems to cease to be a man as though
preparing to become a god. His all-consuming
purpose, the search for which is caused by a bit-
terly human fear of death, is the achievement of
eternal life; his survival of every trial with this
as his motive marks him as a hero of such power
that we feel justified in expecting his success.
Instead, he fails the final test; asked to prove
himself sleepless, equal to a god, and thus worthy
of immortality, he immediately falls asleep and
never wakes for seven days. This is the death of
the hero Gilgamesh; the man who accepts the
defeat of his hopes makes no more attempts to
close the gap between man and god. His spirit is
suddenly that of an elder of Uruk, and he returns
to the city, apparently content merely to be its
king.
These three divisions by time separate inno-
cence from knowledge, and knowledge from ac-
ceptance, in the life of Gilgamesh, the hero whose
adversary is evil in general, and in particular,
death. He does not keep our faith at the last,
because he continues to live, after accepting
death. We look to the Gilgamesh who still sleeps,
or who, perhaps, has found life after all. It is his
historical shadow the poet brought back to Uruk.