Myths and Legends from Around the World

by Robin Brockman

  “Who is the most glorious of men?” Gilgamesh shouted with a grin.

  “Gilgamesh is the most glorious of men,” the singers cried.

  “Who is the most splendid of men?” he asked again.

  “Gilgamesh,” they sang as one. “Gilgamesh is the most splendid of men.”

  In his ear, suddenly worried by his own rashness, Enkidu muttered of the consequences of so infuriating Ishtar.

  “She at whom we flung the haunch of the Bull of Heaven in our anger,” Gilgamesh assured him, “the glorious Ishtar herself, will not find anyone to console her. She was wrong.”

  Alas, Gilgamesh should not have been so certain.

  They held a great celebration in the palace and when it was late, the two heroes went up to their beds. In his sleep, however, Enkidu had a disturbing vision and sat up violently half-awake, asking; “Why did the gods meet for deliberation?”

  The next morning Enkidu told Gilgamesh about his dream.

  “My friend, it was very strange,” he said. “The gods came together to confer and Anu said to Enlil: ‘Because they killed the Bull of Heaven and Humbaba, the one who cut the cedar trees on the mountainside must die.’ But Enlil said: ‘It is Enkidu who must die, but Gilgamesh will not.’ Then the divine Shamash said he had ordered us to kill the demon and the bull. He asked them: ‘So, why should Enkidu, who is innocent, have to die?’ But Enlil grew indignant and said to Shamash: ‘You are too close to them, you appear to them daily and are nearly becoming one of them.”

  Even before his eyes, Enkidu seemed to grow weak and pale and Gilgamesh was frightened for him.

  “But my brother,” he said desperately. “Why should they absolve me and not you?”

  Enkidu made no reply and inside his head Gilgamesh wondered, beset with worry; ‘Is it my fate to watch the spirits of the dead and sit at the gateway of death? Is it for me never to see my dear friend again?’ He did not speak of his deep concerns but tried to encourage Enkidu and nurse him, as daily he grew weaker and more confused.

  At one point in his delirium, Enkidu spoke to the door of his room as if it were a living being. He had chosen its wood from a forest twenty leagues away before he ever saw the lofty cedar trees.

  “Your wood, oh door,” he told it. “I have never seen the like of before in all the land. You are seventy-two cubits high and forty-two cubits wide. A skilled carpenter made you in Nippur and brought you from there. Yet, if I had known that your beauty would bring disaster upon me, I would have taken up my axe and destroyed you, I would have made a raft of you. But what can be done now, door? I made you and brought you and now maybe some future king will use you, remove my name and have carved on you his own.”

  It broke Gilgamesh's heart to hear his friend speak this way and he tried to calm his fears and inspire him to get better, but still the illness grew worse. Even while lucid, Enkidu, in his despair, regretted leaving the wilds for the temptations of civilization. Angrily, he cursed the hunter and the whore.

  “Oh divine Shamash,” Enkidu cried in his agony, “blight the life of the hunter who first saw me. Take all his strength and let all his prey escape him. May nothing he desires ever be attainable. Shamash, Shamash damn the whore who lured me from the wilderness. Let me predict her future, which I pray will be grim. May all my curses have effect at once. Whore, you will never be able to build a house to befit your beauty, may your vanity be great and may your charms fade quickly and be horrid in your sight.”

  Gilgamesh was saddened to hear this and ashamed to tell his friend that the whore had been his idea and his gift.

  “Let your food be the rubbish of the city,” Enkidu went on cursing her. “And the corners of the dark streets your refuge. May you stand in the shadows of the walls where the sober and the drunk will slap your face alike. May your lovers leave you as quickly as they have satisfied their lust for your fatal beauty.”

  Then the god Shamash or Enkidu's vision of the god produced by his own inner guilt for what he had said, appeared to him from heaven and asked him why he so cursed the harlot.

  “She is the one who first taught you to eat bread fit for the gods and made you drink wine fit for royalty and made you wear elegant clothes. It was she who made it possible for you to become the bosom friend and companion of your brother, Gilgamesh.”

  “Oh harlot,” cried Enkidu in his misery and sorrow. “I that cursed you would rather bless you. Let me tell your future again. Kings and princes will love you dearly. No one will ever strike his thigh and ridicule you. For you, the aged man will shake his beard and the young men will undo their belts and offer you lapis lazuli and gold. Punishment will fall on any who scorn you and their houses will be empty. The priest will let you enter the presence of the gods and for you, wives will be deserted, even if she be the mother of seven children.”

  In the night Enkidu dreamt he was entrapped in a hellish underworld and his vivid description of it so deeply disturbed Gilgamesh that he carried the horror of it for the rest of his life. In the dream, Enkidu recounted, the sky thundered and the earth replied and while he stood between them, a boy with a dark and threatening face appeared before him. The boy's face was like that of an eagle and he stripped Enkidu naked, holding him in his claws and choking him until his breathing stopped. Enkidu, in his dream, was dead. The eagle then changed Enkidu's appearance into that of a bird, giving him feathers that covered his body and wings where his arms had been. He was led to a house of darkness, the house from which none who enter ever returns, the house whose dwellers see no light, where sand is their food and mud is sustenance. Here, Enkidu saw kings and princes, mighty in life who were lowly now, heaped on the ground and wearing no crowns. Only the deputies of the gods Anu and Enlil were given meat, bread and cold water. The queen of the underworld also lived in this place. All prostrated themselves before her, as she read from a tablet in her hand. When she lifted her head and saw Enkidu, she said; ‘Who brought this man here? Take him away from me.’ Enkidu then experienced the worst of the horrors of the underworld, and when later he woke from the dream he was convinced that it boded ill for him.

  Until now, he had often been able to move about, though weakened and saddened. After this dream he was confined to his bed and for many days he stayed there. Gilgamesh, in anguish, went to his mother Ninsun for help and advice, but nothing could be done. Enkidu grew worse still and did not rise again from his sickbed.

  “A curse is upon me,” Enkidu said, fading quickly now and in great pain, angry at his helplessness. “My friend,” he told Gilgamesh. “I am under a curse and I will not die in the fury and action of battle. I feared to die in battle, of course, but now it seems a good way, for I will die a despised and ignoble death. Believe me, those who perish on a battle field are truly blessed.”

  Sitting up all through the night with his friend as he faded, Gilgamesh attempted once more to revive his spirits and stood beside where Enkidu lay. Patting his shoulder and smiling at him as the dawn came up, he teased him and prayed for a retort.

  “Your mother was a gazelle and your father a wild ass. You were raised on the milk of asses …” But it was plain that Enkidu did not hear, though lightly he yet breathed. The knowledge that his friend would never respond, never open his eyes again, overwhelmed Gilgamesh.

  “The paths you walked among the cedar trees will grieve for you,” he said over his friend. “And he who pointed the way for us and blessed us will weep for you. The echoes of the weeping will echo about the land and the bear and tiger, the lynx, stag and lion will mourn you. Let those who glorified your name weep for you, and those who anointed your back with fragrant oils and gave you beer and wine and fruit to eat. May all grieve for you, all the brothers and sisters of the land.”

  Still, though, he could not accept that Enkidu would never recover and he railed against it. By now the elders of Uruk had gathered around the sickbed and stood watch with their king over his dying brother.

  Turning to the elders as the horror of Enkidu's end
drew near, Gilgamesh tried to express his feelings, even as they attempted to draw him away, to distract him or present false hope.

  “Listen to me, oh elders, and hear me,” he shouted. “It is for my friend and companion that I weep. Mine is the lament of the mother who has lost a child. Do you not see that he is the hatchet that protects me, the sword and dagger at my belt, the shield that defends me? He is my happiness, my joy, my festive attire. An accursed devil has appeared to steal him from me. My friend and little brother, who hunted with the wild ass in the high hills, with the tiger in the deserts. Together we defeated the Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, so Enkidu, what is this sleep that has overcome you now?”

  Approaching the bed, Gilgamesh touched his friend's hand and froze in shock, for it was so cold.

  “Does the darkness of night enfold you?” he whispered. Enkidu did not open his eyes and when Gilgamesh laid his hand on Enkidu's chest it was still and no heart beat within it. Solemnly, he covered the body with a veil and turned away. Then he began to roar like a lion that has lost its cubs, to pace up and down the room, tearing at his hair and ripping his clothing. Through the night he sat on the floor beside the bed, his dead friend's hand in his, and at dawn he rose.

  Gilgamesh left the bedchamber in a dazed state and ordered that a beautiful statue of his brother be made, with lapis lazuli for his chest and gold for the rest. He ordered also, though it was not needed – for all would have done so out of love and honour – that all the people of Uruk mourn and lament the death of Enkidu.

  On an oath to Enkidu's memory, Gilgamesh let his hair and beard grow and wearing only a lion skin, he went into the desert. For a long time he wandered there, weeping and half-mad in the wilderness, grieving for his lost brother. When the horrible inevitability of the death sank in, the certainty that no god could or would change it, knowing that death was the fate of every man, he began to be frightened.

  The sudden illness and lingering death, the helplessness of watching his only friend die, had scared him, as had the hellish dream Enkidu had experienced before his passing.

  “When I die,” Gilgamesh dared to ask himself at last, “will I be like Enkidu?”

  In fear and grief he had wandered the desert, overwhelmed by sorrow, anger, doubt and fear. Then, with some of the determination of old, he decided to find out the truth, and see if he could defeat the very nature of death.

  Thus was Gilgamesh set on to the path of his further destiny and the great quest with which he made even greater his heroic name. Venturing into the underworld and up to heaven, he found his grandfather, Utnapishtim, the only mortal to achieve immortal status. Gilgamesh ultimately failed in his mission to win immortality for himself, however, and even lost a plant, which rendered eternal youth, that Utnapishtim told him how to find.

  There is a legend, however, that, at last, he did become a god, reach heaven and dwell there, but that is another story. Certainly, the lasting name he craved and cajoled Enkidu into helping him achieve, is immortality enough for any hero, for no such name is greater or more enduring than his. Few friendships as that of Gilgamesh and Enkidu's have been as lasting, either. Indeed, it could truly be said they fight the monsters, chase the girls, protect the people and entertain the gods to this day.

  Osiris, Bringer of Civilization

  Osiris, or more properly Ousir, was once worshipped throughout Egypt as the god of the dead and as a nature deity, and many references to his life and deeds are to be found in Egyptian hieroglyphic texts. A cult of Osiris spread widely and in the Roman empire became established in many provinces as a religious sect. His fate as a physical being is enough to make any fellow wince.

  From the nothing that was before creation, Atum, the ‘all-formed’, made himself into a human shape. It was moulded of the essence of everything that would be male and female, divine and human. In a great cosmic act of masturbation, he shot forth the seed that became Shu and Tefnut, ancestors of the gods. To them were born Geb and Nut, god of earth and goddess of the sky, parents of Osiris, Isis and Seth. As Ra, Atum also became the sun-god.

  At the birth of Osiris, a voice echoed out across infinity, but the gladness engendered by this auspicious birth was leavened by sadness at the future the new-born god faced. Ra himself rejoiced, however, and recognized Osiris as his great-grandson and heir to his throne.

  Growing up to be handsome, taller than most men and dark of features, Oisiris became king of Egypt when his father Geb retired and returned to the heavens. He married his sister Isis. Seth married their other sister Nephthys, but she wanted a child by Osiris and remained barren until she lay with him after making him drunk one night. Anibis was born of this union, but this act was not what made Seth hate his elder brother. The evil Seth was jealous only of his brother's power.

  The chief order of business for the new king was to abolish cannibalism and then to instruct his semi-wild subjects in the skills of agriculture and how to make tools related to this foreign enterprise. From Osiris they learned to grow grain and grapes, and how to produce bread, wine and beer.

  Worship of the gods did not exist as such until he introduced the practice, along with the rules for religious observance. He created two types of flute and composed the songs to accompany religious ceremonies, as well as sculpting the first divine images and having the first temples built. Osiris also constructed towns and instituted just laws. The fourth divine Pharaoh, he became known as the ‘Good One’ among his people, so great were the benefits of his reign.

  Nor did Osiris’ zeal to civilize stop with Egypt. He travelled the world spreading knowledge and culture, conquering lands with charm, intelligence and the earnest desire to teach and assist humanity. Accompanied by his grand vizier, Thoth, and his aides Anibis and Upuaut, Osiris did not need to use violence to get his way. His gentleness and music disarmed people wherever he went.

  Returning to Egypt after bringing civilization to the whole world, Osiris found his country in good order, having been ably ruled by his excellent wife, Isis. However, all along Seth had been plotting against him and now, the jealous younger brother was more than ever determined to take over. Gathering support among men as ruthless and ambitious as himself, Seth was soon ready to carry out his act of betrayal.

  Many celebrations greeted the return of Osiris to Egypt and it was under the guise of such a festival that Seth made his move. Seth was in appearance unpleasant to the Egyptian eye, with his pale skin and red hair. A violent individual and always regarded as dangerous, he is said to have torn himself from his mother's womb. His plan was subtle, though, and in some points almost resembled a practical joke.

  Surrounding himself with 72 accomplices for safety's sake, Seth invited Osiris to a lavish dinner party. During the merry-making after the food was eaten and taken away, a beautifully made, very ornate and valuable coffer was brought before the guests. It would be a present, Seth declared, to anyone who could fit perfectly inside it.

  Now between the contrivance of his cohorts and having had Osiris measured in his sleep, the coffer did not seem to fit anyone else. It did indeed fit Osiris perfectly though, as in the spirit of the fun he lay down inside it. Suddenly all the conspirators darted forward and shut the lid of the coffer, hammers and nails appeared from their cloaks and the lid was nailed down in an instant by many willing hands. Together, swiftly without pause for second thoughts, they carried the coffer to the banks of the Nile and threw it in.

  Osiris died and his body, still encased in the coffer, was carried out to sea and drifted far until it reached Byblos in Phoenicia. It came to rest at the base of a small tree which thereafter grew with strange rapidity, completely surrounding the coffer. The tall, thick, very solid tree eventually found its way into the palace of King Malcandre as a central pillar.

  Meanwhile, heartbroken at the loss of her husband, Isis had been searching the world for his body and it had taken all her powers to locate it. Word of the magnificent scent given off by the tamarisk tree at the court of King Malcandre
eventually reached her, and, understanding its significance, she set off at once, in disguise. Too much openness about her whereabouts and purpose would have alerted Seth to her mission, and this she wanted to avoid at all costs.

  Isis found work at the court looking after Queen Astrate's newborn son. She grew very attached to the child and decided to confer immortality on him. She was in the process of doing this, bathing the infant in purificatory flames, when its mother, Astrate, walked in and, understandably, given the strange scene, screamed the house down, unfortunately preventing the completion of the rite. Isis was forced to reveal her true identity and tell of her suspicions about the tamarisk tree.

  Awed, honoured and embarrassed by their divine nanny, the king and queen of Byblos happily gave her the tamarisk tree and, sure enough, she found the coffer containing her husband's body embedded within its truck. This she secretly took back to Egypt and hid in the swamp of Buto.

  By chance, while hunting by moonlight, Seth discovered the body and recognized it as his brother's. Enraged and intending to make certain it did not turn up again, he hacked it into fourteen pieces which he scattered far and wide. At last, the usurper felt secure on the throne.

  All the gods were in an uproar over Seth's actions, however, even going to the extreme of turning themselves into different sorts of animals to escape the tyranny of his rule. Nephthys was so outraged that she had left him, feeling the same as everyone else, who had taken the side of Osiris.

  Isis had not given up hope of somehow saving her husband, however, and searched out and found every part of Osiris with the sad exception of his phallus. This, apparently, had been eaten by a river crab or a crocodile. Isis was determined to reassemble her husband and, using sorcery, bring him back to life.

  With the help of her sister, Seth's estranged wife Nephthys, her nephew Anubis as well as Thoth, Osiris’ grand vizier, she went to work. Her potent charms and magical spells constituted, for the first time in history, the rites of embalmment. With all this, the women taking turns weeping over him, Osiris was restored to life. He was even, despite his missing member, miraculously able to give Isis a child.