by Brian Godawa
The thought crossed Shamhat’s mind that this was the sad and pathetic state of the male gender. They were obsessed with “glory” and “fame” instead of love and acceptance. They sought a transcendent meaning in the abstract beyond, and completely ignored the imminent meaning of human relationship all around them. They entered Sheol alone.
She thought to herself, But do we not all enter Sheol alone?
Enkidu closed his eyes and breathed his last.
Shamhat wailed in the traditional way. It was deep and guttural because in the depths of her being, she felt a turn, so simple, yet so profound that she knew she was not the same person in that instant.
She would never again allow her destiny to be controlled by a man.
Gilgamesh wept.
Ninurta breathed the slightest sigh of relief. None of them knew that Ishtar was not the one who had inflicted Enkidu, nor was it the Bull of Heaven. It was Ninurta. He had poured slow acting poison in Enkidu’s dinner wine with the intent of taking away from the king the one connection to humanity that kept him from accomplishing the purpose of the gods. Ninurta was after all charged with making sure Gilgamesh performed their secret goal, and Enkidu was the one impediment in the way of that goal. He simply had to be taken out of the way.
Chapter 34
Ishtar laughed. She could not believe her good fortune. Revenge upon this insolent king that was sweeter than death itself, more thrilling than a violent rape and murder, more cathartic than a bloodbath of gore. Her enemy would be imprisoned in a living torture of loneliness and mourning that would haunt him until he took his own life in despair. Who knows? Maybe she could milk this misery for years or decades. She looked out of her temple window to the king’s palace across the way and giggled with anticipation of the next palace servant who would return to her with gossip of what was going on inside that house of despair.
For six days and seven nights, Gilgamesh kept Enkidu’s body in the palace walls without funeral or burial. He remained in his bed, still sleeping peacefully under his sheets.
The rotting flesh of the corpse was causing such a stench that Shamhat had to move into another section of the palace to avoid perpetual nausea. Ninurta stood outside the door instead of inside the room with the revolting odor. Servants wore linen cloths over their mouths and noses to keep from gagging as they came and served the king who lay at the foot of Enkidu’s bed like a dutiful hound to its dead master.
Ninsun came to the door every day to keep an eye on her son. But she could not find the courage to enter for she held a secret so dark that if Gilgamesh discovered it, would only crush the soul of her son, who thought nothing could crush him more than he already had been.
But he was wrong.
Tears streamed down her eyes as she heard Gilgamesh babbling about the mourning of everyone from the elders of Uruk to the rivers and forests to every gazelle, lion, panther, leopard, deer, and jackal of the steppe. He even said that the river Euphrates from which they drank and along which they strode was a stream of tears for him. Then he recounted his tales of adventure to his dead companion as if he were alive and laughing along with a beer in his hand.
“Remember that clodhopper of the Cedar Forest?” said Gilgamesh to the corpse, “Some Rephaim giant he was. We killed him, you and I, and we cut off his head, one, two, three. Do not mess with the Scion of Uruk and the Denizen of the Steppe! We showed those gods we were afraid of nothing. We showed them.” He laughed the laugh of madness and continued his storytelling.
“And how about that Bull of Heaven? He was no match for the Wild Bull on the Rampage and his Wild Born. Three hundred soldiers could not touch that stinking bovine, but we took him out with an axe and a dirk to the brain, did we not?”
By the seventh day, Gilgamesh had ripped off his royal robes and was pacing to and fro naked and unwashed. He refused meals and soon become gaunt. He did not shave so his beard grew in and his hair grew long. Some of it he would tear out with his hands when overcome by emotion. He was transforming into a Wild Born himself. It was a strange form of empathy and identification. It was madness.
On that dawning day, Gilgamesh stopped mumbling to himself. He thought he saw Enkidu move his head. Was he seeing things? Was he truly mad after all?
Gilgamesh slowly approached Enkidu’s corpse. He stared at the emaciated face. Would the gods bring his Enkidu back from the dead? Was it possible?
There it was again. The head did move ever so slightly. But it did move. As he drew near, he could see the almost imperceptible twitching of musculature beneath his cheeks. The process of resurrection must be a difficult one of struggle to revive the once dead body parts into life again.
Gilgamesh was now inches away from Enkidu’s face. And suddenly he saw the nose twitch. And then a maggot fell out of the nostril onto his cheek wriggling and writhing in search of more flesh to consume.
Gilgamesh backed up in horror. Enkidu was not coming alive, he was being eaten by maggots and worms.
Suddenly Gilgamesh was returned to reality. The fetid stench overwhelmed him and he turned and vomited on the floor beside the bed. He looked up and saw his mother Ninsun at the doorway watching him.
He could bear it no longer. He went back to Enkidu’s body, and pulled a linen sheet over his face like a veil. Then he ran to the window and climbed naked down to the street below.
He ran all the way to the walls of the city that had been torn down by the Bull of Heaven and were being rebuilt by laborers. He climbed up and over the rubble. The workers backed up in fear and watched the naked wild Gilgamesh dart off into the steppe.
By the time Ninurta realized what had happened it was too late to follow Gilgamesh as his dutiful bodyguard. He looked out onto the landscape, but Gilgamesh had disappeared into the wild. Ninurta spit in anger. If word got out about this, he would be chastised by the assembly for incompetence. He decided to hide away so that he could not be indicted by his obvious separation from the king. Everyone would assume he was with Gilgamesh.
Chapter 35
Ninsun had the body of Enkidu removed and placed in a temporary crypt until she could find her son to oversee his funeral. He may have had a fit of madness, but she believed he would come back.
When he did not, she sent some soldiers to search for him, but they also came back empty-handed. She then realized that she knew exactly where he would be. And she knew that she would have to go to him.
So she set out for a secret location in the steppe where she used to take him as a child to play in the grass alongside the river. Because of the recent traumatic events, Ishtar’s attention had been distracted and Ninsun was virtually forgotten in the bustling mayhem around her. So she was able to slip out alone without anyone really noticing her absence.
When she arrived at the spot, it was familiar but overgrown with weeds and new trees. It had been many years since she had come to this special place, this sacred space. She sat down by the river and put her feet in the water as she used to do. And she sang the Mesopotamian lullaby she used to sing for her precious Gilgamesh that would sedate him in her arms.
“Sleep come, sleep come,
sleep come to my son,
sleep hasten to my son!
Put to sleep his open eyes,
settle your hand upon his sparkling eyes,
as for his murmuring tongue,
let the murmuring not spoil his sleep.”
Her voice lilted across the grass and through the trees with haunting melody. Soon she sensed a presence behind her. She turned.
It was Gilgamesh. He was a mass of tangled hair and bushy beard, naked as an ape. He had reverted from civilized man to Wild Born. Although, strangely enough, he had the presence of mind to bring the animal skins his mother had given him when he was a child. These were the ones that he used to hunt with. He had them draped over his shoulder.
His mother’s soothing voice had drawn him in and brought him back to his senses. At least momentarily.
“Hello, Gilgy,” sh
e said. It was her special nickname he had not heard for years.
He stepped closer, cautious, but trusting. The reason why he was hesitant was because she was crying and he did not know why. He tilted his head as a dog might when trying to figure out what it was observing.
She kept saying over and over, “My son, my son. You are my son.”
Finally he touched her shoulder and whispered, “Mother.”
She looked up at him.
He sat beside her as he used to do, put his feet in the water.
She said with all the love of a mother, “My child, why? Why do you run? What are you afraid of?”
Gilgamesh sighed and then said, “Death.”
He paused.
“I lost my only friend in the entire world, and I realize that I too will end up like Enkidu.”
“We all end up like Enkidu,” she said.
“I thought I could cheat death,” he said. “I thought I could find eternal life. First it was through indulgence and power, but that only led to the insatiable hunger of tyranny. Then I hoped to become famous and make a name for myself, so I conquered the giant Humbaba and even the mighty Bull of Heaven. But it does not matter because even if these achievements become legendary, even if they are inscribed in tablets of epic, they too will ultimately fade into oblivion in distant days and in far off years. Of what value are glorious stories to those of whom they fabricate? What legends are in Sheol? Darkness is infinite and the dead do not see the radiance of the sun. Fame and glory are but illusions of vanity. They are wisps of smoke that are here and gone. But when I met the gods and conversed with them face to face, I learned that the gods only gave eternal life to one man, Atrahasis, to mock the rest of us. I soon realized that all I had was Enkidu, my friend, my brother, thanks to you. But now that he has been taken from me, I see that all is vanity and emptiness. And all of life is one big cruel joke of the gods to give us hope, only to dash it to pieces in an eternal void of meaninglessness.”
Ninsun broke out bawling like a baby.
Gilgamesh held her.
“Why do you cry?” he asked.
After a moment, she was able to gather her strength to speak.
“I have a confession to make, Gilgy,” she said. “Ishtar was going to force me to do so, but I wanted to tell you myself, without compulsion or duress.”
She swallowed. Then told him, “I am not a goddess.”
Gilgamesh stared at her blank-faced. He was not sure what she had said. “You are not a goddess?” he repeated.
“No, I am not a goddess,” she said, waiting for it to register with him.
“But father was a human,” he said.
“Yes, he was,” she affirmed. “He was only declared to be a god through apotheosis at his death.” Apotheosis was astral deification, the exaltation of a king at death to the status of deity accompanied by their ascension into the stellar host of heaven. The gods were identified with stars.
“But I am two thirds god, one third man,” said Gilgamesh. “How could that be?”
She still could not bring herself to tell him.
“You yourself cut off my extra fingers and toes when I was an infant,” he complained.
“That is true,” she said. He had figured out the fact that he was a Naphil born of god and man.
Then she dropped the axe, “But you are my adopted son.”
He refused to understand it. “I am not your son?”
“You are my son,” she said firmly, “but not of my flesh. You are from the line of Cush, son of Noah.”
He was still awash in confusion and became like a child again with his mother. “But how?” he asked.
She explained to him, “The man that the gods called Atrahasis, was actually Noah ben Lamech. He was the one the gods chose to protect from the Great Deluge. He and his sons and their wives were the eight that were saved by the boat. One of those sons, Ham, had a wife who was impregnated by the god Anu. Cush was born and though he was not himself a giant, carried the blood of giants in him. And he was rejected by his own family, and travelled south to rebuild the cities of Uruk and Eridu and others. When you were born a giant, Cush secreted you in my palace to grant you the chance to thrive and fulfill your destiny as a Gibbor, a mighty leader amongst men. He swaddled you in those magic animal skins that you wear now and have worn all your life on the hunt. They were the original coverings that the creator god made for Adam and Havah, the first pair. They were handed down through the line of Seth to Enoch and eventually were stolen by Cush. Lugalbanda and I adopted you as our own and I claimed to be a goddess so your identity would not be compromised.”
Gilgamesh brushed hair out of his eyes. It was all coming clear to him now; why he never felt quite at home anywhere, including in the palace of Lugalbanda and Ninsun. He had always felt different, special, an outsider.
“So I am not your child. I am more alone in this vast emptiness than I had even imagined I was,” he said.
“No!” she reprimanded him. “You are my son and the son of holy Lugalbanda. You are more our offspring than a natural born which we have no choice over. But we chose you and we loved you as our own. You will always be our son.”
She held open her arms as she usually did. Gilgamesh could not restrain himself. He embraced her with a deep love that transcended flesh and blood.
Gilgamesh was adding more up. He said, “So this Noah, who has eternal life, is my ancestor. I am in his lineage.”
“Yes,” she said. “You are a descendant of Noah ben Lamech.”
He said, “Enlil told me Noah was on a distant island called ‘the Land of the Living.’ Is this true?”
She nodded. “That is why he is called Noah the Faraway or Utnapishtim the Distant. He and his wife Emzara have hid away on the Isle of Dilmun in the Southern Sea.”
“Can you tell me how to get there?” he asked.
She said, “I know how to get you to the one who knows how to get there.”
Gilgamesh said, “Noah is the only one that the gods have granted eternal life, and he is my great grandfather.”
He paused and proclaimed, “I will find my ancestor Noah ben Lamech, and I will procure the secret of eternal life from him.”
He had made up his mind. It would be his final adventure. The journey toward which everything else that he had accomplished previously was but mere prelude. If he could manage to persuade his ancestor, Noah the Faraway, to grant him the secret knowledge of the gods, then he too would become immortal, everlasting. He would conquer the ultimate enemy, death.
“But first, I must bury Enkidu,” he said.
“First,” she said, “you must cut your hair and get some clothes on your naked bottom. You are embarrassing yourself.”
Gilgamesh shared a laugh with her, and then he said, “Thank you, Mother.”
Ninsun’s heart melted with happiness. No matter what happened to her now, no matter how she fared before the wrath of Ishtar and the gods, she was happy. After all he had learned of the lies of his heritage, and after the pain of discovering his abandonment by Cush, and after the adoption by Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh still called her Mother.
Chapter 36
The funeral of Enkidu was an elaborate affair. Gilgamesh cut his hair and cleaned himself up to oversee the administration of the ceremony. His madness was over.
He wanted to give Enkidu the honor of a king. As his adopted brother, he had the legal right to it, but as a mighty warrior and peer of Gilgamesh, he deserved it.
Gilgamesh called together a blacksmith, a goldsmith, and a lapidary jeweler to craft a golden statue of Enkidu with a beard of lapis lazuli and gem laden skin of gold. Black obsidian, red carnelian, and white alabaster were incorporated into this image of his friend like none other.
Then Gilgamesh slaughtered a herd of fatted cattle and sheep and piled them high in the open before the temple of Ishtar on behalf of his friend.
The processional of slaves carried the body in its sarcophagus on a portable throne with carryin
g poles. Behind them followed gifts that Gilgamesh had prepared to lay in Enkidu’s tomb for the underworld: A chair and staff of lapis lazuli, jewelry of silver and gold, an obsidian knife with sharpening stone, his mighty battle axe, and a table of precious wood laid out with carnelian bowls of honey, lapis bowls of butter and flasks of oil. Gilgamesh thought to himself that these accessories were of no help to the dead, but only served to comfort the living in their delusion of hope. But even that, he told himself, was something if it would help ease his grief.
They walked the processional way, performed services in the temple of Shamash, and buried the body in a palace family tomb. Gilgamesh noted the irony that Shamhat was the first to leave the crypt. Gilgamesh, with Ninurta his newly returned shadow, was the last to leave, but his mourning was over. Enkidu was dead, and with him, friendship, love, and hope.
But Gilgamesh was alive.
• • • • •
Ishtar stormed through her temple, flinging servants and prostitutes out of her way like rag dolls. When she crashed out of her palace doors, she hit them with such force that they ripped off their hinges with shattering splinters. One of the flying doors crushed a guard to death.
But Ishtar did not even stop to notice. She was infuriated and concentrating on finding that despicable tramp, the Queen Mother.
She had been trying a new outfit on when the sleazy courtier alerted her to intelligence he gathered from the royal palace. As she marched through the street, she thought her long flowing silk robe behind her was a nice touch. It enhanced the ethereal majesty she was after in her wardrobe. Her skin had been colored white with black lips and eye shadow, the pallor of the undead. She painted high arching eyebrows to amplify her facial expression. She had a large neck ruff embroidered with golden thread that circled her head and framed her face like a work of art. She was a work of art. And this particular theme was virginal so it was all white. She loved to create irony and was particularly aroused by the image in her mind’s eye of a virginal queen’s white purity awash in the blood and gore of slaughter.