The Epic of Gilgamesh - Essay Example

Order 328118 Topic: Epic of Gilgamesh Gilgamesh: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Whatever is the level of the valor of a King, if his appetite is wrong, his power is meaningless and cruel for the people. Gilgamesh was a strange combination of the divine and the evil tendencies. As for his physical prowess, he was matchless. Next to none! When Enkidu arrived in his life to counterbalance his wrong attitudes, Gilgamesh was on the ivory tower of his fame. To say that he was a hard task-master on his subjects would be too soft a description. He exercised power arbitrarily, forced labor was order of the day, and the never-ending battles sapped the energies of the people. That was the warrior aspect of his credentials. As a person, he raped women at will, never cared whether she was the wife of a warrior or the daughter of a noble, and he took fascination for the bride on her wedding night! Enkidu’s benevolent friendship had the soothing effect on him. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh thinks in retrospect of his own death. That sets the wheels of his destiny in reverse motion. His personality undergoes the drastic inner change. Enkidu was great while living; in death he becomes greater! Remorseful, Gilgamesh begins to knock at the portals of spirituality. The latent divinity within him tames and reforms him, and he realizes that one day he too has to go from this mortal world and reach the land from where no one ever returns. The reformed Gilgamesh becomes a better King and performs duties that are expected of a good and virtuous King. Enkidu: Enkidu begins his career as helper to Gilgamesh— a very special helper. He is Gilgamesh’s trusted man, a very personal sidekick. In physical prowess, he is Gilgamesh’s equal. Over the period, the role of Enkidu changes profoundly and he creates a deep impact on the psyche and social disposition of Gilgamesh. It is believed that God brought Enkidu on Planet Earth, as the balancing force to check the evil tendencies of Gilgamesh. Soon he becomes the soul-mate, and his conscience. The upbringing of the two friends are entirely different, they are the spiritual pairs of opposites. Their physical composition is different. Gilgamesh is two-thirds god; Enkidu’s formation is through clay. Gilgamesh is the legendary king of Uruk and Enkidu a wild man fashioned by a goddess, one might imagine that the correspondence of character to theme would be straightforward. Yet it is the King of Uruk who needs taming by means of a (formerly) wild man. Though civilization impacts the kings, noblemen and subjects of the era, the equation between Gilgamesh and Enkidu need not be read in the backgrounder information of the civilization of that time. It was just a personal rapport between the two individuals. Initially Enkidu’s closeness to Gilgamesh was due to his physical prowess. They say, opposite poles attract each other! The violent king Gilgamesh, and the benevolent Enkidu, are attracted towards each other. Gilmesh regrets his past actions. It is the death of Enkidu that provides the shock treatment to Gilgamesh and sets the revolution in his inner world. This friendship, this transformation need not be linked to Mesopotamian attitudes to civilization. I do not visualize any implicit critique of civilization in the epic as related to these two characters. The impact of the Mesopotamian religion and traditions can be seen through the rule of Gilgamesh. Just as in the Mesopotamian era, the kings and priests (in case of Gilgamesh it was Enkidu ) had a special role in interceding on behalf of the people and the whole empire before the gods. The gods were supposed to guard the imperial empire. There was an established link between the gods and the people—these cosmic gods, represented the power of the universe, and their empires on earth represented the novel organizing power among the people. “In Mesopotamia and Egypt, religion was the principal unifying and creative force. People saw divine forces at work in every aspect of nature, and every form of human endeavor was meant to serve the gods. For example, the Sumerians believed that laws descended from the gods. Kings administered these laws with the assistance of priests who revealed for them the will of the gods.” (DOC] online..) The Mesopotamian world view was pessimistic. Humans coped up with their life as per the whims of the gods. This reflected in Mesopotamian literature. Their wisdom literature poses difficult to think and answer questions about human suffering. A central theme of the Epic of Gilgamesh is the hopelessness of the search for immorality, which diminishes the importance of the efforts of the human beings in their pursuit of spirituality. Mesopotamian women were subordinate to men, but they had legal protection and enjoyed more scope in the society than the latter. But these were the laws in the ordinary course. But when Gilgamesh went on the rampage and when his sexual exploits continued unabated, there was no one to control his whims and fancies and Enkidu, intervened strongly as a friend, to reform him. “Although Mesopotamians and Egyptians observed their world, they did not analyze and draw general conclusions about what they saw. Like their prehistoric ancestors, they told stories that personified and explained phenomena in terms of divine influence… Nevertheless, Near Eastern cultural achievements laid the crucial foundation for Western civilization and influenced the Hebrew and Greek traditions for centuries.” (DOC] online-) What Gilgamesh and Enkidu thought about divine forces? “Gilgamesh and Enkidu learn all too well that the gods are dangerous for mortals. Gods live by their own laws and frequently behave as emotionally and irrationally as children. Piety is important to the gods, and they expect obedience and flattery whenever possible. They can often be helpful, but angering them is sheer madness—and a character’s reverence for the gods is no guarantee of safety.” (SparkNotes…)From this view point, The Epic of Gilgamesh is in wide variance from the Judeo-Christian tradition, where god is stern but loving parent to his people. People are promised rewards on earth or in heaven for their meritorious deeds. God is not known by his power, but by his benevolence and human beings is expected to imitate his qualities. These dissimilarities are worth noting as Gilgamesh shares certain elements with the Judeo-Christian Bible. The Bible comes from the same region as that of Gilgamesh. In Gilgamesh and Bible, willful disobedience to a god or gods brings disastrous consequences. The reasons for the devastating floods unleashed by gods in Gilgamesh, is not known. From the point of view of Mesopotamians, their true moral obligations do not include piety and respect for gods. Rather they believe in nature’s supreme power and remind the human beings their place and responsibilities in the larger scheme of things in the nature. Human beings are the inseparable part of the nature. As for sex and seductions, the epic of Gilgamesh and Mesopotamian viewpoints and practices are poles apart. It is the temple prostitute who showed the path of enlightenment to Enkidu. She seduces him and he loses his animal instincts to gain his humanity and self-consciousness. In western societies the position is different. Human sexuality is considered as base and lewd. Christianity tells its followers to transcend the body-mind level and reach the portals of spirituality. Mesopotamians do not consider sex as sublime. They recognized this world only and the acts of sex connected people to the life force mystically and physically. This life force was their goddess. Sacred prostitutes enjoyed a unique position of respectability and reverence. They were considered avatars and instruments of divinity. So, the churning process within the cultures is an ongoing process. How exactly the various facets of the culture evolve into new shapes is a mater that relates to so many compulsions. The values of the Gilgamesh era are not the values of the people where Gilgamesh ruled once. Mesopotamians social customs must have gone through tremendous transformation and what was happening at that time, will read like the fairy tale today. Similar is the case with the Western culture. “Huntington believes that the great days of the West are behind it. Soon the West will enter a period of decline and withdrawal. Its creativity will shift from innovation to preservation, not unlike Egyptian Civilization in its last millennium. But like most philosophers of civilization, he believes that once a civilizations basic values and symbols have been created and instilled in the peoples with whom it is identified, these are ineradicable.” (One…) Conclusion: Whatever is the level of progress of the cultures we are talking about; history will produce Gilgamesh and Enkidus from time to time. Evil, transformation of evil, the never-ending war between the evil and divine forces will be part of the evolution process of various civilizations. History is the witness; such situations can not be avoided. ****************** Works Cited: DOC] online-history.tripod.com/WC1/WC1-Topic3.1-AncientMesoandEgypt... 77k - Microsoft Word - View as html .Retrieved on October 20, 2009 Hunt, Lynn (Author), Martin, Thomas R. (Author), Rosenwein, Barbara H. (Author),Hsia, R. Po-chia (Author), Smith, Bonnie G. (Author) The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, Vol. 1: To 1740Bedford/St. Martins; Second Edition (July 28, 2006) One Civilization - Many Cultures... challenge, –Retrieved on October 20, 2009 SparkNotes: The Epic of GilgameshFrom a general summary … – Retrieved on October 20, 2009 Read More