All I’m Losing is Me:
Gilgamesh #2
Feraco
Myth to Science Fiction
2 October 2009
Risky Business
 Once Enkidu comes in from the Steppe,
the narrative shifts in a whiplash
maneuver towards the battle in the
forest with Humbaba
 Enkidu tries to convince Gilgamesh to
abandon his quest, but to no avail
 This is how “Deal or No Deal” relates to
Gilgamesh: Our hero doesn’t know what
x or y stand for, and chooses to flip the
coin anyway
It is Humbaba who has taken your
strength,
Gilgamesh spoke out, anxious
For the journey. We must kill him
And end his evil power over us.
No, Enkidu cried; it is the journey
That will take away our life.
Don’t be afraid, said Gilgamesh.
We are together. There is nothing
We should fear.
Standing Still
 When the king tells the Elders of Uruk that he
intends to slay Humbaba, a curious interaction
takes place
 Gilgamesh justifies his actions by insisting that
“the youth of Uruk need this fight,” and the old
men flush with memories of glories from long
ago; they agree to his plan
 We are reminded, once again, of the stagnation
that has taken place here; these Elders are no
longer fighters, and the fighters grow restless
from lack of fighting
Revitalization by Proxy
 Yet none of the youth of Uruk fight with him;
how can he argue that they need the fight?
 We see here the idea of revitalization by proxy –
we saw this earlier when Enkidu first battled
Gilgamesh, with the citizenry of Uruk erupting
in cheers when their king’s equal proved his
worth
 Gilgamesh goes out to overcome the monster,
and the book does an oddly effective job of
positioning it within the archetypal context of
saving a province or nation; his victory is the
City’s, for victory brings them life they
otherwise miss
 Do we need enemies? Would we stagnate
without conflict?
He tried to ask his friend for help
Whom he had just encouraged to move on,
But he could only stutter and hold out
His paralyzed hand.
It will pass, said Gilgamesh.
Would you want to stay behind because of
that?
We must go down into the forest together.
Forget your fear of death. I will go before
you
And protect you.
Let the Battle Begin
 Gilgamesh and Enkidu depart with Ninsun’s
blessing and prayers, and the two men draw
near Humbaba’s realm
 When they reach his gate, Enkidu is wounded,
his hand crippled by the barrier’s supernatural
powers; Gilgamesh dismisses his wound,
although he later has a dream that indicates
that only one of them will return to Uruk
 The dream plays itself in real life, as Humbaba
wounds Enkidu badly in his initial attack;
Gilgamesh stands paralyzed, and while he
eventually decapitates the creature of
nightmares, it is only through Enkidu’s daring
slash that Humbaba is brought down
A Goddess Scorned
 The epic spares no time in moving from
triumph to tragedy; no sooner have
Gilgamesh and Enkidu defeated Humbaba
than Ishtar appears
 Gilgamesh’s dealings with her result in
the Bull of Heaven’s attack, which
quickly kills three hundred men before
Enkidu strikes it down
 One could reasonably question whether
Gilgamesh’s candor is wise here; if he
knows Ishtar’s ways well enough, he
should expect retribution for his words
Ishtar’s Purpose
 Ishtar appears without preamble,
although it’s worth noting that she has a
larger role in the entire epic than in
Mason’s verse narrative
 She is the goddess of love and war, and
the seeming contradiction in those roles
merely serves to highlight the violence at
the heart of powerful love
Know Your Enemy
 Why is Gilgamesh so resistant to her?
 He knows her history - one of betrayal
and pain – and alludes to it in the crudest
way possible
 Those who love her know only grief in
the end, because she turns on those she
grows satisfied with
 Gilgamesh points out that it's naive to
assume that a goddess could love a mortal
 After all, he's part god, and that alone
has been enough to separate him from the
mortal world
Reaping What They Sowed
 At any rate, Gilgamesh defies her, Ishtar
unleashes her punishment, and Enkidu
must save his friend yet again
 This is their final offense in the gods’
eyes; they’ve killed two beings who were
of great use to the divine, and one of
them must die
Watch What You Do
 This strikes us as a betrayal, both because
Gilgamesh didn’t exactly request to be
visited by the Bull of Heaven and because
his initial desire to kill Humbaba is not
entirely his own (we learn through
Ninsun’s prayers that Shamash, the Sun
God and Ishtar’s husband/brother, has
sent Gilgamesh to do his bidding)
 How can they be punished with death for
serving the dictates of the gods?
 Or is it that they dared to resist the fates
that divinities set up for them?
Should We Trust Them?
 This section of the epic argues that the larger
powers at work in our lives – the ones
responsible for birth, fate, and death – are
flawed or irrational
 We’re introduced, in quick succession, to
plenty of examples of the gods’
untrustworthiness and abuse
 Beyond the aforementioned “order” to kill
Humbaba from Shamash, we see that Humbaba
is the gods’ slave, the Bull of Heaven kills
innocent men while under Ishtar’s influence,
and the gods argue (morbidly) over whether
Enkidu or Gilgamesh should be killed
Rebel Yell
 In many ways, this section provides more
ammunition for the camp that sees Gilgamesh
as a “rebellion” rather than a chronicle
 We see the tension humans felt while regarding
the divine, the joy of knowing life given by
gods, the agony of seeing that life taken away
by the same deities, and the anger that results
from not understanding the greater meaning of
the bigger picture (why do the good die?)
 Everything feels capricious and arbitrary…and
we know how poorly humans deal with
dysfunctional order
A man sees death in things.
That is what it is to be a man. You’ll know
When you have lost the strength to see
The way you once did. You’ll be alone and
wander
Looking for that life that’s gone, or some
Eternal life you have to find.
In His Hands
 But Gilgamesh proves unable to resist the
demands of the gods in the end; he can find no
words with which to convince them to reverse
their decision, can perform no feat of strength
to prevent them from carrying out their will
 Enkidu dies not from fighting the Bull of
Heaven, but from the wound he suffered while
battling Humbaba as Gilgamesh stood
paralyzed – a wound that resulted from his
prior crippling at Humbaba’s gate, a crippling
that Gilgamesh trivialized at the time
 He’s reduced to weeping helplessly as his friend
slowly expires, leaving him utterly alone again,
alone with his sorrow…and his guilt
Why am I to die,
You to wander on alone?
Is that the way it is with friends?
Outward Bound
 At this point, Gilgamesh begins to revert
to his old ways – fixated only on one
thing, he grows maniacal in his desire to
relieve himself of pain
 Once burned, twice shy
 This three-page section immediately
following Enkidu’s passing is one of my
favorites in the epic; it has some truly
profound things to say about grief, why
we grieve, and how we recover
He Who Survives
 Gilgamesh eventually travels through the
desert – the literal and metaphorical one
– in search of Utnapishtim
 The book refers to him as “the one who
survived the flood”
 Here we see another parallel with a
Biblical archetype
 Before, we had Enkidu cast out of Eden
 Here, we have a flood – sent by Ishtar –
that wipes out virtually everything, save
Utnapishtim and one of each animal he
could save
The Tin Man…
 What Gilgamesh discovers during his
journey will ultimately determine
whether he will be successful – whether
he will recover from pain or drown in it
 Whether he succeeds, of course, is a
lesson for another day…