Tuesday, February 16, 2010

A Grieving Gilgamesh

In Tablets 7 and 8, the Gods have a council, and decide that Enkidu must die for what he did in the Cedar Forest, so he gets sick for twelve days, and dies.

We can see how the author had the concept of hell very similar to what we know the Greeks had, and Enkidu had a dream that Death came to him and took him to hell, with all the dead kings and important people.

We had a QUESTion answered here, as we can infer that in that time people believed that they had no control over their future or destiny, but it was completely in the hands of the gods. The kings in hell might have been really good people, but because the gods didn't like them, they ended up in hell.

Gilgamesh was very melancholic about Enkidu's death; he asked everyone who had ever had anything to do with Enkidu to mourn him. In fact, that was all that Tablet 8 was about.

"May the grasslands wail as if they were your mother.
May the gazelle your mother and the wild ass

your father mourn for Enkidu their child." (p.46)

Gilgamesh also commanded that there be a statue of him made, and he did offerings to the gods in honor of Enkidu.
I thought the whole story was around the two, so now that Enkidu is dead, how will the story continue?

A modern version of this saddness because of a death could be represented by this video:

(YouTube doesn't seem to be working right and it doesn't let me embed the video, so here's the link):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKxtAv6TIiI


Or another in worst quality:

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