Gilgamesh

So for around the last months to weeks, i spent a lot of time focusing on the Epic of Gilgamesh and the meaning of each 3 sections of the story, and more so in the last alternatively unrelated but thematically related story. And using what i found, both on my own and with the help of others; i managed to put through what i feel to be an interesting look on Gilgamesh.

To explain how I’m going with this analysis i will go against the norm and put Gilgamesh in a secondary role, and the focus is on the deities, the natural impulses within him, will take the first place. And in my reading the story Gilgamesh will be split to 4 deities represented through 3 main acts in the epic and the extra one, the first act is dominated by Ishtar the deity concerned with sexual love and political power, Utu dominate the second act and is the deity concerned with morality and society, Ereshkigal dominates the third act and is concerned with death, and the extra chapter is for Enki. I will also use terminologies from Freud to make the ideas more familiar and grounded and use ideas by Nietzsche and Blake to prove the validity of my points.

## Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh i believe is the stand in for humanity, the story tells how he is the son of both a human and a deity, which reflects humanity in general, both in the era the story was popular in and the eras after it, specifically in mysticism.

The belief back in those days was that humans were created after the gods made a sculpture from clay, and then killed another deity and the blood of that god mixed with in the sculpture created humans and gave them a dual in nature, part mortal and part immortal, part return to earth and part return to the gods, part divine and part earthly.

These dualities and their implications hunt Gilgamesh by their concerns with instinctual desires (presented through Ishtar), moral responsibility driven from intellect (Utu) and worries about mortality (Ereshkigal).

And this makes his personal inner trinity, he is two folds god and one fold human, in the first two acts on the story Gilgamesh is shown through his godhood, when he own himself and others around him, for the first one with instinct his divinity is through his ability to make others fear him and not challenge his will, but through this personal will he jump to the second fold of his godhood where morality and intellect resides, there his divinity is displayed through him pursuing what’s best for his community and succeeding at any challenge he faces, as well as remaining moral and ethical throughout it all. The last fold which makes his humanity is in his fear of mortality and desire to survive death; this fear doesn’t hold him back as much as it pushes him forward.

Looking at this there is a lot of internal forces that move Gilgamesh, all of which we name gods, but there is a sense of an identity or a self called Gilgamesh from within, and it’s this self that allow anything to be moved by the other internal forces, this Gilgamesh self is unreserved, and the characteristic that follows him from the beginning to the end is his unwavering will to get what he wants, be that sexual fulfillment, moral ideals or ending his fear of death.

For the later eras part i meant the idea in Abrahamic faiths of God creating Adam from earth on his image and breathing his soul in Adam, which thus made Adam, and humanity as a whole, also part divine and part earthly.

Going with mysticism and especially in Gnosticism, there is more emphasis on the idea that human soul is godly and divine; belonging to an almighty source which gave the spark that started it.

And to help strengthen my point of view that Gilgamesh being a demigod is a metaphor for humanity in general and the relation this have to Abrahamic faith i will focus on two individuals, Jesus and William Blake.

William Blake had a very interesting view on Jesus, he believed in him as a deity for worship but his idea of the incarnation wasn’t a once in history event but something which keeps on happening as long as humanity exists with every human being, he didn’t believe in redemption because paying someone else’s dept doesn’t grant them forgiveness, that’s their job to do. Blake saying that Jesus is God is as correct to him as saying that he is God.

Thus every person by Blake interpretation is an incarnation of God who is holy and divine, Jesus is also the name of the spiritual progress in the person to attain the real God with capital G within every person who is every person (the same thought process was shared by Ibn Arabi) leading to every life to be divine.

So by Blake’s take Gilgamesh is part divinity and part humanity like he is in the original story, and because that’s the case for humanity it support my point, that Gilgamesh is a stand in for humanity and our progress, not just on the spiritual level but also the evolutionary level with the entire epic illustrating that through his character development and leading in finally to the narratively unrelated fragment.

## Ishtar

Despite not appearing, Ishtar dominates the first part of the epic; her power over Gilgamesh is over when he becomes friend with Enkidu by his own will. I believe her to be equated with the Freudian Id and Nietzschian Dionysian man and that’s shown with her character being sexual, impulsive and arrogant, and all of these traits are expressed by Gilgamesh throughout the first act of the story and are what starts the conflicts leading to the conclusion.

Gilgamesh in the beginning is not a good king, which may have been a side motif in the story to set an example for what makes a good or bad king. Looking at it here he is motivated by instinctual impulses and disobeying norms, taking people’s wives and daughters is the most notable and most mentioned deed here, much like Ishtar and Id, the sexual motif is where our eyes are pointed at before we go anywhere else, the Dionysian motif is set through embracing disorder and not following conventional norms.

The Id is the instinctual part of us, and so it is traced to back before we completed our evolution, making it fitting that this is the first act. And much like how Ishtar is a deity who calls for all that is instinctual, an association can be made with her femininity and calling humans back to the womb, the womb being a state before consciousness and awareness. Though this is just a hypothesis because Ishtar isn’t related to motherhood in anyway, but that may also add in to her Id aspect with her lacking and\or avoiding the moral responsibility of being a mother.

Ishtar rule over Gilgamesh is threatened when Enkidu, himself living like a wild man before evolution, decides to show up and act his duty, this part in specific i find hard to relate with the Id but if anything it suggest a conflict against it which supported humanity to evolve, and it may make some lose interest in the topic because i’m positioning it with a spiritual belief, but i would like my point to be heard.

Back to Blake again, in his personal mythology there is a character called Los, this character much like Ishtar, Id and the Dionysian stand for disobeying orders and norms, and for an extra note much like Dionysus is associated with music Los is associated with ear and poetry, but the main difference is that while the three mentioned before were a stand in for instinct, Los is a stand in for intuition and inspiration, and so i propose that Enkidu is his representative in the story. Ishtar i believe is represented with Tharmas, who is sensation and the desire for the body to express itself and it needs.

So much like early humans, and this point may have been suggested before many times, Enkidu was raised in the wilderness like an animal but a meeting with the opposite sex makes him change his ways and leave the forest, much to his dismay at first and near the end of it, and this may just refer to how sexual selection helped in evolving humans, so we will go to that.

Much like instinct, intuition and inspiration are embedded within human nature, but the three are different, intuition and inspiration are looking forward, but instincts looks back. And going forward is what Enkidu does for the story. And much like Los, Enkidu is related to divine will, being created at its hand.

So driven by a sense of morality Enkidu go and challenges Gilgamesh who at first refuses to change so he fights back, but after winning Gilgamesh shows mercy out of admiration, although strangely enough Gilgamesh is far stronger than Enkidu, this instance can be shrugged off to the story wanting to keep Gilgamesh as the most praiseworthy character, but looking at the character itself, i believe this is Gilgamesh himself feeling inspiration, because now there is more than instinct which was expressed by his sexual desires and people fearing him out of need for survival, but here there is someone weaker standing up against him, which i believe Gilgamesh to have admired and got, well, inspired by, with this inspiration he leaves the cycle of instinct and goes to the next step.

So for Ishtar and the narrative it propose on humanity and Gilgamesh so far in the story, instincts were the first dominating power that motivated humanity, however due to this instincts inspiration was born and evolved, helping humanity thus evolve as Gilgamesh did and become more social creatures leading to the next act.

## Utu

Utu is Ishtar’s brother and is the deity of morality and the sun, can be equated with the Apollonian, the superego and Blake’s Urizen who himself is associated with the sun and was equated once to Apollo and much like Apollonian is related to visual arts, Urizen is related to sight and he established morality.

I needed to put a lot of focus on Urizen there in the beginning to justify my usage of Blake mythology and ideas here, ideas which all synchronise with each other and Utu in a meaningful and humanly general sense.

Gilgamesh second phase is defined by Utu who made him now a moral human being seeking to win the favour of his community throughout heroic deeds, people aren’t afraid of him but worried about him and he goes through an archetypical journey to slay the beast Humbaba; a hero slaying a beast is the simplest of all stories, and taking the goods (the cider trees) back to home is the cherry on top.

Two things to be noticed is that throughout the journey Gilgamesh is not afraid of death and contemplate that even if they die they will be mentioned as heroes making them immortal in a way, this is strangely opposite to the reaction we get in the third act, but the meaning is the same as the one a lot assume at the ending of the story, immortality through actions.

Something else is Gilgamesh dreams; Nietzsche associated dreams with the apollonian, so maybe the one inspiring the dreams Gilgamesh had was Utu himself or Utu as a motif.

Humbaba is the son of the god of evil and is suggested to be the source of evil himself, needed to be annihilated. This black and white morality is actually instable here, because for one Gilgamesh is the one who makes the first offense as far as we know, and more strangely is that Humbaba was raised by Utu to protect the forest. To put it simply, Humbaba is innocent.

Humbaba may not be a praiseworthy character, but as hard as the story makes him seems to be the villain, if that was even what the story was attempting to do, it certainly fails at it because he gives a solid reasoning for his actions which none of the characters seem to deny, just ignore.

I believe this does reflect the issue of how morality that’s built on simple objective, more so built on a simple objective related to other living beings, will deny the well being of others for its own sake; putting your side above the idea of the other.

This isn’t the newest take but the proposal here is that Humbaba is a stand in for the other, the other person or the other group who’s your interests’ conflict with theirs, for that reason Gilgamesh needed to put his responsibility ahead of his sympathy.

Inspiration, being Enkidu, does show also a merciless side to him, encouraging Gilgamesh to kill and taking a more of a demon on the shoulder role,  this is the part i find hardest to interpret, and this is the first death mentioned and detailed in the story, despite how violent the first act was.

For the second part of the second act, Ishtar reveals herself to Gilgamesh for marriage and for the first time in the story, but now as a character that holds on moral and social values, he rejects her proposal and mocks her for her moral failures, making her both seem unethical and himself seem reasonable for avoiding her proposal. All taken by me as a metaphor for Gilgamesh either being called back by his instincts and rejecting it now in favor of morality and reason, or morally judging others for what he now perceives as right and wrong.

Because of this denial of instincts he went to the other end of the extreme, and so Ishtar attacks him, leading to another adventure to save their city and all concluding with the death of Enkidu.

Enkidu sparked from the same space Ishtar sparked in, a space before Utu, so with her going due to Gilgamesh deviating too far from his origins Enkidu goes too and due to that he no longer have any inspiration, so he can’t think of any solution death,  before he could say that when people die their names will be left behind and that’s what he looks forward to, but now that Enkidu is gone he can no longer see death the same way, he can make no meaning or value out of it.

Again Enkidu and Shamhat relationship is hard to bring meaning out of, but the meaning come from Gilgamesh, who manages to be the inspiration to Enkidu in his last moment, instead of cursing her he should cherish her for making them meet, as bad as things went, they weren’t worthless, and this is an indicator that Gilgamesh have moved on greatly from what he was before, being able to make such conclusions at the deathbed of his inspiration where he had to be his best self, and acting as best as a social, moral and reasonable can, and this is a moment where his ego and superego are both synchronised, with his id gone as he doesn’t yield to any instinctual anger or any sort of emotions that would have ruined the moment. But again; this is just the best guess i could make in that regard.

## Ereshkigal

Goddess of underworld, and Ishtar opposite twin sister (Ishtar being a goddess for life and Ereshkigal for death); i equate her with the Freudian death drive, and while i don’t know any Blakian concept that can be associated with death drive, the third act appear to me to be motivated by Luvah, the Zoa of emotions, Gilgamesh is initially under no physical threat, what makes him move it feeling of terror and fear from dying, and the grief he felt over Enkidu’s death is also a motivator.

His intuition, Enkidu; isn’t with him, so he doesn’t seek change from himself but from other sources that were known at his time, but Utu is still with him, he is acting rationally and morally, but without intuition, he is stuck needing solutions from others instead of coming with them himself.

He descends into darkness and come out of the other side where he sees Utu shining and leading him to his destination, the descent into darkness is descent into the unknown, Gilgamesh is at many risks when he goes there, the worst of them is finding nothing, but out of desperation he needs to find anything that will help him, when he sees Utu again that will be the idea that his already existing beliefs and rational thinking didn’t trick him, and that while the search was difficult, it was all worth it in the end.

There he meets Siduri, she is another form of Ishtar (not literally but as an idea), now that he got this far his instincts call upon him again to withdraw, another rational solution comes in to his mind because technically speaking he surely can just live in the moment and not care about his mortality. But no, he can’t listen to her anymore, this time due to fear, so nevermind how distracting the things she mentioned are and how pleasurable they get, they won’t end his fear whenever he is reminded of it, the only solution is continuing onward.

The section with Utnapishtem i take is relying on religious or spiritual means to find solution to earthly immortality, this reasons of immortality are specific to individuals, and have their own rules, rules we can’t follow due to our limitations as humans living outside of those myths.

The search of immortality through the plant is, and i know i’m pushing way more boundaries here, relying on scientific means to escape death, but this time the issue comes from us, Gilgamesh got the plant but kept on daydreaming and hoping, he got too far away that he forgot what was near him, same way we get absorbed by beliefs that with scientific and rational methods we may evolve outside of our current situation as humans and even into immortality as some believe, but this hopes are too far away, and forget all things that can distract any of this dreams from happening.

In the end Gilgamesh can do nothing but express his emotions through weeping about it and going home, restarting the poem from where it began.

## Enki

Enki i equate with Urthona and is related to Enkidu like Urthona is to Los, and he is revealed to Gilgamesh as the spirit of inspiration in the end when he gets everything in order in the narratively unrelated but thematically connected final fragment, and instead of favoring one element over the others of his own psyche, he works with them all leading to a spiritual experience where he reconnects with Enkidu again.

In the beginning Gilgamesh meets with Ishtar and helps her, meaning he made peace with his instincts and doesn’t mind them, in the second part he tells Enkidu the rules of the underworld to help protect his friend stay safe, doing his moral responsibility, Enkidu getting captured in the underworld make him grief and face death again, he goes to religion this time again, and due to making peace with all the elements that make him, as i said before, he meets with Enki who give him a spiritual experience where he sees a vision of Enkidu who reveals to him the events that happen in the underworld and answering the dilemma faced at the end of the previous story. Gilgamesh sees the ghost of Enkidu who reveals to him the secrets of the underworld and it’s pretty much an early conception of heaven and hell, suggesting an early form of the idea, not exactly like ours, but closes in some concepts.

Enki is the fourth element of Gilgamesh blood, his personal trinity is now fourfold instead of threefold, and in fact all his parts, the divine and the human, are both divine and human in their respective ways, and now that Gilgamesh is fourfold and whole, he got insight into both sides of being.