Gilgamesh the King

  During the night he awakened and began to speak. His voice was clear and his mind seemed clear, but he showed no sign of knowing that I was there. He spoke of that time he had hurt his hand in the forest of cedars, in order to spare the beautiful gate; and he said aloud that if he had known then that any such affliction as this would come upon him as a result, he would have raised his axe and split that gate like a curtain of reeds. Then he spoke bitterly of the trapper Ku-ninda, who had discovered him on the steppe. “I call curses down on him, for putting me in the hands of the city people!” Enkidu cried, in a hoarse crazed way that frightened me. “Let him lose all his wealth! Let the beasts he would trap escape from his snares! Let him be denied the joy of his heart!” He was silent a time, calmer, and I thought he had returned to sleep. But suddenly he sat up and raved again, this time speaking of the sacred harlot Abisimti: “I curse the woman too!” He had been wild and simple, he said, and she had forced him to see things as men see them. He had not felt sorrow, or loneliness, or the fear of death, until she had caused him to understand that such things existed. Even the joy she had brought him was tainted, said Enkidu: for now that he was dying he felt a stabbing pain at the thought of the loss of that joy. But for her he would have remained ignorant and innocent. Bitterly he said, “Let this be her doom for all time to come: she will wander the streets forever! Let her stand in the shadow of the wall! Let drunken men strike her and use her foully!” He rolled over toward the wall, coughing, growling, muttering. Then once more he subsided.

  I waited, fearful that the next he would curse would be Gilgamesh. I dreaded that, even if his mind was in disarray. But he did not curse me. When next he opened his eyes he looked straight at me and said, in his normal voice, “Why, brother, is it the middle of the night?”

  “I think it is.”

  “The fever is easing, perhaps. Have I been dreaming?”

  “Dreaming, yes, and raving, and talking aloud. But the medicines must be having their effect.”

  “Raving? What sort of things have I said?”

  I told him that he had spoken of the gate at which he had injured himself, and of the trapper, and of the harlot Abisimti, and that he had cursed them all, for leading him to this pass.

  He nodded. His brow darkened. For a troubled moment he did not speak. Then he said, “And did I curse you too, brother?”

  Shaking my head I answered, “No. Not me.”

  His relief was immense. “Ah. Ah. How afraid I was that I might have done it!”

  “You did not.”

  “But if I had, it would have been the fever speaking, not Enkidu. You know that.”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  He smiled. “I have been too harsh, brother. It was not the gate’s fault that I hurt myself. Nor Ku-ninda’s, that I was snared. Nor Abisimti’s. Is it possible to call back curses, do you think?”

  “I think it can be done, brother.”

  “Then I call back mine. If it were not for the trapper and the woman, I would never have known you. I’d not have learned to eat bread fit for gods, and drink the wine of kings. I’d not have been clothed with noble garments, and had glorious Gilgamesh for my brother. So let the trapper prosper. Yes, and the woman, why, let no man scorn her. Let kings and princes and nobles love her, and heap up carnelian and lapis and gold for her, and forsake their wives for her. Let her enter into the presence of the gods. There! I call back my curses!” He looked at me strangely and in a different voice said, “Gilgamesh, am I going to die soon?”

  “You will not. The healers are doing their work on you. A little while longer, and you will be your old self again.”

  “Ah. Ah. How good it will be to rise from this bed, and run and hunt beside you, brother! A little while longer, you say?”

  “Just a little while.” What else could I say? Why not let him have an hour of peace amid his pain? And hope was rising in me for his return to health. “Sleep now, Enkidu. Rest. Rest.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes. I watched him nearly until dawn, when I fell asleep myself. I was awakened by the healers returning, bringing beasts for the morning sacrifices. Quickly I looked toward Enkidu. He had not sustained the night’s recovery. He seemed feverish again, and wandering in delirium. But I suppose there will be many relapses, I told myself, before this thing is lifted from him.

  That day they did the divination by oil-bubble and water, gathering around in a little circle to observe the patterns the oil made as it floated in the cup. “Look,” said one, “the oil sinks and rises again!” And another said, “It moves in an easterly direction. It disperses and covers the cup.” I did not trouble to ask what these omens meant. I had become certain of Enkidu’s restoration.

  They performed the incantation of Eridu on him. The priests fashioned a figure of Enkidu out of dough, and sprinkled the water of the incantation on it: water the life-giver, water the all-cleansing. By prayer and ritual they drew a demon from him into a pot of water, which they broke, spilling the demon into the fireplace. They took another demon out in a piece of string, which they tied in knots. They peeled an onion, throwing the peels one by one into the fire, demon after demon. There were many more such spells.

  Meanwhile the physician went about his work also, setting out his potions of cassia and myrtle and asafoetida and thyme, his bark of willow and fig and pear, his ground turtle-shell and powdered snake-skin, and the rest. Both salt and saltpeter figured in his healing draughts, and beer and wine, and honey, and milk. I noticed the exorcists looking sourly toward the doctor as he mixed his medicines, and he at them: no doubt there is some rivalry between them, each thinking that he alone is the true worker of the cure. But I know that one is useless without the other. The medicines ease pain and make swellings go down and soothe the chilled brow, but unless the demons be driven out as well, what good are the potions? It is the demons who bring the sickness in the first place.

  Because I knew that the illness of Enkidu came by decree of the gods, to punish us for our pride in killing Huwawa and destroying the Bull of Heaven, I felt I should take the medicines too. Perhaps the same disease lurked in me as in Enkidu, though I had been spared its effects by divine command; and perhaps Enkidu would not be rid of his affliction until I too had been purified. So whatever potion Enkidu drank I swallowed also, and foul-tasting stuff it was, most of it. I gagged and choked and retched over it, but I drank it all down, though often it left me dizzy the better part of an hour afterward. Did I achieve anything by doing that? Who knows? The ways of the gods are beyond our comprehension. The thoughts of a god are like deep waters: who can fathom them?

  Some days Enkidu seemed stronger. Some days he seemed weaker. For three days running he lay with his eyes closed, moaning and making no sense. Then he awakened and sent for me. He looked pale and strange. The fever had ravaged his flesh: he was hollow-cheeked and his skin hung loosely on his frame. He stared at me. His eyes were dark glowing stars ablaze in the caverns of his face. Suddenly I saw the unmistakable hand of death resting on his shoulder, and I wanted to weep.

  I felt utterly helpless. I the son of divine Lugalbanda, I the king, I the hero, I the god: for all my power, helpless. Helpless.

  He said, “I dreamed again last night, Gilgamesh.”

  “Tell me.”

  His voice was calm. He spoke as though he were twelve thousand leagues away. “I heard the heavens moan,” he said, “and I heard the earth respond. I stood alone and there was an awful being before me. His face was as dark as that of the black bird of the storm, and his talons were the talons of an eagle. He seized me and held me fast in his claws: I was crushed up against him, and I was smothering. Then he changed me, brother, he turned my arms to wings covered with feathers like a bird’s. He looked at me, and led me away, down to the House of Darkness, down to the dwelling of Ereshkigal the queen of hell: along the road from which there is no way back, down to the house which no one leaves. He took me into that dark place where the dwellers sit in darkness, and have dust for
their bread and clay for their meat.”

  I stared at him. I could say nothing.

  “I saw the dead ones. They are clad like birds, with wings for garments. They see no light, they dwell in darkness. I went into the House of Dust and and I saw the kings of the earth, Gilgamesh, the masters, the high rulers, and they were without their crowns. They were waiting on the demons like servants, bringing them baked meats, pouring cool water from the waterskins. I saw the priests and priestesses, the seers, the chanters, all the holy ones: what good had their holiness done them? They were servants.” His eyes were hard and glittering, like gleaming bits of obsidian. “Do you know who I saw? I saw Etana of Kish, who flew in heaven: there he was, down below! I saw gods there: they had horns on their crowns, they were preceded by thunder as they walked. And I saw Ereshkigal the queen of hell, and her recorder Belit-seri, who knelt down before her, marking the tally of the dead on a tablet. When she saw me she lifted her head and said, “Who has brought this one here?” Then I awoke, and I felt like a man who wanders alone in a terrible wasteland, or like one who has been arrested and seized and whose heart pounds with fright. O brother, brother, let some god come to your gate, and strike out my name and write his own in its place!”

  I was all pain, everywhere in my soul, and I think in my breast also, as I listened to this. I said, “I will pray to the great gods for you. It is a dire dream.”

  “I will die soon, Gilgamesh. You will be alone again.”

  What could I say? What could I do? Sorrow froze me. Alone again, yes. I had not forgotten those days of bleakness before the coming of my friend and brother. Alone again, as I had been before. Those words were like a knell to all my joy. I was chilled; I had no strength.

  He said, “How strange it will be for you, brother. You will journey here and you will journey there, and the time will come when you turn to me to say, Enkidu, do you see the elephant in the marsh, Enkidu, shall we scale that city’s walls? And I will not answer you. I will not be beside you. You will have to do those things without me.”

  There was a hand at my throat. “It will be very strange, yes.”

  He sat up a little way and turned his head toward me. “Your eyes look different today. Are you crying? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry before, brother.” He smiled. “I feel very little pain now.”

  I nodded. I knew why that was. Sorrow bent me like a weight of stone.

  Then the smile faded and in a harsh somber voice he said, “Do you know what I regret most, brother, apart from leaving you to be alone? I regret that because of the curse of the great goddess I must die in this shameful way, in my bed, wasting slowly away. The man who falls in battle dies a happy death: but I must die in shame.”

  That did not matter to me as it did to him. The thing that I struggled with then had nothing to do with such delicate matters as shame and pride. I was already bereaved while he still lived; I suffered his loss. It made no difference to me how or where that loss had been inflicted.

  “Death is death, however it may come,” I said, shrugging.

  “I would have had it come in a different way,” said Enkidu.

  I could say nothing. He was in the grip of death and we both knew it, and words would not alter anything now. The baru-priest Namennaduma had known it from the first, and had tried to tell me, but in my blindness I would not see the truth. Enkidu’s death had come to him; and Gilgamesh the king was helpless against it.

  27

  HE LINGERED ELEVEN DAYS MORE. His suffering increased each day, until I could barely bring myself to look upon him. But I stayed by his side until the end.

  At dawn on the twelfth day I saw his life leave him. At the last moment it seemed to me in the darkness that there was a faint red haze about him; the haze rose and drifted away, and all was dark. That was how I knew he was dead. I sat in silence, feeling the solitude come rolling in upon me. At first I did not weep, though I remember thinking that the wild ass and the gazelle must be weeping, now. All the wild creatures of the steppes were mourning Enkidu, I thought: even the bear, even the hyena, even the panther. The paths in the forests where he used to dwell would weep for him. The rivers, the streams, the hills.

  I reached out and touched him. Was he growing cold already? I could not tell. He seemed merely to be sleeping, but I knew this was not sleep. The fevers that had burned through him had left their mark on his features in these twelve days, making him gaunt and shrunken; but now he looked almost like his old self, calm, his face at ease. I put my hand to his heart. I could not feel it beating. I rose and drew the linen bedcloth over him, tenderly, as a husband might veil his bride. But I knew that this was no veil, it was a shroud. And then I wept. The tears came slowly at first, tears being very odd to me: I made a little sniveling sound, I felt a warmth at the corners of my eyes, my lips clamped themselves tight together. After a moment of this it was easier. Some dam within me broke, and my grief came freely. I paced back and forth before the couch like a lioness who has been deprived of her cubs. I tore at my hair. I ripped at my fine robes and flung them down as though they were unclean. I raged, I stormed, I roared. No one dared approach me. I was left alone with my terrible grief. I stayed beside the body all that day, and another, and another after that, until I saw that the servants of Ereshkigal were claiming him. I knew then that I had to give him up for burial.

  Therefore I gathered myself together. There was much that I needed to do.

  The parting-ritual, first. I went to the cabinet where such things are kept and brought forth a table made from elammaqu-wood, upon which I set a bowl of lapis and a bowl of carnelian. Into one I poured curds, into the other I poured honey; and I carried the table to the terrace of Utu and put it out into the sunlight as an offering. I said the proper words. When I spoke the great lamentation now it was without faltering.

  Then I called the elders of Uruk to me. They knew, of course, what had happened, and they wore the colors of mourning on their arms. They looked somber, but it was only on account of my loss, not for any loss of their own: Enkidu had meant nothing to them. That angered me some, that they had not perceived Enkidu’s virtues as I had perceived them. But they were only ordinary men: how could they have known, how could they have understood anything. They were ill at ease, seeing how great my grief was. They did not expect that of me, precisely because I was not an ordinary man. They had thought of me as a being beyond mere mortal things like grief: a god dwelling among them, or some such thing. Probably I had done much to foster that belief. But now my eyes were rimmed with red, my face was pale and swollen. They could not comprehend such a show of humanity in me. Gilgamesh the king, Gilgamesh the god—well, yes, but I was also Gilgamesh the man. I had suffered greatly in the splendid isolation of my kingship, though no one about me had realized that I suffered; and then I had found a friend; and now that friend had been stolen from me by the demons. Therefore I wept. What did they expect?

  I said, “I weep for my friend Enkidu. He was the axe at my side, the dagger in my belt, the shield I held before me. He was my brother. The loss is great. The pain cuts deep.”

  “All Uruk mourns your brother,” they told me. “The warriors weep. The people in the streets weep. The ploughmen and the harvesters weep, Gilgamesh.” But their words rang hollow to me. It was the old story: they were telling me what they thought I wanted to hear.

  “We will bury him as though he had been a king,” I said, so they would better comprehend what Enkidu had been.

  They looked startled at that, thinking perhaps that I might have it in mind to send my household staff, or even a few of the elders themselves, into the grave to keep Enkidu company. But I had no such thought. I understood death better now than I had on that day when the household of Lugalbanda had gone one by one under the earth into his tomb; I saw no merit in causing other brothers to weep, and sons and wives, for Enkidu’s sake. So I told them only to prepare for a ceremony of great splendor.

  I called out the finest of the city’s craftsmen
, the coppersmiths, the goldsmiths, the lapidaries. I ordered them to make a statue of my friend—the body of gold, the breast of lapis. I had the grave-makers dig a shaft in the open place beside the White Platform and line its walls with bricks of baked clay. I gathered together Enkidu’s weapons and the skins of the animals he had slain, to be buried with him; and also I provided rich treasure to be put beside him, cups and rings and alabaster goblets and jewels and such.

  I went to each temple in turn and formally asked the high priest to take part in the burial of Enkidu. The one temple that I did not visit was the one that I had built for the goddess. In truth it was proper and necessary for Inanna to be present at the funeral of any great man of Uruk; but I did not want her there. I held her responsible for Enkidu’s death: I was certain she had called his doom down upon him with her curses, in her anger at my overshadowing her power in the city. I would not have her at the funeral of the friend she had ripped from me; I would not give her the chance to gloat over the great wound she had inflicted on me. Let her stay huddled in her temple, I thought. No one but her handmaidens had seen her since the day of the loosing of the Bull of Heaven. That was how I preferred it to be.

  But it was not how she preferred it to be. On the day of the funeral I led the march from the palace to the grave-shaft, weeping all the while, and stood beside the priests and my mother as we made the sacrifices of oxen and goats and poured out the libations of milk and honey. The hunter Ku-ninda was with me; the sacred harlot Abisimti was with me also. They had known Enkidu even longer than I, and they mourned him nearly as deeply. Abisimti’s eyes were reddened with weeping, her garments were torn; Ku-ninda, stark and silent, stood with clenched fists and lips clamped tight, holding back fierce sorrow. I had them both aid me in performing the rites. Just as we were coming to the point in the service where the pure cool water is poured as a refreshment for the dead man as he goes to the House of Dust and Darkness, there was a stirring behind me, and I turned and saw Inanna amidst a little group of her priestesses.