Author: Douglas Galbi

After his two, week-long sex sessions with the female prostitute Shamhat, Enkidu establishes an intimate friendship with King Gilgamesh. Enkidu and Gilgamesh in this ancient Mesopotamian epic interact closely, affectionately, and sexually. Moreover, Enkidu is described as being like a wife to Gilgamesh. Modern scholars starkly define a man’s penis penetrating another person, whether woman or man, as necessarily establishing a dominant-submissive (“active” / “passive”) power hierarchy for the two. That modern gender ideology, which brutalizes men’s penises, contradicts the ancient epic of Enkidu and Gilgamesh. It also defies common human experience right up to this day. Enkidu doesn’t subordinate the female prostitute Shamhat to himself by having sex with her. Neither Gilgamesh nor Enkidu is dominant over the other. Both Enkidu and Gilgamesh become “civilized,” meaning they live more personally expansive and culturally complex lives, through their intimate friendship.

Gilgamesh is king of the ancient Mesopotamian city Uruk. Fundamental parts of Uruk are the city itself, its food supply, its source of building materials, and the temple of the goddess Ishtar:

One acre is the city,
one acre the date-grove,
one acre the clay-pit,
half an acre the temple of Ishtar:
three and half acres is the size of Uruk.

{ šār ālu šār kirâtu šār essû pitir bīt ištar
šalāšat šār u pitir uruk tamšīḫu }[1]

The palace of Uruk’s king isn’t mentioned in mapping the city. Ishtar’s temple, which elsewhere in this epic is described as Uruk’s sacred storehouse, is half the size of the city itself. The goddess Ishtar dominates Uruk. “Gilgamesh saw the deep, the foundation of the country {[gilgāmeš ša n]agba īmuru išdī mā[ti]}.” Unlike modern scholars, Gilgamesh surely understands that Uruk is woman-centric.

Gilgamesh is an extraordinary and unruly man. “Two-thirds god and one-third human {šittāšu ilum-ma šulultašu amēlūtu},” he is eighteen-feet tall and has a beard five-feet long. He is a powerful warrior, a courageous leader of soldiers, and a king who directs massive construction projects. Yet he is unsatisfied and disorderly: “day and night he behaves with fierce arrogance {[urr]a u [mū]ša ikaddir šēr[iš]}.” He keeps sons from their fathers and daughters from their mothers. That perhaps means that he doesn’t allow young persons to grow up according to normal role models. He sexually violates young brides, and perhaps young men as well. Gilgamesh, though living in the city of Uruk, isn’t civilized. The women of Uruk complain about him to goddesses and seek divine intervention. The Uruk men, as is typical for men, remain silent in their anguish.

The women’s complaints lead to the creation of the man Enkidu. Both the goddess Ishtar and the god Anu listen to the women’s complaints. Anu had the idea of creating another man like Gilgamesh. Ishtar and Anu give the goddess Aruru the opportunity to realize Anu’s idea. They urge her in creating another man:

Let him be equal to the storm of Gilgamesh’s heart,
let them rival each other, and so let Uruk rest.

{ ana ūm libbīšu lū maḫ[ir]
lištannanū-ma uruk liš[tapšiḫ] }

Responding to this request, Aruru creates Enkidu:

In the wild she created Enkidu, the hero,
an offspring of silence, knit strong by the war god Ninurta.
All his body is matted with hair.
He is adorned with tresses like a woman,
and his hairlocks grow as thickly as those of the grain goddess Nissaba.
He knows not at all a people, nor even a country.

{ ina ṣēri enkīdu ibtani qurāda
ilitti qūlti‡ kiṣir ninurta
šuʾʾur šārta kalu zumrīšu
uppuš‡ pēreta kīma sinništi
itqī pērtīšu uḫtannabā kīma nissaba
lā īde nišī‡ u mātam-ma }

Enkidu is silent, strong, and has body-hair like a man. He also has long hair on his head like a woman. He wears rustic clothes, feeds on grass with gazelles, and drinks water with a herd of non-human animals. He doesn’t live in a community of humans.

Living in the wild doesn’t mean that Enkidu is non-human or “uncivilized.” Humans are a type of animal. Enkidu associates harmoniously in the wild with a herd of non-human animals. His appreciation for non-human animals is a higher level of human consciousness than that among humans who don’t even recognize that they are animals having common life with non-human animals.

Being civilized, in the sense of having a personally expansive and culturally complex life, isn’t equivalent to living in a city. Nomads of the ancient Eurasian steppe had sophisticated culture. In ancient Arabia, small oasis settlements were technologically advanced. Enkidu himself is sophisticated enough to foil the hunter’s technology for capturing non-human animals. The prostitute Shamhat asks Enkidu:

You are handsome, Enkidu, you are just like a god —
why like the non-human animals do you range through the wild?

{ [dam]qāta enkīdu kīma ili tabašši
ammīni itti nammaššê tarappud ṣēra }

Why does Gilgamesh, who is handsome and like a god, rage through the city of Uruk like a wild bull? Gilgamesh’s behavior, like that of Enkidu, isn’t determined by where he lives.

In significant ways, Enkidu lives a personally expansive and sophisticated life with non-human animals. Enkidu and a hunting man come face-to-face at a water-hole. The hunter is afraid of Enkidu, probably because Enkidu has a different appearance from that of other men. Enkidu isn’t afraid of the hunter. Enkidu thus has a more sophisticated understanding of human than does the hunter, who fears a conspecific different from himself. The hunter also complains to his father that Enkidu is impeding his hunting. Men hunting non-human animals in the wild surely was understood in ancient Mesopotamia as an aspect of the natural order. Enkidu challenges the human-assumed predator-prey order of the wild. That’s sophisticated behavior.

The human female prostitute Shamhat captures Enkidu through his human sexual desire. When the hunter complains to Gilgamesh that Enkidu is impeding his hunting in the wild, Gilgamesh advises the hunter to treat Enkidu sexually like a dog:

Go, O hunter, take with you Shamhat the prostitute.
When the herd comes down to the water-hole,
she should strip off her clothing to reveal her charms.
He will see her and will go up to her.
The herd will be estranged from him, though he grew up in its presence.

{ alik ṣayyādu ittīka ḫarimta šamḫat urū-ma
enūma būlu isa[nniq]u ana mašqî
šī lišḫuṭ lubūšīš[ā-ma lip]tâ kuzubša
immaršī-ma iṭ[e]ḫḫâ ana šâši
inakkiršu būlšu š[a i]rbû eli ṣērīšu }

The hunter and Shamhat set this crude trap for Enkidu. Through the eyes of Shamhat, Enkidu in this situation is a savage:

Then Shamhat saw him, the man-savage,
a murderous male from the midst of the wild.

{ īmuršū-ma šamḫat lullâ amēla
eṭla šaggāšâ ša qabalti ṣēri }

In the wild before he meets Shamhat, Enkidu isn’t a murderous man. Apparently a vegetarian, Enkidu eats grass and protects animals from the hunter. Shamhat, who also describes Enkidu as handsome and like a god, here assimilates the sexually aroused Enkidu to dangerous non-human male animals.

Even sophisticated, civilized men might sexually desire a naked, beautiful, warmly receptive woman. The hunter thus urges Shamhat to set her crude snare for Enkidu:

There he is, Shamhat! Show your breasts,
spread your legs so he may see your charms.
Do not be afraid — take in his scent.
He will see you and come to you.
Spread your clothing so that he may lie on top of you,
and treat the man to the work of a woman.
His lust will caress and embrace you.
Then the herd will be estranged from him, though he grew up in its presence.

{ annû šū šamḫat rummî kirimmīki
ūrki pitê-ma kuzubki lilqe
ē tašḫutī leqê napīssu
immarkī-ma iṭeḫḫâ ana kâši
lubūšīki muṣṣî-ma elīki liṣlal
epšīšū-ma lullâ šipir sinništi
inakkiršu būlšu ša irbû ina ṣērīšu
dādūšu‡ iḫabbubū‡ eli ṣērīki }

Dogs have a much more capable sense of smell than do humans. In treating Enkidu like a dog, Shamhat herself uses her sense of smell and thus associates herself with non-human animals.[2] For a week their lives narrow to having sex:

For six days and seven nights, Enkidu, erect, had sex with Shamhat.

{ šeššet urrī (u) sebe mušâti enkīdu tebī-ma šamḫat ireḫḫi }

Living organisms very different from humans have been sexually reproducing on earth for more than a billion years. Sex isn’t highly refined behavior, especially sex with a prostitute. Nonetheless, a highly civilized man might readily be lured into a week or two of sex with an attractive prostitute.

Sex with the prostitute Shamhat alienates Enkidu from non-humans animals. Enkidu in the hunter’s eyes is frightening and disruptive to the right order of the wild. After Enkidu’s week-long sex session with Shamhat, the non-human animals fear Enkidu as the hunter does:

After he was sated with her delights,
he turned his face toward the herd.
The gazelles saw Enkidu and started running,
the animals of the wild moved away from his person,
Enkidu had defiled his body that was so pure.
His legs stood still, though the herd was on the move.
Enkidu was diminished, his running was not as before,
but he was aware, made wide in understanding.

{ ultu išbû lalâša
pānīšu ištakan ana‡ ṣēr būlīšu
īmurāšū-ma enkīdu irappudā ṣabâtu
būl ṣēri ittesi ina zumrīšu
ultaḫḫi enkīdu ullula pagaršu
ittazizzā birkāšu ša illikā būlšu
umtaṭṭi enk[īdu u]l kī ša pāni lasānšu
u šū īši u[zna] rapaš ḫasīsa }

In ancient Mesopotamia, dogs and other non-human animals didn’t have week-long sex sessions with human prostitutes. By his sexual intercourse with Shamhat, Enkidu becomes marked as other in the eyes of the non-human animals. Moreover, he recognizes that they now regard him as other. He legs figuratively stand still because now he understands that he can no longer be with non-human animals as he was before. Enkidu’s new sense of otherness in relation to non-human animals doesn’t make him into a human. He was a human before having sex with Shamhat.[3] Enkidu’s new sense of otherness in relation to non-human animals diminishes him as a human animal.

Translators seem to have projected onto the epic of Enkidu and Gilgamesh ancient Greek philosophic understanding of human reason. Above I modified a key word in the eminent Assyriologist Andrew R. George’s translation. Here is George’s translation:

Enkidu was diminished, his running was not as before,
but he had reason, he [was] wide of understanding.

{ umtaṭṭi enk[īdu u]l kī ša pāni lasānšu
u šū īši u[zna] rapaš ḫasīsa }

The Akkadian term uzna, here in parallel with hasīsu, has a bodily referent “ear.” Its meaning encompasses “awareness, attention” and “wisdom.” In modern English, the ancient Greek thought of Plato, Aristotle, and others has shaped “reason” to be an abstract intellectual good distinctive to humans. That “reason” has no relevance to this ancient Mesopotamian text. Sophus Helle’s recent, much lauded poetic translation underscores the projection of “reason” onto the text. Helle rendered these two verses as:

Enkidu was weakened and could not keep up,
but now he could reason and think.[4]

This translation suggests that a week of sex with Shamhat made Enkidu physically weak and unable to “keep up.” That probably wasn’t the meaning of the ancient text. The ancient text probably also didn’t mean that a week of sex with Shamhat makes Enkidu able to “reason and think.” Western intellectual history best explains that peculiar interpretation.

Parallels and contrasts in half-verses help to clarify the meaning of uzna in the story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh. The immediately previous two verses have half-verses with contrasting ideas within each verse: defiled / pure, and stationary / moving. The subsequent two verses have a contraction and an expansion across their half-verses:

Enkidu was diminished, his running was not as before,
but he was aware, made wide of understanding.

{ umtaṭṭi enk[īdu u]l kī ša pāni lasānšu
u šū īši u[zna] rapaš ḫasīsa }

Moreover, across these two verses, the half-verses contrast chiasmically: diminished / made wide, and bodily action / bodily sensation. The relevant bodily sensation is Enkidu’s awareness of the herd’s fear of him. He is wide in understanding in now understanding himself as a human animal other than non-human animals.

The Genesis story of Eve and Adam apparently has mis-informed understanding of Enkidu. Eve and Adam ate fruit from the tree of knowledge. Eating that fruit didn’t give them knowledge understood as a product of reasoning and thinking. Eve and Adam eating the fruit, in Christian interpretation, made humans sinful and in need of redemption. Eve and Adam thus became sinful humans like all other humans after them. After having sex with Shamhat, Enkidu becomes more like other humans in Uruk in his food, drink, and clothing. Becoming superficially more like other humans in Uruk doesn’t significantly “humanize” Enkidu. The Christian sense of Eve and Adam’s significantly transforming sin shouldn’t be projected back, with reversed moral valence, onto Enkidu having sex with Shamhat.[5]

The Genesis story of Eve and Adam, read closely, suggests how persons in ancient Mesopotamia understood Enkidu’s story. The serpent, who isn’t a trustworthy reporter within the Genesis story, urged Eve to mistrust God about the tree’s fruit:

For God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will become like gods knowing good and evil.

[6]{ כִּי יֹדֵעַ אֱלֹהִים כִּי בְּיֹום אֲכָלְכֶם מִמֶּנּוּ וְנִפְקְחוּ
עֵינֵיכֶם וִהְיִיתֶם כֵּאלֹהִים יֹדְעֵי טֹוב וָרָע׃ }

“Your eyes will be opened” is a matter of awareness. Knowing good and evil indicates an ancient understanding of wisdom. Such wisdom is far from today’s understanding of “reason and think.” Eve and Adam ate the tree’s fruit:

And the eyes of the two were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

{ וַתִּפָּקַחְנָה עֵינֵי שְׁנֵיהֶם וַיֵּדְעוּ כִּי עֵירֻמִּם הֵם }

Prior to eating the fruit, they are naked, and their eyes are not literally closed. Coming to know that they are naked isn’t a matter of gaining ability to reason and think. Eating the fruit changes Eve and Adam’s self-perception. They see themselves in a new way. That’s similar to how Enkidu’s sexual activity with Shamhat changes his relation to non-human animals.

After being ensnared by her alluring female body, Enkidu listens attentively to Shamhat the prostitute as if she were a wise teacher. She had been sent by Gilgamesh to trap Enkidu. She urges Enkidu to go to Gilgamesh. That isn’t the advice of a friend. Enkidu’s heart seeks a friend:

She talked to him, and what she said found favor.
His wise heart was seeking a friend.

{ ītamâššum-ma magir qabâša
mūdû libbašu išeʾʾâ ibra }[7]

Sex with Shamhat doesn’t necessarily make Enkidu’s heart wise. Perhaps Enkidu’s alienation from non-human animals makes his heart wise about his need for intimate human friendship. Alternately, his heart may have always been wise. In any case, Enkidu doesn’t initially seek to be a friend to Gilgamesh:

Come, Shamhat, take me along
to the sacred temple, the holy dwelling of Anu and Ishtar,
where Gilgamesh is perfect in strength,
and lords it over the menfolk like a wild bull.
I will challenge him, for my strength is mighty,
I will vaunt myself in Uruk, saying “I am the mightiest!”
There I shall change the way things are ordered.
The one born in the wild is mighty, he has strength.

{ alkī‡ šamḫat qirênni yâši
ana bīti elli qudduši mūšab ānu ištar
ašar gilgāmeš gitmālu emūqī
u kī rīmi ugdaššaru eli eṭlūti
anāku lugrīšum-ma dan? …
[lultar]riḫ? ina libbi uruk anākū-mi dannu
[…] … šīmata? unakkar
[ša in]a ṣēri iʾʾaldu dān emūqī īšu }

Shamhat tells Enkidu to abandon his intention, for Gilgamesh is stronger than him and beloved of the sun god Shamash. Shamhat thus implicitly characterizes Enkidu as inferior to Gilgamesh. She says nothing about Enkidu and Gilgamesh becoming intimate friends.

Shamhat, however, tells Enkidu about Gilgamesh’s dreams and how Gilgamesh’s mother interpreted them. According to the interpretation of Gilgamesh’s mother, Gilgamesh dreamed that he would meet a companion. That companion would be Gilgamesh’s equal, and Gilgamesh would love that companion as a wife. Shamhat perhaps knows of Gilgamesh’s dreams and his mother’s interpretation of them through Ishtar, twin to the all-knowing god Shamash. She doesn’t tell Enkidu that he will be Gilgamesh’s companion. Perhaps she doesn’t know. In any case, Shamhat isn’t the friend that Enkidu’s heart seeks.

Enkidu realizes Gilgamesh’s dreams of a self-similar companion through experience with him. After coming to Uruk, Enkidu wrestles with King Gilgamesh to prevent him from having sex with another man’s bride. Gilgamesh unilaterally stops their fierce wrestling. Enkidu then praises him, and they kiss and become friends. Gilgamesh’s mother Ninsun initially opposes Gilgamesh’s friendship with Enkidu.[8] However, when Gilgamesh asks her to bless his plan to go with Enkidu to slay the wicked beast Humbaba in the Cedar Forest, she adopts Enkidu as a son. Working closely together, Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill Humbaba and cut down the Cedar Forest. Together they also kill the raging Bull of Heaven. They become friends bonded through triumphing as partners in arduous, dangerous ordeals.

After having sex with Shamhat, Enkidu is more violent toward non-humans. After sex with Shamhat and before going to Uruk to meet Gilgamesh, Enkidu with his new awareness takes up the job of watchman for herdsmen:

He put on a garment, becoming like a warrior.
He took up a weapon to do battle with lions.
When the shepherds lay down at night,
he massacred all the wolves, he chased off all the lions.
The senior herdsmen slept.
Enkidu was their watchman, a man wide-awake.

{ ilbaš libšam kīma muti(m) ibašši
ilqe kakkašu lābī ugerre
issakpū r[ēʾ]û mūšiātim
uttappiṣ ba[r]barī lābī uktaššid
ittīlū nāqi[d]ū rabbûtum
enkīdu maṣṣaršunu awīlum ērum }

Before having sex with Shamhat, Enkidu peacefully associated with a herd of wild animals. After having sex with Shamhat, Enkidu works for humans who keep non-human animals as resources for humans. He thus takes a controlling position relative to animals he once associated with communally. Moreover, Enkidu massacres wolves and lions not for a stated cause, but apparently because he views those animals as categorically human enemies. Such action is uncivilized for ecologically enlightened humans.

Enkidu vociferously rejects mercy for the defeated, supplicating Humbaba. Gilgamesh proposes slaying Humbaba, but vacillates about killing him when he’s defeated and supplicating. Mercy for a defeated, supplicating enemy has long been ethical practice. Enkidu, however, passionately urges killing Humbaba out of concern for solidarity with gods and for social status:

Enkidu opened his mouth to speak, saying to Gilgamesh:
“My friend, there is Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Forest.
Finish him, slay him, do away with his power!
Humbaba, guardian of the Forest —
finish him, slay him, do away with his power
before Enlil, foremost of the gods, hears otherwise!
The great gods could be angry with us,
the gods Enlil in Nippur, Shamash in Larsa.
Establish for ever a fame that endures —
how Gilgamesh killed ferocious Humbaba!”

{ enkīdu pâšu īpuš-ma iqabbi izakkara ana gilgā[meš]
ibrī ḫumbāba maṣṣar qišti [erēni]
gummiršu nēršu ṭēnšu ḫulli[q]
ḫumbāba maṣṣar qišti gumm[iršu] nēršu ṭēnšu ḫul[liq]
lām išmû ašarēdu e[llil]
libbātīni imallû il[ū rabûtu]
ellil ina nippuri šamaš ina [larsa …]
šuziz-ma dārâ […]
kī gilgāmeš ḫumb[āba …] }[9]

In gynocentric society, women are the primary guardians of divine solidarity and the most influential judges of men’s social status. Before he encountered the prostitute Shamhat, the wild man Enkidu had no concern about the gods or social status. When Enkidu refuses mercy for him, Humbaba weeps and appeals to the god Shamash. Humbaba curses Enkidu and Gilgamesh:

May both of them not grow old together!

{ ay ulabbirū kilallān }

In Enkidu’s socialized mind, social concerns outweigh mercy’s imperative. That socialization imperils Enkidu’s intimate friendship with Gilgamesh.

The leading god Enlil declares that Enkidu must die because Enkidu and Gilgamesh together killed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. Death thus will separate the intimate friends Enkidu and Gilgamesh. Falling delirious in mortal sickness, Enkidu rages against the massive door he built for Enlil’s temple in Nippur. Enkidu built that door from a huge, matchless cedar he and Gilgamesh cut down in the Cedar Forest. Enlil’s temple connects the earth to another world, the world above. Death will take Enkidu to another world, the world below. Enkidu disparages the door:

Enkidu raised his eyes,
talking with the door as if it were human,
“O door of the woods, not being perceptive,
you don’t have the awareness that I have.”

{ enkīdu […] ittaši [īnīšu]
itti dalti [ī]tammâ kī […]
dalat ḫalbi [in]a lā … […]
bašât uznī ša lā ibašš[û …] }

The door of Enlil’s temple doesn’t understand the importance of intimate friends being together. Enkidu condemns the door as disloyal to him. He wishes that he could tear it down. He cries in despair.

Gilgamesh cries in sympathy with Enkidu. Gilgamesh, however, cannot understand why Enkidu is speaking to the door:

You who had awareness and understanding —
do you now speak madness?
My friend, why did your heart talk profanities?

{ [ša u]znī ṭēma rašû šanâtī-ma […] … […]
[amm]īni ibrī idbub libbaka šanâti […] }

Here awareness is again linked to personal relation. As Enkidu’s friend, Gilgamesh offers to plead to the gods on behalf of Enkidu. Enkidu, however, explains that Enlil never changes his decrees.

Enkidu curses the hunter and Shamhat. The hunter and Shamhat together conspired to take Enkidu out of the wilderness. Enkidu doesn’t value being “civilized,” in the sense of residing in Uruk and eating, drinking, and wearing clothes like the inhabitants of that city. What matters to Enkidu is being with his intimate friend Gilgamesh. Death will take Gilgamesh from Enkidu. Their friendship will thus fail. Enkidu curses the hunter for that failed friendship:

As for him, that hunter, the trapper-man,
who did not let me be a match for my friend,
may the hunter not be a match for his friend!

{ [šū?] ṣayyādu ḫabbilu amēlu
ša lā ušamṣânni mala ibrīya
[ṣayy]ādu ay imṣâ mala ibrīšu }

Enkidu curses Shamhat to a lonely, harsh life as a prostitute:

May you not establish a household to your delight,
and never reside amid a family.
May you not sit in the young women’s room.
May the ground besmirch your fine-looking garment.
May the drunkard smear with dust your festive gown.
May you not acquire a house with loved ones and lovely things,
for your home shall be a potter’s clay pit.
You shall have neither bedroom, nor family shrine, nor hearth.
No bed or chair or table, such as people take pride in, shall be found in your room.
May the bed for your delight be a bench.
May the junction of the highway be where you sit.
May the ruined houses be where you sleep. May the lee of the city wall be where you stand.

{ [ē t]ēpušī bīt lalêki
[lā? t]arammî? […] ša taḫûtīki
[ē tu]šbī i[na maštaki?] ša ardāti
[ṣubātk]i damq[a qaq]qa[ru] lišaḫḫi
[lubār isinnātīki šakru] ina [turbuʾ]i liballil
[ē taršî bīt …] u banâti
[…] … ša paḫāri
[…] … mimma ē taršî
[eršu kuss]û paššūru šamuḫ nišī ay innadi ina bītīki
[dinnûtki ša l]alêm-ma lū dakkannu
[išpallurtu š]a ḫarrāni lū mūšabūki
[ḫurbātu lū m]aṣallūki ṣilli dūri lū manzāzūki }[10]

If Enkidu will not have his intimate friend Gilgamesh, neither will the hunter or Shamhat have an intimate friend.

The god Shamash pacifies Enkidu by prophesying Gilgamesh’s continuing friendship and care for him. After reminding Enkidu that Shamhat brought him to Gilgamesh, his lordly “companion {tappû},” Shamash declares:

Your friend and brother Gilgamesh now
will lay you on a great bed,
he will lay you on a bed of honor,
he will set you on a restful seat, the seat to his left.
The princes of the earth will kiss your feet.
He will make the people of Uruk weep for you, he will make them sob for you,
those people so prosperous he will fill full of grief for you.
After you are gone, he himself will bear matted locks of mourning.
He will put on the skin of a lion and go roaming the wild.

{ [en]innā-ma gilgāmeš ibri talīmīka
[ušn]ālka-ma ina mayyāli rabî
[in]a mayyāl taknî ušnālkā-ma
[uše]ššebka šubta nēḫta šubat šumēli
[malk]ū ša qaqqari unaššaqū šēpīka
[ušabk]âkka nišī ša uruk ušadmamakka
[šamḫāti] nišī umallâkka dulla
[u š]ū arkīka ušaššâ malâ pagaršu
[iltabbi]š maški labbim-ma irappud ṣ[ēra] }

Shamhat took Enkidu from the wild to Gilgamesh in the city of Uruk. In his grief for Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh will go from the city into the wild. Dressed in lionskin, Gilgamesh will appear as a wild animal, as Enkidu appeared in the wild.[11]

Awareness that Gilgamesh will go to Enkidu’s origin placates the dying Enkidu. Enkidu then prophesies an auspicious life for the prostitute Shamhat. He prophesies that her life will conclude in intimate friendship:

May governors and noblemen love you.
May he one league distant from you slap his thigh.
May he two leagues distant from you shake out his locks.
May no soldier be slow to undo his belt for you.
May he give you obsidian, lapis lazuli, and gold,
and multiple earrings shall be gifts to you.
To a man whose household is well off, whose storage bins are heaped high,
may Ishtar, most able of the gods, send you.
For you may he leave his first wife, mother of seven!

{ [šakkanakk]ū u rubû lirʾamūk[i]
[ša ištēn bēr l]imḫaṣ šaparšu
š[a šinā bēr l]inassisa qimmassu
[ay iklâkk]i rēdû miserrašu lipṭurki
li[ddinki] ṣurra uqnâ u ḫurāṣa
in[ṣabt]ū tutturrû lū nidinki
ana eṭl[i ša kunnū] kunūnūšu išpikkūšu šapkū
i[štar lēʾâ]t ilī lušēribki kâši
[aššumīki li]nnezib ummi sebetti ḫīrtu }

After crudely ensnaring Enkidu for the hunter according to Gilgamesh’s counsel, Shamhat in taking Enkidu to Gilgamesh lead him to one who became an intimate friend. Reminded by Shamash that Gilgamesh will continue to sympathize with him after his death, Enkidu no longer curses Shamhat with the loneliness that he had felt.

Gilgamesh’s grief over losing Enkidu defies cultural boundaries. In Gilgamesh’s telling, grief for Enkidu’s death encompasses all of creation — hills and mountains to grasslands and rivers, both young and old persons, and herdsmen and plowmen and priestesses. Summoning up all that grief is Gilgamesh’s grief:

Hear me, O young men, hear me!
Hear me, O elders of populous Uruk, hear me!
I mourn Enkidu, my friend.
Like a professional mourning woman I lament bitterly.
The axe at my side, in which my arm trusted,
the sword at my belt, the shield in front of me;
who held …
my festive garment, the belt of my delight —
a wicked wind has risen up against me and robbed me.
O my friend Enkidu, mule on the run, donkey of the uplands, panther of the wild,
my Enkidu, mule on the run, donkey of the uplands, panther of the wild!
We joined forces and climbed the uplands,
we seized the Bull of Heaven and killed it,
we destroyed Humbaba, who dwelt in the Cedar Forest.
Now what sleep has seized you?
You have become unconscious and cannot hear me!

{ [š]imâʾinni eṭlūtu šimânni yâši
šimâʾinni šībūt āli rapši uruk šimâʾinni yâši
anāku ana enk[īdu ibrī]ya abakki
anāku ana ibrīya enkīdu abakki
kīma lallarīti [un]abba ṣarpiš
ḫaṣṣin(u) aḫī[ya tukl]at idīya
namṣār(u) šippīya [arīt]u ša pānīya
mukīl … […]
lubār isinnātīya nēbeḫ lalêya
[š]āru [l]emnu itbâm-ma ī[tekm]anni‡ yâši
ibrī kūdannu ṭardu akkannu ša šadî nimru ša ṣēri
enkīdu (ibrī) kūdannu ṭardu akkannu [ša šadî nimru ša ṣēri]
ša ninnemdū-ma‡ nīlû šadâ
niṣbatū-ma alâ [nināru]
nušalpitu ḫumbāba ša ina qišti [erēni ašbu]
nušalpitu ḫumbaba šar qišti erēni dannu […]
(eninna) mīnû šittu (ša) iṣbat(ū)ka kâši
taʾʾadram-ma ul taše[mmânni yâši] }

Gilgamesh, a king and a warrior, mourns as much as a professional mourning woman. Enkidu was to Gilgamesh like his weapons and his festive garment. The epithet series mule / donkey / panther plausibly characterizes Enkidu as having attributes from domesticated to wild. Gilgamesh mourns his all-encompassing intimate friendship with Enkidu. He cannot even speak to him.

Gilgamesh’s grief at Enkidu’s death emphasizes their intimate friendship. Enkidu had been like a wife to Gilgamesh. That’s recognized in one of Gilgamesh’s acts of mourning:

He covered his friend’s face, veiling it like a bride’s.

{ iktum-ma ibra kīma kallati pānuš }

Gilgamesh places Enkidu’s body on a great bed, a bed of honor, a place at Gilgamesh’s side. Gilgamesh makes many, luxurious offerings for Enkidu in the underworld. Gilgamesh also makes rich offerings to many underworld goddesses and gods. His intention in offering is insistently repeated:

May she welcome my friend and walk at his side!

{ ana pān ibrīya l[ū ḫadât-ma idāšu] lillik }

Enkidu will no longer have Gilgamesh at his side. But Gilgamesh makes offerings so that Enkidu might at least have at his side the most important figures of the underworld. That’s culturally complex, “civilized” behavior.

The story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh has long been misinterpreted as telling of Enkidu being “humanized” and “civilized” through intercourse with the prostitute Shamhat. In the Yale Oriental Series in 1920, scholars analyzing the Old Babylonian version explained:

The story then continues with the description of the coming of Enkidu, conducted by the woman to the outskirts of Erech {Uruk}, where food is given him. The main feature of the incident is the conversion of Enkidu to civilized life. Enkidu, who hitherto had gone about naked, is clothed by the woman. Instead of sucking milk and drinking from a trough like an animal, food and strong drink are placed before him, and he is taught how to eat and drink in human fashion.[12]

Specifics of how one eats and drinks make for a culture-specific, superficial understanding of being human and being civilized. Within this superficial interpretation, one finds a peculiar sense of women directing men, who of course naturally lack human dignity, into a normative, bourgeois “career and destiny”:

the story of Enkidu’s gradual transformation from savagery to civilized life is continued, with stress upon his introduction to domestic ways with the wife chosen or decreed for him, and with work as part of his fate. All this has no connection with Gilgamesh, and it is evident that the tale of Enkidu was originally an independent tale to illustrate the evolution of man’s career and destiny, how through intercourse with a woman he awakens to the sense of human dignity, how he becomes accustomed to the ways of civilization, how he passes through the pastoral stage to higher walks of life, how the family is instituted, and how men come, to be engaged in the labors associated with human activities.

A highly regarded scholarly work published in 1982, before Enkidu’s second week of sex with Shamhat was discovered, further explained how Shamhat humanized and civilized Enkidu:

In arguing that Enkidu was modeled not on the nomad but on primordial man, whose culture was that of the animal, we perceive the contrast as one between human culture and its absence. Enkidu is first civilized by the harlot Shamhat, who is, it is true, representative of Uruk, called elsewhere “city of courtesans, hierodules, and prostitutes” … and he is subsequently brought to the city. But his civilizing experience takes place before he arrives there, and it is summed up in the phrase “he became human” or “like a human” … Uruk appears in the epic as the locus of human culture — perhaps even the very best of human culture. What is stressed through the epic is the human-ness, rather than the urbanity, of that culture.[13]

In another ancient Mesopotamian myth, Nergal and Ereshkigal had sex for six days in their first meeting. That wasn’t necessary to humanize or civilize either of them.[14] How exactly does Shamhat and Enkidu’s six days of sex humanize Enkidu? That’s merely a matter for speculation:

What Enkidu apparently acquired from intercourse with the harlot was the intellectual potential to adopt human ways and the desire to seek human companionship. How this was brought about by intercourse we can only speculate. It is possible that a week of intimacy with a human made Enkidu realize where he belonged.

Men are struggling in the modern education system: in the U.S., nearly 50% more women than men currently receive post-secondary educational degrees.[15] To increase men’s intellectual potential, perhaps educational authorities should arrange for men students no-cost, week-long sex sessions with prostitutes. While such educational policy for college men hasn’t been seriously considered, the dominant interpretation of the Epic of Gilgamesh right up to 2018 starkly declared the relevant effect:

{Enkidu’s} transformation from animal to human is accomplished through a sexual initiation with a woman sent into the wilderness by Gilgamesh.[16]

According to this dominant interpretation, merely one week-long sex-session with the female prostitute Shamhat transformed Enkidu into a superior being.

After the discovery in 2018 of Enkidu’s second week-long sex-session with the female prostitute Shamhat, one might wonder how Shamhat could humanize and civilize Enkidu twice within a short period. Scholars, however, have rationalized both sex sessions into the dominant paradigm of culturally superior woman humanizing and civilizing naturally brutish man. Andrew George, the most eminent living scholar of the story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh, discovered the second sex session. He rationalized it in a scholarly way closely connnected to textual specifics:

Already transformed from unconscious semi-animal to self-conscious man, Enkidu needs no seduction second time around, so the second week of intercourse is more perfunctorily told. More important for the story is that it reinforces his desire to go to Uruk, in response this time to the prospect not of locking horns with Gilgameš but of finding there a role in men’s society. The idea introduced here is of Enkidu joining the urban social order that the gods established when they created kings to rule men.

It is a mark of the poem’s profundity that the two contrasting futures placed in Enkidu’s mind by the prostitute, each after a sexual marathon, are eventually reconciled in the narrative. In Uruk Gilgameš and Enkidu meet head on like bulls (OB II 219 // 224 kīma le’im), and fight each other to a standstill without an apparent winner; but then Enkidu acknowledges Gilgameš’s superiority as one predestined to be king by the god Enlil (OB II 238–240), and thereby implicitly accepts his own subordinate position. The moment is again informed by mythological thought: Babylonian folklore held that awīlum “human being” and šarrum “king” were distinct categories, created separately (e. g. VS 24, 92, ed. Mayer 1987). Enkidu’s acknowledgement that Gilgameš is the latter kind, and so he himself must be the former, completes the story of his transition from wild man to socialized human, and deftly and perceptively concludes this poet’s reflections on the ascent of man.[17]

Much textual evidence in the Standard Babylonian version indicates that Gilgamesh and Enkidu regarded each other as equals.[18] Moreover, believing that the king essentially differs from other men is autocratic socialization. Perhaps being humanized and civilized in ancient Mesopotamia meant coming to believe that the ruler has a divine right to rule. That’s now generally regarded as readily accepting, without independent reason and thought, elite propaganda. That doesn’t make for an appealing understanding of being “civilized.”

Elite propaganda can take culturally sophisticated forms. Sophus Helle’s popular presentation of Andrew George’s scholarly finding provides a more abstract rationalization of men’s natural inferiority to women and the need for two sex sessions with the prostitute Shamhat:

The first time Shamhat invites Enkidu to come to Uruk she describes Gilgamesh as superb in strength and horned like a bull. Enkidu readily accepts her invitation, saying that he will come to Uruk – but only to challenge Gilgamesh and usurp his power. “I shall change the order of things,” he declares. “The one born in the wild is mighty, he has strength.” Though Enkidu has learned to plan and speak like a human being, his way of thinking is still very much that of a wild animal: he immediately sees Gilgamesh as an alpha male, a rival bull to be defeated. The only thing that matters to him at this point is strength and domination.[19]

In this account, Enkidu’s first sex session with Shamhat gives him the ability to think and speak like a human, Enkidu, however, thinks in a way that intellectuals today disdain. Enkidu wants to change the order of things through his physical strength, rather than by writing learned treatises. He thus needs another sex session with Shamhat:

But the second time Shamhat invites him to Uruk, after they have had sex for yet another week, he sees things differently. Shamhat says that she will lead him to the temple {of the goddess Ishtar}, home of Anu, the god of heaven. Rather than change the order of things, Enkidu is to find a place for himself in society: “Where men are engaged in labours of skill, you, too, like a true man, will make a place for yourself.” Enkidu, now wiser after a second bout of civilizing sex, is ready to accept this invitation. “He heard her words, he consented to what she said: a woman’s counsel struck home in his heart.” He has understood the value of urban life, accepting the fact that human society is not all about domination and strength, but also about cooperation and skill. Each human being is part of a larger social fabric, where everyone must find their own place.

This interpretation thus concludes with a moralization comparable with the most bland and tendentious ones in the medieval story collection Deeds of the Romans {Gesta Romanorum}. Taking one’s place in the social fabric presumably includes honoring and respecting the dogmas of duly accredited and authoritatively certified human superiors, e.g. kings, professors, and authors of books published by prestigious university presses. This way of thinking apparently is necessary for urban life / human society / the social fabric.[20] It’s perhaps subsumed under the “cooperation and skill” needed to be regarded as respectable and orthodox.

Modern obfuscatory gender ideology grossly distorts understanding of Enkidu and Gilgamesh. Across cultures and history, men’s penises have commonly been brutalized. To this day, penal systems around the world vastly disproportionately punish persons with penises. In ancient Mesopotamia, a Middle Assyrian law specifies harsh punishment for a man who sexually penetrates another man with his penis, but no punishment for the man being sexually penetrated. The man using his penis sexually is punished through being sexual penetrated, as if that cannot be pleasurable, and then castrated, a typical act of sexual violence against men.[21] Despite authoritative promulgations to the contrary, such laws indicate women’s sexual privilege, not women’s social inferiority.

Like Tycho Brahe formulating an intricate theory of epicycles to rationalize the earth being at the center of the universe, scholars considering gender in the story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh have engaged in extraordinary intellectual contortions. Respectable scholars must uphold the brutalization of men’s penises and the myth of patriarchy. Scholars thus conceive of the penis as a tool of domination and make outlandish claims about what’s inconceivable:

in the Mesopotamian worldview, male-male sex was necessarily defined in terms of an active-passive dichotomy that is perceived as inappropriate between two comrades or equals. Indeed, it seems that in Mesopotamian thought, as in the Greco-Roman world, the idea of any sexual union, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, between equals or peers was “virtually inconceivable.”[22]

In ancient Rome, Propertius had sex with Cynthia, who dominated him. In ancient Baghdad, all-mighty caliphs were subservient to the slave girls with whom they had sex. Nonetheless, one should be able to conceive of a husband-wife couple in ancient Mesopotamia living a conjugal partnership between equals within their own conception of human status. Lacking such common-sense imagination leads to a literary problem:

how can a text that depicts the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu in terms that all commentators admit are, at least to some degree, homoerotic, also be a text in which Gilgamesh and Enkidu are represented as equals, given that an egalitarian sexual relationship is not conceivable within the cultural context in which the Gilgamesh Epic was generated?

The obvious answer is that an egalitarian sexual relationship involving a man’s penis was conceivable within the cultural context that produced the epic of Enkidu and Gilgamesh. Men’s penises actually don’t typically function as an instrument of domination. Superficial, men-demonizing gender ideology has obscured that reality among modern, benighted scholars.

Gender mystification in support of dominant ideology has reached epic proportions in interpreting the story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh. In order to uphold today’s orthodox dogma about gender, scholars must profess that women, but not men, lack power and are silenced. What that actually means can be seen in practice:

The epic is a story that was told by men to men about men, with “women functioning as supporting and subsidiary characters in the cast,” in the words of the Assyriologist Rivkah Harris.[23]

This appeal to an authority (an eminent female Assyriologist) in characterizing the literary genre of epic fails independent reading and thinking. Human stories that endure typically are, explicitly or implicitly, about women and men. Women are the directors of epic. They encourage and judge epic violence against men. After his appeal to higher authority, the author then moves to contradiction and strangeness:

Women stand at the outer edges of the epic, but ironically, those edges can be a powerful place to be. Precisely because women are excluded from the male sphere of decisions, they hold a strange power over it. This is the logic of an anxious male privilege. To maintain an exclusive grasp on power, men restrict the speech of women and so come to imagine that if it were not restricted, women’s speech would hold great danger. That fear in turn becomes a reason to curtain their speech all the more.[24]

Women have a powerful place in epic, but it’s at the outer edges of epic. Whatever the outer edges of epic are exactly, they aren’t a powerful place, except ironically. That’s funny! Men are excluded by definition from the female sphere of decisions, yet they don’t have strange power over it. Men have an exclusive grasp on power, but women are in a powerful place and have a “strange power.” It’s like when at the commanding heights of British intellectual life, Mary Beard shouts about the silencing of women. Silenced women’s speech is so powerful that it presents great danger. It’s restricted, if your wife or girlfriend hasn’t yet told you, but the general-purpose demon “anxious male privilege” — there it is, standing right next to that coal miner! — wants to restrict women’s speech even more. The “precisely” inserted in this intellectual mush is precious. Such is the practice of today’s irrational, anxious, gender dogmatists.

Hocus-pocus gender liturgy transforms the ancient stone tablets about Enkidu and Gilgamesh into the reigning spirit of our age. For example, the prostitute Shamhat, who on behalf of the hunter captured Enkidu in the wild, becomes another admirable woman who must be defended from those now harming her with words:

Shamhat is a wise and outspoken woman who makes conscious use of her sexual appeal. Labeling such a woman a prostitute is, to put it mildly, not ideal, unless the claim is backed up by solid philological evidence, which is not currently available.[25]

That’s tediously tendentious sophism posing as philological science. The text makes reasonably clear that Shamhat is a prostitute. The textual evidence that she’s a prostitute is far greater than the textual evidence that she’s a “wise and outspoken woman.” Enkidu listens attentively to the prostitute Shamhat and follows her advice. She tells Enkidu what Gilgamesh’s mother told him about his dream. Women’s speech shapes the story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh. But, in summary, hocus-pocus, mystery, and paradox:

In short, women in Gilgamesh stand at the edge of power. Silenced but still speaking, they are viewed with both awe and anxiety by the male protagonists of the epic, and time and time again it is women who decide the fate of the male heroes. This is the paradox of female power in Gilgamesh, and nobody represents that paradox better than Ishtar.[26]

The temple of the goddess Ishtar in Uruk is literally half the size of Uruk itself. That physical reality doesn’t matter relative to current imperative to charge men with violence against women:

Male spheres of power are created by the violent exclusion of women, but as a result, women become an eternal threat to those spheres. The epic indulges in the literary fantasy that every time a woman speaks, she decides the fate of men, perhaps to justify why women must be silenced.

That’s solemn liturgy intoned throughout elite culture today. That’s a literary fantasy justifying dominant dogma that women are silenced, even though Ishtar and Shamhat and Gilgamesh’s mother and Siduri and the scorpion-woman aren’t silenced. Today’s dominant ideology culturally constructs “male spheres of power” to exclude women by definition. It’s inane verbal work, especially with respect to Uruk and its temple of Ishtar. Nonetheless, today elites such as those running Yale University Press regard gender hocus-pocus, mystery, and paradox with utmost solemnity. Within such liturgy, the false claim that men violently exclude women from epic violence against men regrettably benefits from the brutalization of men’s penises throughout history.

In ancient Mesopotamia, those who heard and told the story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh probably could conceive of an egalitarian sexual relationship involving a penetrating penis. The figuration of the story, as well as the practice of life more than three thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, closely relates gods, humans, and non-human animals:

the boundary between gods and animals is indistinct, and hybrid creatures populate Mesopotamian imagery. … both Gilgameš and Enkidu are related to gods and animals, albeit differently.[27]

Among divine beings and non-human animals, the sexual activity of a penis doesn’t dominate a sexual counterpart. Although the anthropomorphic male god Dumuzid and the anthropomorphic female goddess Ishtar have vagina-penis sex, he doesn’t dominate her. Moreover, Ishtar, like many females, was probably sexually active with her vagina in sexual intercourse. Although male non-human animals penetrate with their penises female non-human animals, male non-human animals do not uniformly dominate female non-human animals either socially or physically. Persons merely familiar with the behavior of cats and dogs understand this. Gilgamesh with his penis apparently sexually penetrates Enkidu as he would a wife.[28] With such sexual action, a man neither dominates his wife nor dominates an intimate man friend. Other than through crude imagination, the sexual action of the penis hasn’t implied dominance historically.

Both Gilgamesh and his mother Ninsun understand that he could love a wife or a man as an equal. Interpreting Gilgamesh’s dream, Ninsun declares:

My son, the axe you saw is a man.
You will love him like a wife,
and you will caress and embrace him,
and I, I shall make him your equal.

{ mārī ḫaṣinnu ša tāmuru amēlu‡
tarâmšūma kīma aššati taḫabbub‡ elīšu
u anāku ultamaḫḫaršu‡ ittīka }

Gilgamesh is delighted that he will have such a “wife”:

O mother, by Counselor Enlil’s command may so befall me!
I will gain a friend, a counsellor,
a friend, a counsellor, I will gain!

{ [u]mmī ina pī ellil māliki (rabî) limqutam-ma
ibra mālika anāku lurši
[lur]šīma ibra mālika anāku }

That’s like the conjugal partnership that medieval European authorities prescribed for marriage. A poem in the Sumerian cycle of poems from more than four millennia ago describes in parallel the grief of a young man and young woman, neither of whom undressed a spouse.[29]

Mutual, intimate friendship can exist between a man and another man or a woman. That truth is evident in the ancient Mesopotamian epic of Enkidu and Gilgamesh and in the Genesis story of Eve and Adam. Belief that one person penetrating another with a penis (“active”) subordinates the other (“passive”), whether in ancient Mesopotamia or where you are right now, is merely an artifact of oppressive contemporary gender dogma. Ignore its authoritative acolytes solemnly intoning nonsense. Then you can better understand the intimate friendship of Enkidu and Gilgamesh, and how it humanized and civilized them. Then you can better hope to realize such intimate friendship yourself.

* * * * *

Read more:

• men and female prostitutes from ancient Sumer to medieval Europe
• Ausonius and Proba on “love is war” and brutalizing men’s sexuality
• literary progress: perceiving systemic sexism in medieval love poetry

Notes:

[1] Epic of Gilgamesh, Standard Babylonian (literary Akkadian) version, 11.327-8 (tablet.verses), phonetic transcription of cuneiform text and English translation (modified) of George (2003), updated in George (2022), via the online electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), I.4 Poem of Gilgameš. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a conventional name for what I refer to above as the story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh.

Subsequently quotes from the Epic of Gilgamesh are similarly sourced from the Standard Babylonian version, unless otherwise noted. I modify George’s English translation slightly to be more fluently readable and note significant changes that I make. Some verse numbers in George (2022) differ slightly from those in George (2003). I consistently use the verse numbers of George (2022).

Stories about Enkidu and Gilgamesh exists in various versions and recensions. Such stories are first known in a Sumerian cycle of poems from the Third Dynasty of Ur (about 2112-2004 BGC). George (2003) pp. 7-17. Old Babylonian versions date about 1800 BGC. The Standard Babylonian version was compiled about 1100 BGC. On the history of versions and recensions of the story of Enkidu and Gilgamesh, Tigay (1982) and George (2003). On the modern reception of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ziolkowski (2011).

Subsequent quotes above are from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Standard Babylonian version, unless otherwise stated. Those quotes are Epic of Gilgamesh 1.1 (Gilgamesh saw the deep…), 1.48 (Two-thirds god and one-third human), 1.67 (day and night he behaves with fierce arrogance), 1.95-6 (Let him be equal to the storm of Gilgamesh’s heart…), 1.101-6 (In the wild she created Enkidu…), 1.205-6 (You are handsome, Enkidu…), 1.160-4 (Go, O hunter, take with you Shamhat the prostitute…), 1.176-7 (Then Shamhat saw him…), 1.178-85 (There he is, Shamhat…), 1.192 (For six days and seven nights…), 1.193-200 (After he was sated with her delights…), 1.199-200 (Enkidu was diminished…), 1.211-2 (She talked to him…), 1.214-21 (Come, Shamhat, take me along…), Old Babylonian version 1.110-9 (He put on a garment…), 5.196-204 (Enkidu opened his mouth to speak…), 5.279 (May both of them not grow old together!), 7.37-40 (Enkidu raised his eyes…), 7.70-1 (You who had awareness…), 7.94-6 (As for him, that hunter…), 7.106-17 (May you not establish a household…), 7.138 (companion), 7.139-47 (Your friend and brother Gilgamesh…), 7.153-61 (May governors and noblemen love you…), 8.42-56 (Hear me, O young men…), 8.59 (He covered his friend’s face, veiling it like a bride’s), 8.138 (May she welcome my friend…), 1.286-8 (My son, the axe you saw…), 1.293-5 (O mother, by Counselor Enlil’s command…).

[2] Gender stereotypes have colored modern interpretation of Shamhat’s character:

Perceiving Shamhat as passive and benevolent, we have paid little attention to her unfeminine speech and associated grammatical irregularities. Shamhat orders Enkidu about with forceful imperatives: “Come! Get up! Eat! Drink! (Penn: 56, 59, 96, 98; MSS B, P: I 209), and her actions are described with less common Š and D-stem verbs that specify her personal agency (šūkulum, šaqûm, lubbušum, šuršûm “to feed, give drink, provide with clothing, cause to acquire”) rather than G-stem verbs that lack connotations of causality. Shamhat’s agency is further marked by irregular grammatical referencing, invisible in translation, that indicates that Shamhat has taken sexual advantage of Enkidu, leaving him weak, defiled, and humiliated.

McCaffrey (2021) p. 183.

[3] Enkidu is created as a human man in the pattern of the “first men.” George (2003) p. 450. He has sex with Shamhat as a man with a woman. With respect to movement between categories of beings as presented in the Epic of Gilgamesh, sex with Shamhat doesn’t “humanize” Enkidu. George nonetheless refers to Enkidu’s “transformation from animal to human state” and “Enkidu’s emergent humanity.” Id. p. 451. For those innocent of highly developed human ideology or knowledgeable about biological evolution, humans are a type of animal. George and others in referring to “animal” apparently mean “non-human animal.”

In interpreting Enkidu’s character, “humanized” seems to be misleadingly used as a synonym for “civilized.” In normal usage, “human” refers to a category of beings, and “humanized” means becoming included in the “human” category of beings. In contrast, “civilized” distinguishes between subcategories of human beings — “civilized” humans in contrast to “uncivilized” / “savage” humans, with “civilized” humans regarded as superior to “uncivilized” humans.

Claims about “humanizing” Enkidu have been astonishingly broad. In interpreting the Epic of Gilgamesh as an “ascent of knowledge,” Foster declared that “sex belongs to the lowest common level of human knowledge — what everyone must know and experience to become human.” Foster (1987) p. 22. To the contrary, humans who don’t experience sex surely still are humans. According to Foster, Enkidu in the wild originally was:

a man without humanity or society. Enkidu begins the ascent of human knowledge first through sexual awareness and second through use of his rational faculties.

Id. To the contrary, Enkidu in the wild was part of society, a society of animals, the herd. Moreover, he used his rational facilities to thwart the hunter’s efforts to capture non-human animals.

Enkidu’s relation to non-human animals unquestionably changes significantly. Ponchia stated:

Animals run free in the steppe without worrying about their life or death, they eat grass and drink water with which they are spontaneously presented by the cycle of nature. And their lives are also continuously cyclical: they wander in search of pasture and come back to the water pool when thirsty. The apparent lack of aim and of any individuality is the reason for their freedom. And such is the original life of Enkidu, who in himself has no mark of death, or awareness of death, and is closed in the eternal cycle of wildlife.

Ponchia (2019) p. 194. That lofty understanding shouldn’t color interpretation of a comic passage in the story:

The barber treated his body so hairy,
he anointed himself with oil, and he became a man.

{ ultappit gallābum šuʾʾuram pagaršu
šamnam iptašaš-ma awīliš īwe }

Epic of Gilgamesh, Old Babylonian version, 2.106-9. A man today, after a long, rough wilderness adventure, might shave his beard and declare, “Now I’m a human again.” Like such a man, Enkidu didn’t literally become a human through superficial changes in his body and behavior. Cf. Ponchia (2019) pp. 190, 206. Enkidu’s intimate friendship with Gilgamesh gave Enkidu a position in human society and led him to death. That’s the substantive “civilizing” of Enkidu.

[4] Helle (2021). Helle similarly has Enkidu say to the door of Enlil’s temple, “you lack the reason I have gained.” Epic of Gilgamesh 7.40. In Helle’s translation, Gilgamesh subsequently says to Enkidu, “You, who learned to think and reason, now speak nonsense!” Epic of Gilgamesh 7.70. I discuss these verses subsequently above.

The back cover of Helle (2021) includes blurbs from diverse, prestigious persons. The blurb for “Michael Durda / Washington Post” declares about Helle’s book: “Looks to be the last word on this Babylonian masterpiece.” In blurbing practice, authorities aren’t required to speak truthfully or even read the book. Rigorously following contemporary orthodoxy, Helle to the contrary states in his book:

Gilgamesh has been successful not because it appeals to some universal truth or because it gives us a resounding answer that is as valid now as it was in ancient Uruk. Rather, Gilgamesh has been successful because it interweaves an extraordinary number of threads and themes and topics, allowing new ages and new readers to use it to ask their most pressing questions. The epic survives because it can adapt — because it is a poetic kaleidoscope that can be shaken endlessly into new forms.

Helle (2021) p. 145. Robert Macfarlane’s review for the New York Review similarly adheres to the currently dominant intellectual program. His review has the subtitle “Ecocide, toxic masculinity, fear of death, and more: the Epic of Gilgamesh’s themes could be transcribed from yesterday’s newspaper.” Macfarlane’s review includes some evocative, disparaging stereotypes of men:

Gilgamesh is fascinatingly complex: variously a vulnerable aesthete and a knuckle-dragging silverback, a grieving lover and a swinging-dick bullyboy.

Macfarlane (2022). Apart from work seeking popular success, the Epic of Gilgamesh provides a stone-solid artifact from which to critique current intellectual practices. One must of course endure dire risks in questioning the universal truth of patriarchy and men’s oppression and silencing of women.

[5] Enkidu learning to eat bread and drink beer is a “comic” passage. George (2007) p. 36. It shouldn’t be given sacramental weight to transform Enkidu by “humanizing” or “civilizing” him.

Regarding Shamhat’s first sex session with Enkidu, George noted “widespread human belief that sexual knowledge brings the end of innocence.” George (2003) p. 451. That belief fits the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, but is much less relevant to Shamhat and Enkidu. On the relation of Eve and Adam in Genesis to Enkidu and Gilgamesh, Kynes (2023). Enkidu is a match for Gilgamesh like Eve is a match for Adam. Id.

[6] Genesis 3:5, Hebrew text (Westminster Leningrad Codex) via Blue Letter Bible, English translation (modified slightly) from the English Standard version translation. The subsequent quote above is similarly from Genesis 3:7.

[7] George’s translation inserts “now” parenthetically: “his heart (now) wise was seeking a friend.” Epic of Gilgamesh 1.212. That parenthetical “now” seems to me not textually warranted. It apparently assumes that sex with Shamhat made Enkidu’s heart wise. That’s a broader claim than the apparent narrative implication that sex with Shamhat prompted Enkidu to seek a human friend.

Bulls and other male animals typically fight for access to reproductive-age females. Human male animals in high-income societies today typically compete for access to the most desirable reproductive-age female through displays of material resources (e.g. an expensive car) and social status (e.g. affiliation with prestigious institutions).

[8] When Ninsun, Gilgamesh’s mother, initially rejects Enkidu as a friend for her son, Enkidu is disconsolate:

Enkidu being present, he heard what Gilgamesh’s mother said.
Thinking it over, he sat down weeping.
His eyes filled with tears,
and his arms fell limp, lacking strength.

{ izzaz enkīdu išm[e qabâša]
uštaddan-ma itta[šab ibakki]
īnāšu imlâ [dimāti]
aḫāšu irmâ emūqī […] }

Epic of Gilgamesh 2.178-81. Gilgamesh and Enkidu then embraced, and Gilgamesh spoke reassuring words to Enkidu. Mothers have always been powerful persons.

[9] George translated Enkidu urging Gilgamesh to slay Humbaba “before Enlil the foremost has learned (about it)!” Epic of Gilgamesh 5.200. In that translation, “it” makes sense only as Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s publicly established intent to slay Humbaba. George commented, “His crucial point seems to be the importance of destroying Humbaba before Enlil learns what is going on.” George (2003) p. 468. But given that Gilgamesh and Enkidu had long established publicly their intent to slay Humbaba, it’s improbable that the gods didn’t know what the city of Uruk knew.

I interpret Epic of Gilgamesh 5.200 to imply that Enkidu thought that Enlil wanted Humbaba slain as a enemy of the gods. In this interpretation, Enkidu warned Gilgamesh that dithering would anger Enlil. This interpretation is consistent with the repetition of the verse in Epic of Gilgamesh 5.269-70.

[10] Enkidu’s cursing of Shamhat uses the same language used in reference to a dog in an Old Babylonian incantation. George (2003) pp. 479-80. Enkidu thus turns back on Shamhat her treatment of him as sexually like a dog.

[11] In grief over Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh doesn’t make himself into a non-human animal or an uncivilized human by going into the wilderness dressed in lionskin to seek immortality. His behavior is human and highly sophisticated:

Gilgameš himself has taken on the aspect of a wild animal by running into the wilderness and down distant roads, looking for the secret of a life that does not know death (as was Enkidu’s earlier way of life). Through loneliness and suffering he has perhaps recovered the purity of Enkidu’s life in the wilderness, which is conducive to the acquisition of knowledge.

Ponchia (2019) p. 201.

[12] Jastrow & Clay (1920) p. 19. The subsequent quote above is from id. p. 20. From this perspective, the story of Enkidu is “an attempt to trace the evolution of primitive man from low beginnings to the regular and orderly family life associated with advanced culture.” For an alternate perspective, consider the eminent Roman Empress Valeria Messalina within the advanced culture of classical Roman society.

[13] Tigay (1982) p. 209, internal references omitted. The subsequent quote above is from id. p. 207. Tigay summarized:

Enkidu was at first an uncivilized brute, roaming the steppe with wild animals, until he was seduced by a harlot who introduced him to human ways.

Id. p. 4.

[14] The Standard Bablylonia myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal / Ereškigal, manuscript C (eighth-century tablet from Sultantepe), iv.4-20. For an English translation, Foster (1996) p. 423 and Ponchia & Luukko (2013). The latter is a pioneering critical edition of Nergal and Ereškigal.

[15] See U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Table 318.10, “Degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by level of degree and sex of student,” 2019-20 (the most recent data).

[16] Maier (2018) p. 84. The Norton Critical Edition of Gilgamesh, which targets college students, includes Rivkah Harris’s article, “Images of Women in the Gilgamesh Epic.” That article declares:

The intermediary role of the prostitute in transforming Enkidu from one at home with nature and wild animals into a human being is crucial. … Shamhat serves, as do women in other places and times, as “one of culture’s crucial agencies for the conversion of nature into culture, especially with reference to the socialization of children.” Shamhat is the primary facilitator of Enkidu’s socialization. What she teaches Enkidu puts “her squarely in the category of culture,” and “on the basis of her socializing functions alone, she could not be more a representative of culture.”

Foster (2001) pp. 211-2, from Harris (2000) p. 122. Harris’s article “Images of Women in the Gilgamesh Epic” is Chapter 7 in id. The text that Harris quotes in support of the gender stereotype that men naturally lack culture comes from Rosaldo & Lamphere (1974).

[17] George (2018) p. 20. Enkidu’s first sex-session with Shamhat is Epic of Gilgamesh 1.188-94. Enkidu’s second sex-session with Shamhat is Epic of Gilgamesh, Old Babylonian version, 2.45-50.

George interpreted the first sex session to be consistent with humanizing and civilizing (” taming”) Enkidu:

At first he {Enkidu} is a nervous wild animal, whom it takes all the prostitute’s expertise to tame and bring to bed. … Already transformed from unconscious semi-animal to self-conscious man, Enkidu needs no seduction second time around, so the second week of intercourse is more perfunctorily told.

Id. pp. 19-20. This seems to me an over-interpretation. In particular, the prostitute Shamhat didn’t show any specialized sexual expertise in her first sexual encounter with Enkidu. Empress Theodora, in contrast, provides a highly distinguished example of sexual expertise.

[18] For a brief review of the textual evidence that Enkidu and Gilgamesh were regarded as equals in the Standard Babylonian version, Ackerman (2005) pp. 78-80. Enkidu and Gilgamesh are “virtually equal.” Maier (2018) p. 51. In the early Sumerian poems about Enkidu and Gilgamesh, Enkidu is a servant to Gilgamesh. The character of Enkidu thus changed across centuries.

[19] Helle (2018), which explicitly refers to George (2018). Helle’s article refers to Enkidu’s sex-sessions with the prostitute Shamhat as “making love,” “love-making,” and “this marathon of love.” Sex at first sight with a prostitute typically isn’t understood as the more complex relation “love.” Moreover, Enkidu didn’t regard Shamhat as an intimate friend. Helle set forth a sophisticated stage theory of humanizing a (non-human?) animal through sex with a human prostitute:

In a nutshell, the differences between the two episodes reflect different stages of Enkidu’s transition from an animal to a human being.

Helle (2018). The subsequent quote above is similarly from id.

[20] Helle’s interpretation of “humanizing” Enkidu is grossly dehumanizing, at least within the modern liberal tradition of human individuals:

{Enkidu} no longer wishes for power and raw animal {sic} strength; now he wants to find a suitable role in a city of workers and dutiful citizens. … The epic shows that to become fully human, Enkidu must … abandon his alpha-male instincts and surrender to the city, becoming one cog in the collective, one person in the acre.

Helle (2018) p. 203. Helle seems here to be expressing his self-conception within gynocentric academia functioning as a propaganda arm for the gynocentric state.

[21] Middle Assyrian Laws A.20. The law:

If a man has sexual intercourse with his male comrade
and they prove the charges against him
and find him guilty,
they shall have sexual intercourse with him
and they shall turn him into a eunuch.

{ šum-ma LU₂ tap-pa-a-šu i-ni-ik
ub-ta-e-ru-u₂-uš
uk-ta-i-nu-u₂-uš
i-ni-ik-ku-u₂-uš
a-na ša-re-še-en u₂-tar-ru-uš }

Midde Assyrian text o.ii.93-7, from the Text Corpus of Middle Assyrian, English translation of Roth (1995) p. 160, with minor changes. In accordance with dominant ideology, Ackerman interprets this law to imply that a woman’s position is degrading for a man:

Mesopotamian tradition believes it to be wrong to place any man in the receptive position in male-male sexual intercourse because it improperly feminizes him. Mesopotamian law, I would then suggest, avenges this improper feminization by requiring that the perpetrator be feminized himself, initially by being placed in the feminized or receptive position in sexual intercourse and then by being made womanlike through castration.

Ackerman (2005) p. 77. This claim assumes that the feminine sexual position has low value in Mesopotamian tradition. In fact, vaginas apparently were valued more highly than penises. Moreover, castrating a man doesn’t in itself give that man a vagina or make him womanlike.

[22] Ackerman (2005) pp. 77-8, quoting (“virtually inconceivable”) Halperin (1990) p. 31. Halperin includes a long footnote that seems to indicate that the claim “penetrating penis dominates receptive person” is merely a language game based upon reification of abstract status classifications. Id. p. 32. The subsequent quote above is from Ackerman (2005) p. 87.

[23] Helle (2021) p. 209, quoting Harris (2000) p. 120, via Foster (2001). Harris further declared:

The Gilgamesh Epic is like the medieval chanson de geste, which was “written for a male audience, to male taste [Harris’s emphasis].” Therefore, what we find in the epic are essentially male attitudes toward women, both human and divine.

Harris (2000) p. 120, quoting Gold (1985) p. 2. Women are better characterized as the directors of the medieval chanson de geste. As Helen of Troy exemplifies, women drive epic violence against men.

[24] Helle (2021) p. 209. Such analysis is squarely within the misandristic tradition.

[25] Helle (2011) p. 211. Helle’s arch phrase “not ideal” obscures a vicious, ridiculous scholarly controversy over prostitutes in ancient Mesopotamian literature and life. Reviewing Helle’s book, the eminent Assyriologist Benjamin R. Foster courageously observed:

His reluctance to consider Shamhat a harlot (p. 210), to choose another current topic of discussion, runs up against Enkidu’s curse and ironic blessing of her (pp. 64, 66), while only the most desperate over-reading can result in anything but understanding her as a “sex worker”, or something more elegant, like courtesan or cocotte if one prefers; there is nothing in those two passages about a sacerdotal role, but a lot about abasement and ardent and generous clients. One can, if one wishes, dismiss all the old literature on Mesopotamian prostitution as overheated male imagination, but these two passages speak for themselves and cannot easily be explained away except by ignoring what they actually say. It would indeed be hard to imagine a non-professional or non-promiscuous social role for a woman who is prepared to have intercourse on demand at a waterhole with a naked, hairy wild man she has never seen before.

Foster (2022) pp. 115-6. The name Shamhat comes from a verb denoting “superlative beauty of the flesh combined with lush growth and physical wellbeing.” George (2003) p. 148. Moreover, the name Shamhat includes “an obvious allusion to the common noun šamḫatu, which is a synonym of ḫarimtu and so marks Šamḫat {Shamhat} out as the prostitute par excellence.” Id.

Helle translated Shamhat’s specific situational “advice {milkum}” to Enkidu into more general “wisdom”:

the woman’s wisdom landed in his heart

{ mil[k]um ša šinništim imta[q]ut ana libbīšu }

Epic of Gilgamesh, Old Babylonian version 2.67-9. George translated this verse as “a woman’s counsel struck home in his heart.”

[26] Helle (2021) p. 212. The subsequent quote above is from id. p. 213. Underscoring gender hocus-pocus, mystery, and paradox, Helle declared:

Like priestesses, Ishtar was both central and marginal. She is the most important Akkadian goddess, but also constantly associated with all that is unusual, disruptive, and immoral.

Id. p. 212. In addition to being incoherent, the claim that Ishtar was “constantly associated with all that is unusual, disruptive, and immoral” seems to me fashionable academic cant projected back onto Ishtar in Uruk. There she was a well-known, revered goddess associated with a massive temple. Nonetheless, Helle cites an academic authority in asserting the hackneyed and, in its specific contex here, absurd claim that Ishtar is “a divine embodiment of cultural exclusion.” Id.

[27] Ponchia (2019) pp. 187, 188.

[28] On homoerotic elements in the relationship of Enkidu and Gilgamesh, Walls (2001) Chapter 1, and Ackerman (2005) Chapter 3. In Tablet 12, Enkidu returns from the underworld and despairingly tells Gilgamesh:

My friend, the penis that you handled so your heart rejoiced,
now grubs devour it like an old beam.
My friend, the vagina that you felt so your heart rejoiced,
it is filled with dust like a crack in the ground.

{ [ibrī? iš]ara ša talputū-ma libbaka iḫdû
[… kī guš]ūri labīri kalmatu ikkal
[ibrī? ūra ša ta]lputū-ma libbaka iḫdû
[kī nigiṣ erṣet]i epera mali }

Epic of Gilgamesh 12.96-9. The sexual context of these verses is obvious, yet the specific sexual referents, whether literal or figurative, aren’t clear. Helle’s translation uses “crotch” for “vagina {ūru}” in Epic of Gilgamesh 12.98. On difficulties in interpreting gender in ancient Mesopotamian literature, McCaffrey (2021). Apart from such textual difficulties, scholars should at least be able to agree that a penis penetrating in sexual intercourse is not a universal sign of dominance.

[29] Having returned from the underworld, Enkidu responds to Gilgamesh’s questions:

“Did you see the young man who never undressed his wife?” “I saw him.” “How does he fare?”
“You finish a rope, and he weeps over the rope.”
“Did you see the young woman who never undressed her husband?” “I saw her.” “How does she fare?”
“You finish a reed mat, and she weeps over the reed mat.”

{ juruc tur ur2 dam-na-ka tug2 /nu-ub-sig9-ge igi bi2-du8-am3 igi bi2-du8-am3 a-na-gin7 an-ak
ec2-cu-/ak\ cu im-mi-du7-un ec2-cu-/ak-ba [er2 im-mi]-/in-ce8-ce8
ki-sikil /ur2\ dam-na-ka tug2 nu-ub-sig9-ge igi bi2-du8-am3 [igi bi2]-/du8-am3 a-na-gin7 an-/ak\
gi-cu-ak cu im-/mi-du7-un gi-cu-ak er2 mi-in-ce8-ce8 }

Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the nether world, (ETCSL c.1.8.1.4) Version A, from Nibru, Urim, and elsewhere, vv. 272-5, Sumerian transliteration and English translation from the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL). This text became part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 12.

[images] (1) Hero like Gilgamesh mastering a lion. Relief from the façade of the throne room, Palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad (Dur Sharrukin), 713–706 BGC. Preserved as accession # AO 19862 in the Department of Oriental Antiquities, Richelieu, ground floor, room 4, Louvre Museum (Paris). Source photo thanks to Jastrow (2006) and Wikimedia Commons. (2) Terracotta wall panel depicting Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s friend. Enkidu holds the door post he made for the Enlil’s temple in Nippur. From Ur, Iraq. 2027-1763 BGC. Preserved in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Source image thanks to Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) and Wikimedia Commons. (3) Gilgamesh and Enkidu slaying Humbaba at the Cedar Forest. Made c. 1900-1600 BGC in Iraq. Preserved in Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany. Image thanks to Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) and Wikimedia Commons. (4) Cuneiform tablet containing the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 5. From Iraq. Preserved in the Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq. Source image thanks to Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

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