Epopeea lui Ghilgames are 12 canturi, adica cele 12 zodii, timpul zodiacal /infinit (Aion),ca si Tiganiada.

Este
epopee despre timpul astral, aionic, infinit, nu despre timpul terestru/cronologic
Canturile 8 si 9 evoca zodiac Scorpionului, tor 9 si Potopul, asociat cu Varsatorul. Gilgames si Enkidu sunt
Gemeni, frati de umbra/bifrons (aproape zeu-aproape om, civilizat-salbatic, stapan-sclav, bogat-sarac
How Gilgamesh Became the Lord of the Dead
Part Three:Gilgamesh Journeys Through the Zodiac
by John David Ebert

Moving onward now to a consideration of the Babylonian epic and its description of Gilgamesh's journey through
the zodiac, the first point to note is that Gilgamesh and Enkidu are meant to be an incarnation of the constellation
which we now refer to as Gemini. Gilgamesh was explicitly identified in a late text with the god Meslamta-ea (note
the "mes" prefix) which name is the oldest known of that of the god Nergal, whose temple at Kutha was called
"Emeslam." Meslamta-ea, furthermore, was one of a pair of deities whose counterpart was known as Lugal-irra,
both of whom were linked astronomically with Gemini. These two gods were twins, and they were specifically
associated with guarding doorways, particularly the gateway to the underworld, where they stood with bronze
axes waiting to dismember the dead. When we recall the strange scene at the beginning of the epic when
Gilgamesh and Enkidu first meet each other in a doorway, and then proceed to fight while somehow remaining in
or near that doorway, the scene no longer appears so strange when we realize that they are meant to be the
Mesopotamian Gemini who guard doorways. Both Gilgamesh and Enkidu, furthermore, like Meslamta-ea and
Lugal-irra, carry bronze axes, and the first thing Enkidu does after they have felled the sacred cedar is to cut up
its wood and make a doorway out of it.

In Roman mythology, the twins have been combined into a single figure with two faces Janus, the god of
doorways while in Egyptian myth, the ferryman who carries souls across the threshold into the land of the dead
was, like Janus, also a two-faced deity known as Her-ef-ha-ef ("he whose face is behind him.") The
Mesopotamian god Enki, moreover, the god of the watery Abzu, had a two-faced minister named Usmu often
shown in attendance on him. Two-faced gods, then, or twins, are often linked with the underworld, and since we
know that one of the Greek Gemini, Castor, had to die while the other became immortal, we can be reasonably
certain that Gilgamesh and his mortal friend Enkidu are an early prototype of this astrological pair.

With the image of the doorway, then, the threshold to the netherworld is laid bare, and the
narrative will begin to move from the constellations of the northern celestial hemisphere to those
of the southern. (With the slaying of the Taurus bull, discussed in , we have already passed
through the springtime equinox for the Platonic Month of the Age of Taurus. Now, in the course of
Gilgamesh's solar journey through the twelve signs of the sun's annual passage through the year,
we are moving forward through the ecliptic, from Taurus to Gemini to Cancer to Leo, etc.
Remember, though, that with regard to the precession of the equinoxes, the "progression" moves
back the other way, i.e. from the Age of Gemini to Taurus, and from the Age of Taurus [c. 4000-2000 B.C. E.] to
the Age of Aries [known to the Mesopotamians, however, as the Day Laborer] [c. 2000 0 B.C.E.] This image of
the Babylonian Gilgamesh narrative encompassing two astronomical clocks, as it were, should be held in mind,
as though we were visualizing one clock, that of the precession moving backwards through the zodiac, while the
other, that of the annual solar allegory, moves forwards.)
Now Enkidu is the mortal twin of the Gemini and so he is killed by a mysterious illness inflicted on him by the sun
god Shamash. In Tablet VIII, the mourning speeches of Gilgamesh, in which trees and rivers and animals are said
to lament the passing of Enkidu, puts us suspiciously in mind of the god Dumuzi and the later lamentations for the
death of Tammuz during the summer that will become so common in the Middle East that the Arabs will name the
month of July after him. If the lamentations for Enkidu are, as I suspect, deliberately meant to put us in mind of
Dumuzi, then we become aware that the narrative at this point has shifted from the springtime Sacred Marriage
ceremony (together with its ritual slaying of the bull) to the withering heat of summer, when the sun dries up all
the vegetation of Sumer. This is perhaps why it is specifically the sun god Shamash who kills Enkidu, just as in
the Samson story of the Old Testament. Samson's role as the sun god who destroys the crops in summer is
dramatized by the episode in which he ties firebrands to the tails of foxes and has them run through the fields
setting fire to all the crops.
The death of Enkidu would thus occur at about the time of Cancer which sign, however,
was known to the Sumerians not as a crab, but as the Carpenter and in fact, Enkidu, as
we have seen, is a sort of carpenter, for he is a builder of doorways. He even has a
deathbed conversation with the doorway that he built for Enlil's temple in Nippur. In the
earliest version of his death as recounted in the story of Gilgamesh and the Gilgamesh bemoans the loss of his
pukku and mikku after they have fallen into the underworld, saying: "On this day, if only my ball had stayed for me
in the carpenter's workshop! O carpenter's wife, like a mother to me! If only it had stayed there!" Hertha Von
Dechend, in Hamlet's Mill, suspects a reference here to the sign of the Carpenter, and we note that the events of
that story take place on the day of Enkidu's death, so it would make sense if the Babylonians had retained a
tradition from the Sumerians that Enkidu had died in summer under the sign of Cancer, the summer solstice point
for the month of Aries into which Gilgamesh was preparing Mesopotamian civilization to enter.
The first thing Gilgamesh does after he buries Enkidu and sets off on his wanderings is to kill a pair of lions, and
so we should not be surprised to find that the Mesopotamian sign for Leo was represented as a man killing a lion.
After Gilgamesh performs this deed, he puts on the lion skins like Heracles and eats their flesh. Then, as
the text says, strangely, "Gilgamesh [dug] wells that never existed before," earning him one of his epithets as
"well-digger." The digging of wells in Mesopotamian ritual is always associated with opening up portals to the
underworld, and so it is appropriate that immediately after the lion sequence, he comes to the Mashu (i.e. "twin")
mountains of the East, where he encounters a scorpion man and his wife guarding the gate. Now, at first glance,
we would be tempted to think that these figures represent Scorpio, but it is more likely that the scorpion people
represent Libra, since according to Robert Graves, one of the two scorpion people later became that
constellation. (For the ancient Greeks, these two constellations, Scorpio and Libra, were not separate but rather
constituted one large constellation, for the Greeks referred to Libra as the Claws of
the Scorpion, not the scales).

Gilgamesh at this point goes through a dark tunnel and comes out the other side into a garden of jewels and
precious stones. At the point along the ecliptic between Scorpio and Sagittarius, there is an opening to the Milky
Way, and so it is possible that this tunnel leads him down to the celestial underworld where he will find this very
river that will take him to the domain of Utnapishtim. Here he leaves behind the constellations of the northern
hemisphere for, as the text says, "he took the path of the sun God," meaning that he followed the ecliptic as it led
him down into the southern celestial hemisphere. After the jewel garden, he comes to an ocean (and now here is
the Milky Way, accessible at this point from Scorpio) where a tavern is kept by a woman at the edge of the sea
known as Siduri. Von Dechend has pointed out that this may be the Mesopotamian scorpion goddess Ishkhara,
for in many cultures all over the world a scorpion goddess is imagined in this constellation. "In Nicaragua and
Honduras, Mother Scorpion, who dwells at the end of the Milky Way,' is described as many breasted," she writes,
for the souls of the dead are supposed to be nourished by the milk from her breasts. Ishkhara,
furthermore, was the Mesopotamian sign of Scorpio, and it was her job to nourish the souls of the dead from her
many breasts. The milk from her breasts has here been transposed euphemistically into beer served from a
tavern by a maiden (just as in Germanic myth, the souls of the dead spend their first night in a tavern governed by
Gertrude). The Mesopotamians were also fond of puns, and so we note that the word for "barmaid" that is used to
refer to Siduri is sabitu, a homophone for Sebittu, the Seven
Sages of
whom it was said that Ishkhara was their mother.
So Gilgamesh is now well on his way to the Underworld. Though
explicit reference at this point to Sagittarius, the centaur known
Mesopotamians as Pabilsag, the huntsman I note that when
lays eyes on Gilgamesh, she sees him coming from a distance
herself: "For sure this man is a hunter of wild bulls," and later,
Gilgamesh is summarizing his adventures for Utnapishtim, he
yet to reach the tavern keeper, my clothing was worn out. / I killed
lion, panther, cheetah, / deer, ibex, the beasts and game of the
their flesh, their pelts I flayed." So, though there is no reference to
the story, Pabilsag was a hunter of wild animals, and it would
Gilgamesh momentarily steps into his role. (And besides,
wearing all of his various animal skins is a half-animal, halfa sort of modified centaur).

there is no
to the
Siduri first
and says to
when
says, "I had
bear, hyena,
wild: / I ate
a centaur in
appear that
Gilgamesh
human being,

Thus, Gilgamesh, traveling along the ecliptic, has reached the cluster of constellations Libra, Scorpio and
Sagittarius (the Scorpion Men, Siduri / Ishhara and Pabilsag [whose tail was depicted as that of a scorpion's])
which mark the entrance into the southern celestial hemisphere and, in terms of the cycle of the year, the
threshold point at which the days and the nights are of equal length. From now onward the nights will begin to
become longer than the days, and so the abyssal side of life will begin to take precedence over the light side. In
Greek mythology, correspondingly, it is at this point that Scorpio rising out of the East will sting the huntsman
Orion sinking directly across the sky from him into the Western horizon. Gilgamesh, that is to say, has been stung

symbolically, and now he waits at the shore of the Milky Way between Scorpio
Sagittarius for passage across the sea.

and

It is at this point in the sky that the ecliptic cuts across the Milky Way at an
perpendicular angle, and in order for Gilgamesh to continue on his path through
ecliptic, he must cross the Milky Way. Siduri says to him:

almost
the

Only Shamash the hero crosses the ocean:

Apart from the sun god, who crosses the ocean?
The crossing is perilous, its way full of hazard,
And midway lie the Waters of Death, blocking the passage forward.
So, besides, Gilgamesh, once you have crossed the ocean,
When you reach the Waters of Death, what then will you do?

She then directs him to Urshanabi, who, besides being Utnapishtim's private boatman undoubtedly spends the
majority of his time traveling up and down the Milky Way ferrying the souls of the dead between the northern and
southern hemispheres.
Urshanabi at this point takes him out over the ocean to the domain of Utnapishtim. It was traditional in Sumerian
myth that the flood survivor (originally Ziusudra) was borne by the gods to the island of Dilmun, located in the
Persian Gulf as a sort of Elysium. Scholars tend to agree that Dilmun was not just a mythical land but a real
place, and was most likely the island of Bahrein. Dilmun was regarded by the Sumerians as a land of fabulous
wealth, and a great trade economy was established between it and the various cities of Mesopotamia. But if
Dilmun was Bahrein, it was also a special place, for it was the one place in the Persian Gulf where there were
abundant freshwater springs both on and around the island. There is some evidence that these springs were
regarded as holy places sacred to the god Inzak, the son of Enki, Lord of the watery Abzu. Thus, Dilmun may
have been thought of as a kind of source land for the waters of the Abzu, a place of eternal springs whose fresh
waters emerged mysteriously from cracks in the earth. It might also have been thought that the waters conferred
eternal youth on those who drank from them. The thousands of burial mounds that ripple across the deserts of
the island may be evidence that Dilmun was thought to be a particularly holy place to be buried, since such a
location at the nexus of Time and Eternity might have been thought to put one in the province of special powers of
revivification via the island's eternal freshwater springs.
The other special thing about Dilmun was that it was a major source for pearls. To this day, pearl divers still jump
from their boats off the coast of Bahrein with one rope tied around their ankles exactly as Gilgamesh is described
as doing when he goes searching for the plant of eternal youth. And since we know that in folklore, pearls are
regarded as having the magical property of restoring youth, it is very likely that the plant which Utnapishtim sends
him diving after is not a plant at all but a pearl. In support of this notion, the archaeologist Geoffrey Bibby in his
bookLooking for Dilmun wrote about unearthing some pots on Bahrein inside of which the remains of serpents
were found with a single pearl lodged into their mouths. And when we recall that the fate of Gilgamesh's plant
was to have been snapped up by a serpent, the suspicion that Gilgamesh was really diving for a pearl becomes
even stronger.
But then if Gilgamesh really has arrived at Dilmun (or Bahrein), then we must confess that the story is really
working on two levels simultaneously: there is the celestial allegory of a journey through the zodiac, but
apparently, Gilgamesh has also been traveling on the geographical plane south from the city of Uruk down to the
headwaters of the Persian Gulf, where Urshanabi has picked him up and begun to carry him across the Gulf
waters to Bahrein.
Either way, we have arrived at the domain of Utnapishtim, who appears to have been a guardian of the sacred
wells upon the island of Bahrein. In this role, it is not hard to see him as Aquarius, the water bearer, who was
perhaps guarding not only the island's necropolis, but may also have been the ministering priest of some sort of
special baptismal rite. This would certainly be consistent with his role in the story of the great flood, which he now

proceeds to recount to Gilgamesh (perhaps from the cool interior of his palm frond house with its floor made of
crushed seashells). In doing so, the Babylonian editors have miniaturized an older text known as "Atrahasis," a
recounting of the flood myth dating from about the same time as the Old Babylonian version of Gilgamesh (the
corresponding tablet, XI, which would have recounted the Utnapishtim story in the Old Babylonian version has
been lost, so we must rely on the much later Standard version). In combining the "Atrahasis" with the Sumerian
Gilgamesh stories, the Babylonian editors have made their astronomical allegory more clear. This part of the text,
Tablet XI, corresponds to the last three signs of the zodiac: Aquarius, Capricorn and Pisces, and this would have
been necessary in order to complete their zodiacal allegory.

Aquarius, as I have suggested, corresponds to Utnapishtim, and Aquarius was the sign for the winter solstice
during the Platonic month of Taurus, but now in the Age of Aries, the new winter solstice point will become
Capricorn, the goat-fish. The god Enki is the most important of the deities in the flood myth, for he is the one who
specifically warns Utnapishtim of the coming of the flood, and it is precisely this god who later became the sign of
Capricorn, for both the goat and the fish were sacred to him. As Utnapishtim recounts the story of the flood to
Gilgamesh, he tells him that Enki warned him that Enlil planned to destroy humanity and that Utnapishtim should
build an ark shaped exactly like a cube ("her length and breadth shall be the same"). This is a strange detail until
we realize that for the Mesopotamians the constellation of Pisces included the so-called Pegasus Square
between the two fish, and that this square was known as "1 Iku," precisely the dimensions of the ark (an iku was
a unit of measurement equivalent to 3600 square meters). The Mesopotamian constellation of Pisces,
furthermore, included three other components: the Tail, the Swallow and Anunitu, the birth-goddess. With the
exception of the Tail, the other two elements of Pisces do figure prominently in the flood narrative as Utnapishtim
recounts it, for when the ark lands atop the mountain, the first thing Utnapishtim does is to send out three birds to
find land: a dove, a swallow and a raven. The swallow, along with the other two birds, is thus associated with
inaugurating a new post-diluvial World Age, just as Pisces, at the very end of the zodiac, is the last sign before
the springtime equinox, at which point the Mesopotamians celebrated their New Year festival. The fourth and final
component of the Mesopotamian constellation of Pisces was the birth goddess Anunitu, who in the narrative
appears as Belet-ili, the birth goddess who laments over Enlil's murderous destruction of humanity.

Placing the flood myth inside the Gilgamesh narrative was the key element in completing the astronomical
allegory of Gilgamesh's journey through the zodiac, an element that, we might add, could not have been present
in the various scattered Sumerian fragments, since they do not form a cohesive whole. The Babylonians,
therefore, and not the Sumerians, imagined the journeys of Gilgamesh as a complete circuit of the ecliptic from
the stars of the northern hemisphere to those of the southern, and therefore it was they, and not the Sumerians,
who universalized him by linking him with a cosmological process that could be clearly identified in any
Mesopotamian city.
The only sign of the zodiac that does not occur in the story unless I have missed it is that of Aries, the DayLaborer or Hired Man. However, I find the absence of this sign curious in light of the fact that it is precisely the
epoch that Gilgamesh is preparing the Mesopotamians to enter. He makes a complete circuit of the ecliptic
beginning with Taurus and going all the way down through Pisces, ending at precisely the last signbefore Aries.
Also, in terms of the precession of the equinoxes, which moves in the opposite direction of the sun's annual path,
the narrative begins with the Age of Gemini in the Cedar Forest, then moves "forward" into the Age of Taurus with
the Bull of Heaven episode, then stops on the cusp of Aries and moves back to Gemini with the death of Enkidu,
from whence it proceeds forward to Cancer and the rest of the
zodiac.
There is at least one other curious detail worth pointing out. In the
Epic, the god Enki refers to Utnapishtim as the "son of Ubar-Tutu."
Turning to a document known as the Sumerian King List, we note
that Ubartutu was the last king who ruled before the coming of the
flood. After the flood, kingship descends from heaven for a second
time, and a new cycle begins of kings who live much shorter lives
(approximately 1000 years on average instead of tens of thousands
each). But if we count the number of years from the time of the
flood until the reign of Gilgamesh, we arrive at the interesting
number of 26,554 years, which is just 634 years more than the
number associated with a complete cycle of the precession of the
equinoxes, namely, 25,920 years. But the difference becomes even
more negligible if we suppose that the Sumerians, instead of
estimating the length of each Platonic Month at 2,160 years, simply
rounded it up to 2,200 years and then multiplied that by 12 to get
the number 26,400, which is only 154 years less than 26,554. Either way, it becomes suspicious that Gilgamesh,
a man who travels through 11 signs of the zodiac (on precisely 11, and not 12, tablets) lived about 26,000 years
after the occurrence of the flood, when the last Great Year ended. This would bring the epoch in which he was
living, that of Aries, back full circle to where it was in the time of Utnapishtim which, likewise, must have been
Aries. This would make the time in which Gilgamesh was living the ending of another Great Year, not just of
Taurus merely, and so perhaps Gilgamesh is the human being elected by the gods at the end of this mahayuga to
become immortal, like Utnapishtim at the end of the previous Great Year (although Utnapishtim was never
worshipped as a god).

The gods, that is to say, have elected Gilgamesh to become the Lord of the Dead because he has been initiated
into the cosmic mysteries. He has completed an initiatory journey through the cosmos, in which he has witnessed
secrets and caught glimpses of the great powers framing the edges of the cosmos that no human being before
him had ever seen, thus rendering him fit to occupy the office of a god. His quest for immortality, then, can in no
way be regarded as a failure. Even the apparent failure of the plant of ever-lasting youth that is gobbled up by the
serpent has the feel of a sense of fulfillment about it, as though some secret ritual purpose were being completed
unbeknownst to Gilgamesh. Such is implied by Bibby's excavations on Bahrein which have revealed buried
serpents with pearls in their mouths, for this suggests that Gilgamesh's apparent failure was really part of the
performance of a pre-existent myth of some sort, now lost to us. For Gilgamesh, too, in shuffling off his mortal coil
upon his descent to the realm of the netherworld to become a god is imitating the powers of the snake who
sloughs his skin and yet becomes immortal through the imbibed power of the pearl.
In order to become the Lord of the Dead, Gilgamesh has to know the hidden secrets of the cosmos and
participate in its esoteric mysteries. Thus, the poem has the feel of an initiatic Mystery Play about it. A similar
pattern is evident in the Esthonian epic known as the Kalevipoeg, whose main hero also ends by becoming the
Lord of the Dead after undergoing a series of fantastic cosmic journeys. That the Babylonian editors chose not to
append the Sumerian text of "The Death of Gilgamesh" to their solar epic implies nothing more than that they
assumed the ultimate fate of Gilgamesh to be too well known in order to add a coda to it. And besides, this would
have disrupted their astrological symbolism of retaining precisely 11 tablets in order to imply that Gilgamesh's
journey was part of an attempt to bring the twelfth into being as the dawning Age of the Day Laborer for which he
was making Mesopotamian civilization ready.
We Westerners had forgotten all this and assumed that the story told on the 11 tablets
contained the whole story and did not require completion, or "fill in" on the part of the
knowing reader. But the clues were there all along. We should have known better, and
not allowed ourselves to become beguiled too quickly by Gilgamesh's apparent failures,
for it is a well-known motif in mythology that apparent failures upon a journey are really
the workings out of deeper, secret undercurrents of fate that are leading the protagonist
onward to the completion of higher purposes. For those very failures, when carefully
examined, turn out to have been constitutive of the inner workings of a great cosmic
Destiny: How the first human being in the history of mythology underwent the agonizing
humiliations necessary for the breakdown of his mortal structure and subsequent
transformation into a god.

John David Ebert is a former editor for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. He wrote
footnotes for Baksheesh & Brahman, Sake & Satori and The Mythic Dimension, all
posthumous publications of Campbell's writings. His first book was Twilight of the
Clockwork God: Conversations on Science & Spirituality at the End of an Age(Council Oak Books, 1999).
His most recent book is entitledCelluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of
Electronic Society (Cybereditions, 2005), and was reviewed by Dr. William Doty in the August 2005 issue
of Mythic Passages. His work has been published in various periodicals such as Utne Reader, The Antioch
Review, Lapis and Alexandria. He is currently working on a book about popular culture and mythology, tentatively
entitledElectric Demigods of the Lightspeed World.
Read more by John Ebert at his website cinemadiscourse.com
THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Love As a Motivating Force

Love, both erotic and platonic, motivates change in Gilgamesh. Enkidu changes from a wild man into a noble one
because of Gilgamesh, and their friendship changes Gilgamesh from a bully and a tyrant into an exemplary king
and hero. Because they are evenly matched, Enkidu puts a check on Gilgameshs restless, powerful energies,
and Gilgamesh pulls Enkidu out of his self-centeredness. Gilgameshs connection to Enkidu makes it possible for
Gilgamesh to identify with his peoples interests. The love the friends have for each other makes Gilgamesh a
better man in the first half of the epic, and when Enkidu dies, Gilgameshs grief and terror impel him onto a futile
quest for immortality.
The epic may lack a female love interest, but erotic love still plays an important role. Enkidus education as a man
begins with his sexual initiation by the temple harlot, and the two heroes troubles begin with their repudiation of
Ishtar, the goddess of love. Humanity renews itself through the female life force, which includes sex, fertility,
domesticity, and nurturance, not through an arbitrary gift of the gods. When Gilgamesh finally sees that his place
is here on Earth and returns to Uruk to resume his kingship, Ishtar returns to her place of honor.
The Inevitability of Death
Death is an inevitable and inescapable fact of human life, which is the greatest lesson Gilgamesh learns.
Gilgamesh is bitter that only the gods can live forever and says as much when Enkidu warns him away from their
fight with Humbaba. Life is short, the two warriors tell each other on their way to the deadly confrontation in the
Cedar Forest, and the only thing that lasts is fame. But when Enkidu is cursed with an inglorious, painful death,
their bravado rings hollow. Shamash, the sun god, consoles Enkidu by reminding him how rich his life has been,
but though Enkidu finally resigns himself to his fate, Gilgamesh is terrified by the thought of his own.
Mesopotamian theology offers a vision of an afterlife, but it gives scant comfortthe dead spend their time being
dead. If Gilgameshs quest to the Cedar Forest was in spite of death, his second quest, to Utnapishtim, is for a
way to escape it. Utnapishtims account of the flood reveals how ludicrous such a goal is, since death is
inextricably woven into the fabric of creation. But life is woven in as well, and even though humans die, humanity
continues to live. The lesson that Gilgamesh brings back from his quest isnt ultimately about deathits about
life.
The Gods Are Dangerous
Gilgamesh and Enkidu learn all too well that the gods are dangerous for mortals. Gods live by their own laws and
frequently behave as emotionally and irrationally as children. Piety is important to the gods, and they expect
obedience and flattery whenever possible. They can often be helpful, but angering them is sheer madnessand
a characters reverence for the gods is no guarantee of safety. Thus, the world of The Epic of Gilgamesh differs
markedly from that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in which God is both a partner in a covenant and a stern but
loving parent to his people. The covenant promises that people will receive an earthly or heavenly inheritance if
they behave well. The Judeo-Christian God represents not just what is most powerful but what is morally best
humans should aspire to imitate him. These differences are noteworthy because Gilgamesh also shares certain
common elements with the Judeo-Christian Bible. Both Gilgamesh and parts of the Bible are written in similar
languages: Hebrew is related to Akkadian, the Babylonian language that the author used in composing the late
versions of Gilgamesh. The Bible comes from the same region as Gilgamesh and shares some of its motifs and
stories, such as the serpent as the enemy who deprives humans of eternal life and, most important, the flood. In
both the Bible and Gilgamesh, disobedience to a god or gods brings dire consequences.
Although we never learn exactly why the gods unleashed the great flood in Gilgamesh, we know why Ea rescues
Utnapishtim and through him all the creatures and people of the world. As the god of wisdom and crafts, Ea is
responsible for human attributes including cleverness, inventiveness, and creativity, which enable people to
survive independently. Ishtar, too, while a fickle friend, presides over sexual desire, fertility, nurturance,
agriculture, and domesticity, which ensure humankinds future. For the Mesopotamians, piety and respect for the
gods are not true moral obligations. Rather, piety and respect suggest a practical acknowledgment of natures
power and serve to remind humans of their place in the larger scheme of things.
Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the texts major
themes.
Seductions
There are two important seductions in Gilgamesh, one successful and one a failure. When the temple prostitute
seduces Enkidu, he loses his animal attributes but gains his self-consciousness and his humanity. In
contemporary western society, people often view human sexuality as base and lewd and may be more
accustomed to a reversal of roleswith Enkidu seducing a woman, instead of a woman seducing him.
Furthermore, Christianity encourages its followers to transcend their bodies and to store up treasures in heaven.
Sex played a much different role in the Mesopotamian worldview. The notion of sublimation was entirely foreign to
the ancient Mesopotamians, who believed that this world is the only one and that the act of sex mystically and
physically connects people to the life force, the goddess. Sacred prostitutes did not embody moral frailtythey
were avatars and conduits of divinity.
When Gilgamesh spurns Ishtar as she attempts to seduce him, he brings disaster upon himself and Enkidu.
When he asks Ishtar what he could offer her in return since she lacks nothing, he misses the point of her
seduction. When Gilgameshwho has no afterlife to look forward to and no moral ideal to aspire tospurns the
goddess, he spurns life itself.
Doubling and Twinship
Gilgamesh is full of characters and events that mirror or resemble one another. For example, Gilgamesh and
Enkidu look almost identical. After Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh grows his hair and dons animal skins, as if trying to
become his lost friend. Two scorpion monsters guard the twin-peaked mountain, Mashu, which Shamash travels
through nightly. The gods Ea and Shamash champion the human heroes. The heroes undertake two successful
quests, one against Humbaba the demon and one against the Bull of Heaven. Gilgameshs solitary quest to find
Utnapishtim mirrors his journey with Enkidu to the Cedar Forest. These repetitions sometimes serve to reinforce
or emphasize important features of the story, such as Gilgameshs and Enkidus power and heroism. At other
times they create contrasts, calling attention to the differences between two similar events. Alternately, the story
may be structured in terms of twins and doubles primarily for aesthetic reasonsin other words, because the
repetitions lend the story a symmetry or cyclicality that is beautiful or poetic in itself.
Journeys
Almost all of the action in Gilgamesh begins with a journey. Enkidu journeys from the wilderness to Uruk and
Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Enkidu journey to the Cedar Forest. Enkidu journeys to the underworld. Gilgamesh
journeys to and then through the twin-peaked mountain Mashu. He journeys to Urshanabi to find Utnapishtim,
then travels with Urshanabi across the sea and through the sea of death, only to return to Uruk. Gilgameshs
many journeys mirror his internal journey to become a selfless and devoted king.
Baptism
Baptism imagery appears throughout Gilgamesh, signaling a continual renewal and rebirth of the characters.
Enkidu washes and anoints himself after he tastes cooked food and beer at the shepherd camp. Ninsun washes
herself before she communes with Shamash. Gilgamesh washes himself after his return from the Cedar Forest.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu wash themselves in the Euphrates after they subdue the Bull of Heaven. Gilgamesh
undergoes a reverse baptism after Enkidus death, when he dons skins and lets his hair grow. Siduri urges
Gilgamesh to wash himself, but he refuses. Utnapishtim orders his boatman to baptize Gilgamesh before they
journey home. Gilgamesh is in a pool of pure water when the snake steals the magic plant. Though Gilgamesh
regrets losing the plant, the baptism imagery suggests he doesnt need it anymore. He has finally come to terms
with his morality and is ready to resume his place in the world.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Religious Symbols
Gilgamesh is rich in religious symbolism. Religious rituals in Mesopotamia involved sacrifices, festivals, sex,
dream interpretation, and shamanic magic, all of which appear in the story. Enkidus hirsuteness symbolizes the
natural, uncivilized state. The walls of Uruk symbolize the great accomplishments of which mortals are capable.
In the context of the ancient king who built them, they represent the immortality he achieved through his acts.

Bulls represent explosive, destructive natural power, and the ability to wrestle a bull suggests humanitys ability to
harness natures power. This symbolism accounts for Enkidus interpretation of Gilgameshs dream about the bull
in the Cedar Forest. Enkidu says the bull is Humbaba, and that the act of wrestling the bull is Shamashs
blessing. Later in the poem, Enkidu and Gilgamesh do subdue a bull together, perhaps suggesting that
humankind has the power to conquer famine.
Doorways
Images of doorways, portals, and gateways constantly recur in Gilgamesh. Enkidu blocks the doorway of the
brides chamber and wrestles with Gilgamesh. Enkidu and Gilgamesh stand awestruck and terrified before the
gates to the Cedar Forest. After their triumph there, they fashion the tallest tree into a gate for Uruk. The
Scorpions guard the gates of Mashu. Siduri the barmaid locks the door to her tavern. The hatchway of
Utnapishtims boat is caulked shut. In most cases, doorways mark a transition from one level of consciousness to
another. They also represent choices, since characters can either shut themselves behind doorways to seek
safety or boldly venture through them.

Storytelling, the Meaning of Life,

and The Epic of Gilgamesh
Arthur A. Brown
Stories do not need to inform us of anything. They do inform us of things. From The Epic of
Gilgamesh, for example, we know something of the people who lived in the land between the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers in the second and third millenniums BCE. We know they celebrated a king
named Gilgamesh; we know they believed in many gods; we know they were self-conscious of their
own cultivation of the natural world; and we know they were literate. These things we can fix -- or
establish definitely. But stories also remind us of things we cannot fix -- of what it means to be
human. They reflect our will to understand what we cannot understand, and reconcile us to mortality.
We read The Epic of Gilgamesh, four thousand years after it was written, in part because we are
scholars, or pseudo-scholars, and wish to learn something about human history. We read it as well
because we want to know the meaning of life. The meaning of life, however, is not something we can
wrap up and walk away with. Discussing the philosophy of the Tao, Alan Watts explains what he
believes Lao-tzu means by the line, "The five colours will blind a man's sight." "[T]he eye's
sensitivity to color," Watts writes, "is impaired by the fixed idea that there are just five true colors.
There is an infinite continuity of shading, and breaking it down into divisions with names distracts the
attention from its subtlety" (27). Similarly, the mind's sensitivity to the meaning of life is impaired by
fixed notions or perspectives on what it means to be human. There is an infinite continuity of meaning
that can be comprehended only by seeing again, for ourselves. We read stories -- and reading is a kind
of re-telling -- not to learn what is known but to know what cannot be known, for it is ongoing and we
are in the middle of it.
To see for ourselves the meaning of a story, we need, first of all, to look carefully at what happens in
the story; that is, we need to look at it as if the actions and people it describes actually took place or
existed. We can articulate the questions raised by a character's actions and discuss the implications of
their consequences. But we need to consider, too, how a story is put together -- how it uses the
conventions of language, of events with beginnings and endings, of description, of character, and of
storytelling itself to reawaken our sensitivity to the real world. The real world is the world without
conventions, the unnameable, unrepresentable world -- in its continuity of action, its shadings and

blurrings of character, its indecipherable patterns of being. The stories that mean most to us bring us
back to our own unintelligible and yet immeasurably meaningful lives.
The Epic of Gilgamesh opens with the convention of a frame -- a prologue that sets off the story of
Gilgamesh's life. An unnamed narrator states, "I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh"
(61). Thus the narrator introduces himself before he introduces the hero, and by doing so, welcomes
us, as the imaginary listeners and actual readers, into the endless present of the telling of the tale. The
deeds of Gilgamesh took place in the past. Having returned from his journey and resting from his
labor, Gilgamesh, the narrator recounts, engraved the whole story on a clay tablet. What we are
reading, then, is the transcription of an oral telling that repeats a written telling. On the one hand the
frame helps verisimilitude. By referring to Gilgamesh's own act of writing, the narrator attempts to
convince us that Gilgamesh was an actual king and that the story that follows is a true story. On the
other hand, by calling our attention to the act of telling, the narrator reminds us that the truth of a
story might lie in the very fact of its being a story -- the undeniable fact of its narration. To deny its
narration would be to deny our own existence. Either way, the frame blurs the distinction between
Gilgamesh's world, or the world of the tale, and our own.
And yet there is an irony in the prologue of which the narrator himself seems unaware -- an irony that
highlights our position as readers and not listeners. Praising Gilgamesh's accomplishments, the
narrator invites us to survey the city of Uruk: "Look at it still today.... Touch the threshold, it is
ancient.... Climb upon the wall of Uruk; walk along it, I say; regard the foundation terrace and
examine the masonry: is it not burnt brick and good? The seven sages laid the foundations" (61). It
seems as if the narrator is counting on the walls themselves to verify his story, while from where we
stand in time and space, these walls are nowhere to be seen -- they have been buried for centuries.
However, we could say that the writer of the clay tablets anticipates our distance from Uruk and asks
only that we imagine the walls, the way all storytellers ask their audiences to imagine what they are
about to hear. Our ability to imagine the walls -- our inability not to as we read the sentence that
describes them -- once again makes the act of narration part of the story and forces us, as readers, into
the world of the text. The story has been passed on from narrator to narrator to listener to reader -from writer to reader to reader. Thus even before we begin to read this story about the death of a
friend and the hero's failed attempt to find immortality, we are made aware of the passage of time that
connects us even as it separates us.
In the prologue we learn that Gilgamesh was two-thirds god and one-third man, and this knowledge is
key to all that follows. Gilgamesh is a hero -- more beautiful, more courageous, more terrifying than
the rest of us; his desires, attributes, and accomplishments epitomize our own. Yet he is also mortal:
he must experience the death of others and die himself. How much more must a god rage against
death than we who are merely mortal!And if he can reconcile himself with death then surely we can.
In fact, without death his life would be meaningless, and the adventures that make up the epic would
disappear. In celebrating Gilgamesh -- in reading The Epic of Gilgamesh -- we celebrate that which
makes us human.
The story begins with the coming of Enkidu. As a young man and a god, Gilgamesh has no
compassion for the people of Uruk. He is their king but not their shepherd; he kills their sons and
rapes the daughters. Hearing the people's lament, the gods create Enkidu as a match for Gilgamesh, a
second self: "`Let them contend together and leave Uruk in quiet'" (62). The plan works in several

ways. First, Enkidu prevents Gilgamesh from entering the house of a bride and bridegroom; they fight
and then they embrace as friends. Second, Enkidu and Gilgamesh undertake a journey into the forest
to confront the terrible Humbaba. There they encourage each other to face death triumphantly:
All living creatures born of the flesh shall sit at last in the boat of the West, and when it sinks, when
the boat of Magilum sinks, they are gone; but we shall go forward and fix our eyes on this monster.
(81)
While everlasting life is not his destiny, Gilgamesh will leave behind him a name that endures. "I will
go to the country where the cedar is felled," he tells Enkidu. "I will set up my name in the place where
the names of famous men are written" (70). Thus Gilgamesh turns his attention away from small
personal desires to loftier personal desires -- desires that benefit rather than harm Uruk. We remember
from the prologue that the walls of the city, made from the cedar taken from the forest, still stand in
actuality or in imagination to proclaim Gilgamesh's fame, and the very first sentence of the epic
attests to the immortality of his name. But the immortality of a name is less the ability to live forever
than the inability to die. Third and most important, Enkidu teaches Gilgamesh what it means to be
human; he teaches him the meaning of love and compassion, the meaning of loss and of growing
older, the meaning of mortality.
From its beginnings, Enkidu's story raises many questions on the nature of man. Created of clay and
water and dropped into the wilderness, Enkidu is "innocent of mankind," knowing "nothing of
cultivated land" (63). He lives in joy with the beasts until a trapper sees that Enkidu is destroying the
traps and helping the beasts escape. The trapper needs to tame Enkidu just as the people of Uruk need
to tame Gilgamesh, or to redirect his desires. As we read the story, we are not necessarily on the
trapper's or the people's sides; we may identify more with the heroes -- with Enkidu and Gilgamesh.
Civilization is less a thing than a process, the transformation of the primitive. Without the primitive,
civilization would cease to exist. The Epic of Gilgamesh helps us see past the conventional
classifications of "civilized" and "primitive" so that we might recall what each of us gains and loses in
developing from one state of being to another. Would civilized man, if he could, go back to being
primitive? Or, to put it another way, what does primitive man lose in the process of becoming
civilized -- and what does he gain?
What Enkidu gains is wisdom. The harlot -- brought to the wilderness to trap Enkidu -- stands for this
wisdom and speaks for civilization, even as she stands also as an outcast and an object of sexual
desire. Enkidu is seduced by the harlot and then rejected by the beasts. This seems a dirty trick.
Recognizing the corruption in himself, civilized man corrupts primitive man to weaken him and make
him one of his own. Yet for Enkidu as for human beings in general, sexual desire leads to domesticity,
or love. "Enkidu was grown weak," the narrator tells us, "for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of
a man were in his heart." The woman says to him, "You are wise, Enkidu, and now you have become
like a god. Why do you want to run wild with the beasts in the hills?" She tells him about "strongwalled Uruk" and "the blessed temple of Ishtar and of Anu, of love and of heaven," and about
Gilgamesh himself. Enkidu is pleased: "he longed for a comrade, for one who would understand his
heart" (65).
Ultimately, Enkidu's journey out of the wilderness and his adventure with Gilgamesh lead to his
death, and, looking back in his sickness, Enkidu curses the walls of the city: "O, if I had known the

conclusion!If I had known that this was all the good that would come of it, I would have raised the
axe and split you into little pieces and set up here a gate of wattle instead" (90). He curses the trapper
and the harlot, who had destroyed his innocence -- as if innocence were precisely innocence of death
and without consciousness, or knowledge, or wisdom, there would be no death. Yet Shamash, the Sun
God, reminds him that the loss of innocence brings recompense:
Enkidu, why are you cursing the woman, the mistress who taught you to eat bread fit for gods and
drink wine of kings? She who put upon you a magnificent garment, did she not give you glorious
Gilgamesh for your companion, and has not Gilgamesh, your own brother, made you rest on a royal
bed and recline on a couch at his left hand?
Above all, Shamash reminds Enkidu that he will be mourned by the people of Uruk and that "When
you are dead [Gilgamesh] will let his hair grow long for your sake, he will wear a lion's pelt and
wander through the desert" (91). Hearing Shamash, Enkidu changes his curse to a blessing. Bitter as
his death is to him, and to Gilgamesh, it gives meaning to his life, for it makes companionship a thing
of consequence. When Enkidu tells Gilgamesh his dream of the Underworld, Gilgamesh responds,
"we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to
the healthy man, the end of life is sorrow" (93). Enkidu is in the story to die. In his rage and despair,
Gilgamesh must live with the death of his friend, and with the knowledge that "What my brother is
now, that shall I be" (97).
Afraid of this knowledge, even hoping to deny it, Gilgamesh goes on a search for everlasting life.
Two-thirds god, he is able to go farther than the rest of us could go except by participating in the act
of storytelling. In the repetition of passages, the story gives us not only a description but the sense of
Gilgamesh's journey into the twelve leagues of darkness: "At the end of five leagues, the darkness
was thick and there was no light, he could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him. At the end of
six leagues the darkness was thick and there was no light, he could see nothing ahead and nothing
behind him" (99). Gilgamesh speaks for us when he says, "Although I am no better than a dead man,
still let me see the light of the sun" (100). And in the repetition of his own description of himself and
recounting of what has happened to him, we feel his grief over the loss of his friend; we feel his
aging, and the inevitability of our own grief and aging: "[W]hy should not my cheeks be starved and
my face drawn? . . . Enkidu my brother, whom I loved, the end of mortality has overtaken him" (101).
Beside the sea, Gilgamesh meets Siduri, "the woman of the vine, the maker of wine," who reminds
him of the meaningfulness of being human. "Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to?" she asks.
You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to
him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with
good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be
fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy
in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man. (102)
If it is "life" the gods retain in their keeping, it is not human life, for human life depends on the
passage of time and the possibility of death.

Yet Gilgamesh still cannot rest. He continues his journey to Utnapishtim the Faraway, the only mortal
to whom the gods have given everlasting life. With Urshanabi, the ferryman, Gilgamesh crosses the
waters of death. Like Siduri, Utnapishtim asks Gilgamesh, "Where are you hurrying to?" (105), and in
answer to Gilgamesh's question, "How shall I find the life for which I am searching?" he says, "There
is no permanence" (106). But he reveals the mystery of his own possession of everlasting life. He tells
Gilgamesh the story of the flood, of the time when the gods, unable to sleep for the uproar raised by
mankind, agreed to destroy mankind, and would have succeeded had not Ea, one of man's creators,
instructed Utnapishtim to build a boat and "take up into [it] the seed of all living creatures" (108). The
story is familiar to us not only because it anticipates Noah's story in the book of Genesis, but because
it is the story of life, the story of destruction and renewal.
When Gilgamesh is ready to begin his long journey home, Utnapishtim, at the urging of his wife,
reveals a second mystery of the gods. He tells Gilgamesh of a plant growing under water that can
restore youth to a man. Gilgamesh finds the plant and picks it; he decides to take it to Uruk to give it
to the old men. But as Gilgamesh bathes in the cool water of a well, a serpent rises up and snatches
away the plant; immediately it sloughs its skin and returns to the well. Again this story is familiar to
us, not only because we recognize this snake as a precursor of the more sinister one that appears in the
Garden of Eden, but because we comprehend it as a symbol. In the Sumerian world, Ningizzida, the
god of the serpent, is "the lord of the Tree of Life" (119). While Gilgamesh himself has lost the ability
to live forever, or the opportunity to pass on this ability to the men of Uruk, it is enough that the snake
recalls for us, in its sloughing of its skin, nature's pattern of regeneration.
And with this dramatic statement of theme, Gilgamesh returns to the strong-walled city of Uruk, and
the story itself returns to its beginning. Gilgamesh says to the ferryman, with whom he has made the
journey home, "Urshanabi, climb up on to the wall of Uruk, inspect its foundation terrace, and
examine well the brickwork; see if it is not of burnt bricks; and did not the seven wise men lay these
foundations?" We have taken the ferryman's place by passing the story on -- even if only to ourselves.
The narrator tells us once again that Gilgamesh, worn out with his labor, "engraved on a stone the
whole story" (117). And finally, with the death of Gilgamesh -- the end of the story and the end of the
telling of it -- the text returns us to our mortal lives.
Works Cited
Sandars, N. K., trans. The Epic of Gilgamesh. London: Penguin, 1972.
Watts, Alan W. The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage, 1957.