Gilgamesh and the Gods

Dated to approximately 2750 to 2500 BCE, The Epic of Gilgamesh stands as one of the oldest surviving stories in human history. The narrative describes the adventures and exploits of the semi-divine king of the ancient Sumerian city Uruk and his ultimately fruitless quest for immortality. The Mesopotamian gods play a complex role in this epic. They disagree with one another, regret their actions, attempt to rectify mistakes, and overall exhibit many human failings. Gilgamesh’s god-like qualities are precisely the ones that he must overcome in order to succeed as a ruler. The primary distinction outlined by the epic between the gods and humanity concerns their immortality, not their qualities or behaviors. Ultimately, the gods of The Epic of Gilgamesh reveal the values and concerns of ancient Mesopotamian society, particularly with regard to leadership.

The epic opens with Gilgamesh’s tyranny over his subjects. The people of Uruk cry out to the gods, who “kept hearing their complaints, so the gods of the heavens implored the Lord of Uruk” to intervene (Tablet I). But instead of directly doing so, the gods create Enkidu, a wild man more comfortable among beasts than humans, to subdue Gilgamesh. This immediately establishes a pattern of behavior whereby the gods prefer to pursue some indirect means of action in dealing with human problems. Rather than using their impressive powers to simply stop the king, their actions seem quite human in this backhanded approach. Their plan seems to work, however, as Gilgamesh and Enkidu become inseparable friends, taking Gilgamesh’s focus from his oppressed subjects (Tablet II).

For somewhat intangible reasons, Gilgamesh and Enkidu decide to travel to the forest of cedars to slay its protector, Humbaba. After a ritualistic series of attempts to receive the approval and aid of Shumash the sun god, the two arrive at the forest. Shamash creates a windstorm to trap Humbaba, who begs Gilgamesh for his life, even offering himself in servitude. Enkidu convinces Gilgamesh to show no mercy and slay Humbaba “before the Preeminent God Enlil hears…and the gods be filled with rage against us” (Tablet V). This clearly indicates the gods have competing interests and take actions that contradict one another. Instead of creating a united front of moral authority, this event portrays a world of ambiguity where humans can knowingly defy some gods while securing the approval of others.

The narrative then moves on to Ishtar’s proposal of marriage to Gilgamesh. He immediately spurns this goddess of the underworld’s advances, pointing out that her prior lovers had met less than favorable fates. Angered by the rejection, Ishtar goes up to heaven and demands her father, Anu, give her the bull of heaven to destroy Gilgamesh. Anu initially sides with Gilgamesh, as his recounting of her “despicable deeds” rang true. But Ishtar threatens to bring down the gates of the netherworld unless her father complies, so Anu concedes (Tablet VI). In this instance, not only do the gods disagree with one another, they display very human emotions of humiliation and anger, and cope with those emotions in the least commendable way possible, through revenge.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay the bull released by Ishtar, but in doing so bring the wrath of the gods upon them. The gods hold council concerning the slaying of Humbaba and the bull, and Enlil decides one of the pair must pay with his life, despite Shumash’s insistence that he permitted these actions (Tablet VII). Enkidu dies despite the lack of consensus, sending Gilgamesh into mourning. Seeing the mortality of his friends then consumes him with the inevitability of his own. He sets out to find Utanapishtim, the only man granted immortality by the gods. But this encounter does not play out as expected. Utanapishtim chastises Gilgamesh, saying “You have toiled without cease. And what have you got!” (Tablet X). In other words, he devalues the hero’s quest for immortality as pointless, suggesting the value of human life lies in the everyday.

Utanapishtim then tells the story of how he received immortality, which essentially occurred as the result of the gods’ utter regret for destroying humanity with a flood. The flood story provides the ultimate example of the gods’ lack of moral certitude. Ishtar laments her decision to allow this catastrophe, and all the gods weep with regret except Enlil. The gods challenge him for his lack of compassion and callous haste in implementing this destruction (Tablet XI). Here Enlil stands as an example of poor leadership. His incapacity for self-reflection and inability to consider the consequences of his actions mirrors the tyranny displayed by Gilgamesh at the outset of the narrative.

While the gods do not occupy center stage in this epic, they do provide a backdrop of sorts for Gilgamesh’s narrative. The primary themes, in fact, consist of very human concerns—friendship, grief, fame, adventure, and mortality. This leaves the gods to repeatedly serve as foils to those themes. Their activities and personal shortcomings often constitute the source of strife for the human characters, creating the major obstacles that Gilgamesh must face. Gilgamesh’s own godliness, his partial divinity, was precisely what he had to move beyond in order to accept the social responsibility of leadership. Thus while Gilgamesh’s pursuit of immortality provides the bulk of the narrative, his failure to achieve it and his return to his kingdom suggest the value in the mundane prevails. The king’s heroism and extraordinary pursuits did little toward his success as a king, thus he had to embrace his humanity.

Work Cited

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Academy for Ancient Texts, 7 June 2001. Web. 7 March 2014.