Book Information
Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse
David Ferry
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
Copyright 1992
ISBN: 978-0-374-52383-1
Before we say farewell to Enkidu, it is worthwhile to study his role in the Epic of Gilgamesh. He serves a specific function - to give the hero a consciousness of himself. Enkidu does this by interpreting Gilgamesh’s dreams. In one of those dreams, Gilgamesh is saved by a man who provides him with lifesaving water. Enkidu interprets the man to be Gilgamesh’s father, the dead king Lugalbanda. Enkidu is himself connected to water and serves as a pseudo-father to Gilgamesh by doing something his dead father cannot do – to teach him about himself.
When Gilgamesh and Enkidu trek to the Cedar Forest to kill Huwawa, Gilgamesh has a series of troubling dreams. Enkidu reassures his friend by interpreting these dreams in a positive light. He says that the dreams mean their quest will be successful.
“’Then one brought water to me in my dream.’
‘The dream you dreamed tonight is fortunate.
The bull you dreamed of in your dream is not
the demon enemy guardian of the Forest.
The bull is Shamash. The wrestling is his blessing.
The one who brought you water is your father.’” (Ferry 23)
In Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, he suggests that the ancients, “… took it for granted that dreams were related to the world of the supernatural beings in whom they believed, and that they brought inspirations from the gods and demons. Moreover, it appeared to them that dreams must serve special purpose in respect of the dreamer; that, as a rule, they predicted the future.” (Freud 184) In the Epic of Gilgamesh, dreams serve as a plot device. Some of the story’s action occurs in dreams as if it were no different than the real world. For example, Enkidu dreams that the gods convene and determine his fate. They decide to punish him with a fatal illness for the behavior of both friends. Dreams also connect Enkidu to Lugalbanda through water symbolism. From the first moment we meet him, Enkidu is connected to water:
“He feeds upon the grasslands with gazelles;
visits the watering places with the creatures
whose hearts delight, as his delights, in water.” (Ferry 5)
David Leeming, in the Oxford Companion to World Mythology, explains the importance of water in mythology. “In many traditions the ‘Water of Life’ is a life-saving or life-preserving potion. In the Christian Bible’s Book of Revelation, the Christ offers the Water of Life, perhaps signifying baptism. In the Mesopotamian myth of Lugalbanda, good demons give the Water of Life to the endangered hero.” (Leeming 399) Leeming provides us with Lugalbanda’s back story. “In an ancient Sumero-Mesopotamian myth, the hero Lugalbanda is with his king, Enmerkar, in the mountains on the way to a war with the Lord of Aratta in the East. Suddenly he loses his ability to move, and his comrades are forced to leave him alone with some food and some weapons until they can retrieve him on their way home. The hero prays to Utu, Inanna, and Nanna. The paralysis leaves him, and good demons find him the Plant and Water of Life, which he eats and drinks. Now full of energy, he hunts for more food and captures several wild animals. In his sleep, he is told to sacrifice the animals and to offer the hearts to Utu and the blood to the mountain serpents. Lugalbanda does as he is instructed and then prepares a feast to which he invites An, Enlil, and Ninhursaga. As evening approaches, the astral deities to whom he has prayed and for whom he has made special altars reveal themselves in the night sky to chase away any evil powers.” (Leeming 241)
Imagine how Gilgamesh might have behaved if put into a similar predicament as his father. Lugalbanda dutifully does what he is instructed to do. He is faithful and disciplined. One can imagine Gilgamesh, in contrast, whining when he becomes paralyzed, complaining when his comrades leave him, squandering the Plant and Water of Life, refusing to sacrifice the animals he has hunted, and thumbing his nose at An, Enlil, and Ninhursaga. If he does produce a feast at all, one imagines him bragging that it is the best feast any king has ever offered. Lugalbanda was a deified hero and, presumably, his story was known by the readers of the Gilgamesh story. The reference to his honorable father only shows how unkingly Gilgamesh’s behavior has been. We are reminded once again that the purpose of the story is to teach a person how not to behave.
Enkidu, in his own flawed way, serves to make Gilgamesh more aware of who he is as a person. He does this by interpreting his friend's dreams. Dreams and mythology are closely related. As David Leeming says, “… myths are comparable to dreams and should be regarded as seriously as we regard dreams. Dreams provide us with important information about ourselves - information uncorrupted by conscious defense mechanisms. Myths, with their complex and often bizarre dreamlike events and symbols, do the same thing for cultures; they provide direct insight to the collective psyche or the collective soul. To repress or dismiss myths as mere illusion can be as psychologically and spiritually harmful as dismissing dreams. Both are languages of the unconscious. … we need myths - those of our individual and cultural past and origins - and a mythical consciousness in the present time, to show us who we are.” (Leeming 107)
As we say farewell to Enkidu, a creature created specifically as a distraction, foil, and companion for the flawed king, we realize that while he may have given his friend a consciousness of himself, he could not give him what he needed even more – a conscience. That, Gilgamesh would have to find on his own.
Bibliography
Ferry, David. Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992.
Freud, Sigmund. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. New York: The Modern Library, 1938.
Leeming, David. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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