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The New Orphic Review

New Orphic Publishers

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 Gilgamesh Revisited

First published as an essay in:

New Orphic Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, Fall, 2005;

and later published in:

Heretic!

ISBN 1-894842-08-1   $18.00 plus shipping $5.00 = $23.00 total

 

 

 Ernest Hekkanen

 

I don’t pretend to be a scholar; I’m not cut from that sort of cloth, I don’t have the sort of patience necessary to quibble over small details that very rarely add up to anything of any consequence; however, I am a reasonably intelligent person who has been trained to use his discernment, and so it comes as no surprise to me how we have unerringly ended up on the road to Waterloo, and here, I’m speaking of America’s invasion of Iraq. Scholars are fond of telling us that history repeats itself, but it seems to me that most scholars are in the job of misinterpreting history in order to meet the mandate of the state-run education system. One has only to read The Epic of Gilgamesh, executed in cuneiform writing on clay tablets some five to six millennia ago, to understand why George Bush Junior felt compelled to invade the Babylon area of the Middle East, but I’m sure even Junior failed to understand the true nature of his motivations, because he is neither very bright nor very self-aware. However, he is a good Christian, purportedly, and he does believe in conducting crusades.

       I was first introduced to The Epic of Gilgamesh in high school, because of a course in literature and mythology I was interested in taking in my senior year. That would have been in late 1964 or early ’65. Although I found The Epic of Gilgamesh intriguing, I absorbed its meaning none too well at that point in my life. I was prone to reflection, but nonetheless I was a healthy young man, and a healthy young man’s ability to reflect is frequently disturbed by hormones and such things. Also, there were other pressing matters. For instance, there loomed the threat of the Vietnam War, which President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Gilgamesh figure of that time, was urging us to fight in, but which I ultimately avoided by crossing the border into Canada.

       I dutifully filed The Epic of Gilgamesh away in a subconscious drawer of my mind, but due to recent events in Iraq, took it out again and, voilà, upon reacquainting myself with it, I discovered it had indeed had a profound effect on my thinking. When I reread it nearly forty years later I found it even richer than I did the first time round; indeed, I discovered it was a metaphor rife with meaningful infrastructure which is still unfolding, quite willfully and violently, today.

       Indeed, I don’t think we can fully appreciate America’s invasion of Iraq, without first coming to grips with The Epic of Gilgamesh.

       On the surface, the Gilgamesh epic is a well-told adventure story that closely follows ‘the heroic cycles.’ It is a coming-of-age tale. Gilgamesh, two-thirds god and one-third man, is an impetuous Alpha Male Warrior whose adventures ultimately result in him discovering the boon and bounty of life, after many wrong turns, dead-ends and needless slayings.

       As an Alpha Male, Gilgamesh might be best described as a right bloody royal flamer. He is a “king [who] should be a shepherd to his people,” but instead he creates havoc in his own kingdom, by bedding down other men’s wives and daughters and enlisting their sons in campaigns to further the sphere of his influence – which, in many ways, is economic in nature, as was America’s recent invasion of Iraq.

       Indeed, Adam Smith, the Patron Saint of Capitalism, might very well have taken lessons from the anonymous social philosopher who chiseled The Epic of Gilgamesh into clay tablets. Mighty Gilgamesh, like his present-day successor, George Bush Jr., makes forays into the wider world in order to bring back material wealth to the walled city of Uruk, which “shines with the brilliance of copper.” The temple built to Ishtar, the lady of love and war, the like of which “no latter-day king [or] man can equal,” is a description worthy of America itself.

       In the Gilgamesh story, raw resources are transported from the countryside back to Uruk and are turned into commodities designed to add to the glory of the walled city. If we properly do our literary archeology and unfold in greater and more literal detail the meaningful infrastructure of Uruk, we are forced to conclude that there must have been a large assortment of craftsmen working to make the city an emblem of wealth and power. Later, Adam Smith would coin a term for this sort of activity. That term was accumulation, which he saw as occurring primarily in metropolitan areas. Since the heyday of his popular social theories, his successors have replaced the word ‘accumulation’ with the words ‘capital investment,’ in hopes of obfuscating what is really taking place, I imagine.

       Gilgamesh’s warring and fornicating takes a needless toll on his people. “He sounds the tocsin for his amusement,” they claim. The citizens of Uruk petition the gods to bring Gilgamesh into line, to place some restraints on him, for they themselves are impotent to do anything, for fear that they will be unjustly dealt with, if not killed. (Sounds as if they had a version of Homeland Security back then, now, doesn’t it?) The gods hear the lament of the people of Uruk. To bring the King to heel, and so make him a good shepherd to his people, the gods persuade the goddess of creation to create a Jungian-type shadow by the name of Enkidu. Enkidu is created as Gilgamesh’s equal; he is, in fact, Gilgamesh’s own reflection or “second self.”

       The stage is now set for action. A messenger goes to Uruk to extol the strength of Enkidu and to ask the King to supply a harlot, “a child of pleasure,” whose “woman power [will] overpower this man.” Here, if we are the least bit discerning, we might notice that the anonymous author of the Gilgamesh epic has created the archetypes for Samson and Delilah. Furthermore, if we are keen to acknowledge such things, we find, at this point in the tale, the typecasting of woman as a thief who, given the right opportunity, will steal a man’s power. It is a bad rap that women have had to contend with for a very long time now. Furthermore, it is a notion later foisted on us by other holy books which hail from that region of the world.

       Gilgamesh, of course, subdues Enkidu, who is described as a “savage man, come from far-off in the hills.” However, it is important to note here how the gods accomplish this feat. After lying with the harlot supplied by the gods’ representatives here on earth, Enkidu’s knees give way when he starts to run. His swiftness leaves him; he grows weak, “for wisdom [is now] in him.” The harlot’s control over Enkidu is made complete when she urges him to “eat bread, it is the staff of life,” and to drink wine, for it is “the custom of the land.” Obviously, Uruk was located in a region where grain and grapes grew in some abundance.

       When Enkidu puts on Man’s clothing he appears as “a bridegroom,” and it is in this aspect that he now attempts to overthrow Gilgamesh, in an effort to “change the old order.” It is all in vain, though, for Gilgamesh is destined to subdue Enkidu in a metaphorical wrestling match. But coincidentally, prior to the wrestling match, the King of Uruk has a strange dream that he asks his mother to interpret, and Ninsun tells him that he is destined to “love Enkidu as a woman.” Centuries later, a similar wrestling match would take place between Saddam Hussein and George Bush Jr., two men who are imperfect reflections of each other, as Gilgamesh and Enkidu are.

       Once Enkidu, the shadow, has been subdued and, indeed, absorbed as part and parcel of Gilgamesh’s subconscious, Enkidu becomes “oppressed by idleness” because he is a man of action and has little to entertain him, and so his conscious spokesman – i.e. Gilgamesh – suggests that they go on a journey to Lebanon to slay Humbaba, the guardian of the forest, where cedars are destined to be felled and the wealth accruing from them further add to the glory of Uruk. (Apparently, back then, there weren’t any environmentalists bold enough to interfere with this pair of freewheeling capitalists and their attendant armies.)

       During their adventures (perhaps, it would be wiser to call them misadventures), Enkidu warns Gilgamesh that “the strongest of men will fall to fate if he has no judgment.” But the warring shepherd, Gilgamesh, replies “hold close to me now and you will feel no fear of death…. Let your courage be roused by the battle to come; forget death and follow me, a man resolute in action.” And so, they go forth, like crusaders, to slay the guardian of the forest, followed by other ill-advised escapades typical of unthinking youth.

       Ultimately, Enkidu, because of his enormous lack of judgment – which has to do with him blindly following the dictates of Gilgamesh – meets his fate. He dies of a fever, but not before he has cursed woman for having endowed him with a modicum of wisdom. Upon hearing his curses, Shamash lashes out from heaven, “Woman, I promise you another destiny. The mouth which cursed you shall bless you! Kings, princes and nobles shall adore you. . . For you he will undo his belt and open his treasure and you shall have your desire: lapis lazuli, gold and carnelian from the heap in the treasury.”

       In this fashion, harlots are turned into goddesses and even saints, apparently. This is a dichotomy that holy books of every description have passed down to us. They inform us that women are temptresses, that they are unclean spoils that can be made clean by gods and kings; and because fundamentalists of every stripe and persuasion have read these so-called holy books, and have taken the message to heart, they have reiterated it with great vigor down through the ages to the present time.

       In The Epic of Gilgamesh, roughly 15,000 words in length, we find a wealth of archetypal characters later recycled in Greek and Roman myths, and in every holy book that hails from the Middle East. We find enfolded in its pages ideas which might have inspired Freud or Jung. Furthermore, in the characters of Enkidu and Gilgamesh, we glimpse predecessors to Sancho Panza and Don Quixote. Also, as I have already harped upon at some length, Gilgamesh outlines what became the operative ethos of capitalism – a system based on plundering the countryside in order to enrich cities. And, when it comes to literature, the tale of Gilgamesh is a near-perfect example of the novella.

       Furthermore, after reading The Epic of Gilgamesh, one comes to better understand why Saddam Hussein felt compelled to impoverish his countrymen in order to build monuments to himself, and why, in turn, George Bush Jr. felt compelled to attack Iraq. Babylon is considered by many to be the Cradle of Civilization, and for the West that might very well be true. Babylon has exported a form of economics which has come to dominate the world, and because George Bush Jr. and his cronies in the White House were determined to pursue the economic mandate first articulated in The Epic of Gilgamesh, they, out of necessity, had to invade Iraq; nay, they were driven to do it, for reasons they themselves may only have dimly fathomed.

       But as Enkidu, the Prototype Shadow, reminds us from his grave: the strongest man falls to fate because he lacks judgment, and I’m afraid this scenario is now playing itself out in the Good Ol’ United States, while respected scholars of every stripe and persuasion fail to bring it to our attention, for fear that they might garner the attention of Homeland Security. If only, like the people of Uruk, we had some gods we could petition, gods who could bring Bush Jr. and his cronies to heel, but such gods are the fabrication of impotent people who have been rendered gullible by stories having to do with creation.

       In the end, I’m reminded of the often-employed visual metaphor of the snake that devours itself by first swallowing its tail. Or, as my father so often warned me, “If you know what’s good for you, Ernest, you won’t pursue a course of action that will come back to bite you in the ass.”

       It looks as though we haven’t learned a lot from history, due to scholars who consistently misinterpret it or who are too cowardly to buck authority. The right bloody royal flamer who was King of Uruk, and who had absolutely no regard for his subjects, is still willing with us today. I suspect he will be willing with us tomorrow and the day after that as well, largely because those in power are in such firm control of our gullibility.