Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh is a story in the form of a poem that was written on tablets about the twenty seventh century. Gilgamesh was the a powerful king of Uruk and he was two-thrids a god, one-third a man. The people of Uruk asked the goddess Aruru to create another man just like Gilgamesh. The goddess created Enkidu who was a haired bodied and wild man and who lived with wild animals. A prostitute named Shamhat went into the wilderness and met Enkidu, and then took him back to Uruk to meet Gilgamesh. Enkidu and Gilgamesh fought each other to prove who was the strongest, and then when Enkidu realized that Gilgamesh was the strongest, he gave in and became friends with Gilgamesh. The two of them traveled to many places to fight evil beings and monsters. Enkidu eventually died and Gilgamesh mourned his friend. Then Gilgamesh decided he didn’t want to die so he traveled to many places to find the answer to how he could live forever. He wanted to change his life and wanted to be a better man to himself and to his people so he looked for guidance everywhere. Gilgamesh finally realized that there’s no way to escape death and that everyone must die.

            Life and death the major points of this story. It is the story of all people who are born with different powers and abilities and talents. When they are young they try to use their powers, and they also need friends, companionship, to help them through life. There are always enemies that people meet in life, and many times those enemies become friends, like Gilgamesh and Enkidu. It is our friends that help us to deal with the problems of life, like fighting the battles as Gilgamesh and Enkidu did.

When I read the story, what caught my eye is when Gilgamesh saw Enkidu, I thought he saw a reflection of himself. Many times our friends are also reflections of ourselves because they have good qualities, like the strength that Enkidu had, and also weaknesses that Enkidu also had. When Gilgamesh and Enkidu were getting ready to fight, it reminded me that we sometimes was similar to fighting parts of ourselves that we don’t like. Then when Enkidu realized that Gilgamesh was stronger than him, he gave in. That seems to me to be similar to giving in and realizing that we can’t always be the strongest and the best at everything we do. It could also mean that sometimes we have a weakness or problem in our personality, but if we realize that it’s not so bad, then we can deal with it by giving in to it, accepting it, and loving it just as it is. Then we can turn a negative situation into a positive situation.  When Gilgamesh and Enkidu were telling each other about their dreams, Enkidu kept telling Gilgamesh that his dreams have meaning and he interpreted the dreams as being positive. For example, when Gilgamesh dreamed about the mountain falling on him and Enkidu, the dream was telling him it was Huwawa that was attacking him. This was Gilgamesh’ mind telling him that danger was coming. I think my dreams sometimes tell me about what is going to happen, but the challenge is to understand the dream so it can help me. That’s not always easy to do, to read between the lines of a dream that doesn’t seem to make sense.

Also, when Gilgamesh climbed to the top of a mountain, he prayed to the goddess Shamash, “May the mountain bring a fortunate dream from Shamash.” (P. 21) I think this part of the story is similar to the way I pay for good things to happen. It can also be similar to visualizing for good luck and good fortune. So even though this story was written over 5,000 years ago, it shows that all of the things that Gilgamesh and Enkidu said and did are a reflection of the same things that happen to human today, and the same things people today are afraid of, like death. People today are still looking for ways to stay alive forever because of fear of the unknown. It is also a fear of having our body fall apart because we identify so strongly with our bodies. When Gilgamesh goes into the nether world, it is a dream. In the dream he meets Enkidu who tells Gilgamesh that he can’t tell him what the nether world is like because he doesn’t want Gilgamesh to tell others what it is like. I think this dream is similar to dreams I have had where I dream of a person who has died and even though I can have a conversation with that person, I never find out what it is like to be on the other side, in the nether world.