Gilgamesh the King Read online

  But he did not know yet what had befallen him. When he had taken his fill with her, he rose to return to his beasts. But the gazelles ran off in fright as he approached. The smell of mankind was on him now, the smell of civilization. The wild creatures of the steppe no longer knew him, and they drew away from him. As they fled he would have followed them, but his body was held back as though bound with a cord, his knees would not serve him, all his swiftness was gone. Slowly, bewilderedly, he made his way back to Abisimti, who smiled tenderly and drew him down beside her. “You are no longer wild,” she said, with gestures more than with words, for he was not yet good with words. “Why do you still want to roam with the beasts of the steppe?”

  Now she told him of the gods, and of the Land, and of the cities of men, and of great-walled Uruk, and of Gilgamesh its king. “Rise up,” she said. “Come with me to Uruk, where every day is a festive day, where the people are resplendent in wondrous robes. Come to the temple of the goddess, that she may make you welcome in the world of men, and to the temple of the Sky-father, where you will receive heaven’s blessing. And I will show you Gilgamesh, the joyful king, the hero radiant in manhood, strongest of men, who lords it over one and all.” And at those last words his eyes grew bright and his face became hot, and he said, in his thick-tongued way that was still freighted with the sounds of the beasts, that he would indeed go with her to Uruk, and to the temple of Inanna and the temple of An. But chiefly he wished to be shown this Gilgamesh, this king, this so-called strong man. “I mean to challenge him,” Enkidu cried. “I will show him which one of us is the stronger. I will let him feel the might of the man of the steppes. I will change things in Uruk, I will reshape destinies, I who am the strongest of all!” Or such, at any rate, were the words that Abisimti reported to me afterward.

  Thus was it carried out, the snaring of the wild man Enkidu. In accordance with the strategy I had devised, he was caught in the softest and sweetest of traps, and brought away from the fields of beasts into the world of settled folk.

  Abisimti divided her garments, clothing him with one half and herself with the other, and took him by the hand; and like a mother she led him to the place of the sheepfolds close by the city. The shepherds gathered around him: they had never seen anyone like him. When they offered him bread, he did not know what to do with it, and held it in his hand staring at it, confused, embarrassed. He was accustomed to eating only the wild grasses and berries of the fields, and to sucking the milk of wild creatures. They gave him wine, and it bewildered him, and when he tasted it it made him gag and choke, and he spat it out.

  Abisimti said, “This is bread, Enkidu: it is the staff of life. This is wine. Eat the bread, drink the wine: it is the custom of the land.”

  Cautiously he nibbled, cautiously he sipped. His fear went from him; he smiled, he ate more gladly, he gobbled bread until he was full, he drank down seven goblets of strong wine. His face glowed, his heart exulted; he leaped about, he danced a merry dance. Then they took him and they groomed him, they rubbed the tangles out of his matted hair, they trimmed him and clipped him and anointed him with oil, and gave him decent clothing, so that he came to look more like a human being, although one who was of more than usual size and more than usual hairiness.

  He lived some while among the shepherds. Not only did he learn to eat the food of men and drink the drink of men and wear the clothes of men; Enkidu learned to work as men must do. The shepherds taught him how to use weapons, and made him the watchman of their flocks. By night, while the herdsmen slept peacefully, he patrolled the fields, driving away the beasts that came to raid the sheepfold. He chased lions, he caught wolves, he was the tireless guardian of the sheep—he who had been as a wild beast himself. No word of any of this was brought to me. I confess that I had forgotten all about the wild man of the steppes, so busy was I with the tasks of kingship and with the pleasures by which I eased my heart’s ache.

  One day at this time Enkidu and Abisimti were sitting in a tavern that the herdsmen were fond of frequenting, when a wayfarer came in, a man of Uruk, and called for a beaker of beer. The stranger, seeing the courtesan Abisimti, recognized her, and he nodded to her and said, “Count yourself fortunate that you are not living in Uruk these days.”

  “Why, is life so unlucky in the city?” she asked.

  “Gilgamesh oppresses us all,” said the stranger. “The city groans beneath him. There is no containing the force of him, and he exhausts us. And he practices abominations: the king defiles the Land.”

  At that, Enkidu looked up and said, “How so? Tell me what you mean.”

  The stranger replied, “There is a house of assembly in the city that is set aside for the people, where they celebrate their marriages. The king ought not to intrude there; but he enters it, even while the wedding drums are beating, he seizes the bride, he demands to be first with her, before the husband. He says that this right was ordained by the gods at the time of his birth, from the time the cord that bound him to his mother was cut. Are such things right? Are such things proper? The wedding drums roll, but then Gilgamesh appears to claim the bride. And all the city groans.”

  Enkidu grew pale on hearing this, and great anger came over him. “It must not be!” he shouted. And to Abisimti he cried, “Come, take me to Uruk, show me this Gilgamesh!”

  Abisimti and Enkidu set out at once for the city. When they came within the walls he caused a considerable stir, so broad were his shoulders, so powerful his arms. Crowds gathered about him, and when they heard from Abisimti that this was the famous wild man who had been setting trapped animals free on the plains, they pressed close, gawking, whispering. The bravest of them touched him to feel the strength of him. “He is the equal of Gilgamesh!” someone cried. “No, he is not as tall,” said another, and a third said, “Yes, but he is broader in the shoulders, his bones are stronger.” And they said, “A hero has arrived! He is one that was suckled on the milk of wild beasts! Finally Gilgamesh has met his match! At last! At last!”

  This was the man, this Enkidu, whose coming had been foretold in my two dreams. He was the companion whom the gods had provided to lift me from my loneliness, to be the brother I had never had, the comrade with whom I would share all things. To the people of Uruk he was also a godsend for whom they long had prayed, but for a different reason. For it was indeed the case—though I did not know it—that they had been groaning under the burden of my reign, that they feared my surging energies and condemned me for arrogance. So the people of Uruk had asked the gods to create my equal and send him to their city: my double, my second self, matching me stormy heart for stormy heart, in order that we would contend with one another, and leave Uruk in peace. And now that man had come.

  19

  IT WAS THE DAY OF the wedding of the nobleman Lugal-annemundu and the maiden Ishhara. The wedding drums were beating, the bridal bed had been laid out. The maiden was desirable to me, and at nightfall I made my way to the assembly-house of the people to take her to the palace.

  But as I was crossing the marketplace known as the Market-of-the-Land, which lies just across the street from the assembly-house of the people, a burly figure rose up out of the shadows and blocked my path. He was a man almost of my own height, no more than a finger’s breadth or two shorter: I had never seen anyone else so tall before. His chest was deep and heavy, his shoulders were wide, wider even than mine, his arms were as thick as an ordinary man’s thighs. By the flickering light of my servants’ torches I stared close into his face. His chin thrust boldly forward, his mouth was broad, his brow was strong and dark; and there was something fierce and smouldering in his eyes. His beard was thick, his hair was shaggy. And how calm he was, how self-assured! Look at him standing in my way! Did he not know I was Gilgamesh the king?

  I said quietly, “Step aside, fellow.”

  “That I will not do.”

  It amazed me to hear such words. I will not say that I felt fear, but I was put on my guard, for I knew this could be no common citizen
. My yeomen stirred uneasily and began to draw their weapons. I beckoned them to hold back. Going closer to the stranger, I said, “Do you know me?”

  “I think you are the king.”

  “So I am. It is not wise to bar my way like this.”

  “Do you know me?” he asked. His voice was rough and deep, his accent uncouth.

  I said, “Not at all.”

  “I am Enkidu.”

  “Ah, the wild man! I should have guessed as much. So you have come to Uruk, now? Well, what do you want with me, wild man? This is not the hour for presenting petitions to the king.”

  Bluntly he said, “Where are you going, Gilgamesh?”

  “Am I answerable to you, then?”

  “Tell me where you are going.”

  Again my yeomen stirred. I think they would gladly have speared him dead, but I held them back.

  In some irritation I answered, waving beyond him to the assembly-house, “Over there. To attend a wedding. From which you delay me, wild man.”

  “You may not go,” he said. “Do you mean to take the bride for yourself? You may not have her!”

  “I may not? I may not? What strange words to offer a king, wild man!” With a shrug I said, “This ceases to amuse me. Once more I tell you: step aside, fellow.”

  I moved forward. But instead of yielding the way, he put out his foot to prevent me, and then he laid hold of me with his hands.

  It is death to touch the king in such a fashion. I left no space, however, for my yeomen to strike him down; for as he touched me a sudden terrible rage sprang up in me, and I grabbed him as if I meant to hurl him to the far side of the marketplace. Instantly we were grappling in a tight embrace, and the spearmen could not have struck him without wounding me; so they stepped back and let us go at it, not knowing what else to do.

  In the first moments I saw that he was my equal in strength, or nearly so. That was something new to me. In my boyhood, in my days of military training in Kish, in the roistering frolics with the young heroes of my court after I had become king, I had wrestled often, purely for the sport of it, and I had always sensed in the first laying-on of hands that the man with whom I had contended was at my mercy: I could throw him whenever I chose. That was satisfying only when I was a child. When I grew older I lamented it, since it robbed the wrestling of sport, to know that the power of victory was mine for the taking, at any moment, always. This was different. I had no assurance. When I tried to move him, he did not budge. When he tried to move me, it took all my strength to resist. I felt as though I had crossed over into some strange other world where Gilgamesh was no longer Gilgamesh. What I tasted was not fear—I do not think it was fear—but something almost as unfamiliar. Doubt? Uncertainty? Unease?

  We fought like maddened bulls, snorting, lurching up and down, never once releasing one another. We shattered doorposts and made the walls of the buildings shake. Neither of us was able to prevail. Because he was of my height, or nearly so, we stared eye to eye as we contended; his eyes were deep-set and reddened with strain, and they gleamed with an astonishing wildness. We grunted; we bellowed; we roared. I shouted out defiance in the language of Uruk and the language of the desert folk and any other language I could think of; and he muttered and stormed at me in the language of the beasts, the harsh growling of the lion of the plains.

  I yearned to kill him. I prayed that it be given to me to break his back, to hear the sharp snapping sound of his spine, to toss him like a worn-out cloak into the trash-heap. Such hatred went through me as made me dizzy. You must understand that no one had ever stood up to me in this way before. He was like a mountain that had risen in the night across my highway. How could I have felt, if not enraged: I the king, I the invincible hero? But I could not defeat him, nor he me. I cannot tell you how long we strained and struggled, and my strength and his were in equal measures.

  But there is godhood in me, and Enkidu was altogether mortal. In the end it was inevitable that I would prevail. I felt my strength holding, while his was beginning to wane. At last I planted my foot firmly on the ground and bent my knee, and was able to catch him and pull him down, so that his feet flew up beneath him and he lost his balance.

  In that moment every vestige of hatred for him went from me. Why should I hate him? He was splendid in his strength. He was close to being my equal. As a river batters down a dam, so did love for him sweep away all my anger. It was a sudden love so deep that it swept upon me like the fullest torrents of springtime and entirely conquered me. I bethought me of my dream—of that piece of star-stuff which had fallen from the heavens and which I had been unable to budge. In the dream I had braced myself and with the greatest of efforts I had lifted it and taken it to my mother, who had told me, “This is your brother, this is your great comrade.” Yes. I had never known a man so much my equal in so many ways, so fitted to me as though joined by a master carpenter. I clove to him in that moment as if we were of one flesh in two bodies, long sundered, now united. That was what I had felt, while my strength was being tested by his. That was what had passed between us as we struggled. I went to Enkidu and raised him from the ground and embraced him a second time, not in strife now, but in love. Great sobs shook me, and him also; for we both knew in the same moment what had passed between us.

  “Ah, Gilgamesh!” he cried out. “There is not another one like you in all the world! Glory to the mother who bore you!”

  “There is one other,” I said, “who is like me. But only one.”

  “No: for Enlil has given you the kingship.”

  “But you are my brother,” I said.

  He looked at me, dazed like one who is roused too soon from sleep. “I came here meaning to do you injury.”

  “And I the same to you. When I saw you would block my way, I imagined myself cracking you in half, and throwing the pieces of you aside like gnawed bones.”

  He laughed. “You could not have done it, Gilgamesh!”

  “No. I could not. But I meant to try.”

  “And I to cast you down from your high place. I could have done that, if the luck had gone with me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think you could. Try it again, if you will. I will be ready for you.”

  He shook his head. “No. If I cast you down, if I do you grave injury, I will lose you. I will be alone again. No, I would rather have you for a friend than an enemy. That is the word I mean. Friend. Friend. Is that not the word?”

  “A friend, yes. We are too much alike to be enemies.”

  “Ah,” said Enkidu, frowning. “Are we alike? How so? You are the king, and I am only—I am—” He faltered. “A shepherd’s watchman is all I am.”

  “No. You are the king’s friend. The king’s brother.”

  I had never thought I would be able to say those words to anyone. Yet I knew them to be true.

  “Is it so?” he asked. “Shall we not fight again, then?”

  With a grin I said, “Of course we’ll fight! But it will be as brothers fight. Eh, Enkidu? Eh?” And I took him by the hand. Forgotten now was the wedding, forgotten was the maiden Ishhara. “Come with me, Enkidu. To Ninsun my mother, the priestess of An. I would have her meet her other son. Come, Enkidu. Come now!” And we went to the temple of the Sky-father, and knelt in the darkness before Ninsun; and it was very strange and wonderful for us both. I had thought the loneliness would be with me forever; and here it was gone, suddenly, vanished like a thief in the night at the moment of the coming of Enkidu.

  That was the beginning of that great friendship, the like of which I had never known before, and will never know again. He was to me my other half; he filled a place in me where there had been an emptiness.

  But it has been whispered that we were lovers as men and women are. I would not have you believe that. That was not the case at all. I know that there are certain men in whom the gods have mixed manhood and womanhood so that they have no need or liking for women, but I am not one of them, nor was Enkidu. For me the union of man and woman is the great
holy thing, which it is not possible for a man to experience with another man: they say that they do experience it, those men, but I think they deceive themselves. It is not the true union. I have had that union, in the Sacred Marriage with the priestess Inanna, in whom the goddess resides. Inanna too is my other half, though a dark and troubled half. But a man may have several halves, or so it seems to me, and he may love a man in a way that is altogether different from the way in which he finds union with a woman.

  That kind of love that exists between man and man existed between Enkidu and me. It sprang to life in the moment of our wrestling, and it never faded thereafter. We did not speak of it with one another. We did not need to speak of it. But we knew its presence. We were one soul in two bodies. We scarcely had to voice our thoughts, because we could hear them unspoken in one another. We were well matched. There is a god within me; there was the earth within him. I come from the heavens downward; he came from the ground upward. Our meeting-place was the place between, which is the world of mortal men.

  I gave him rooms in the palace, the grand white-walled suite along the southwestern wall that previously had been reserved for the use of visiting governors and kings of other cities. I provided robes of the finest white linen and wool for him, and gave him maidens to bathe and oil him, and sent him my barbers and my surgeons to trim and polish the last traces of wildness out of him. I awoke in him a love of fine roasted meats, and sweet strong wines and rich foaming beer. I gave him the skins of leopards and lions to bedeck himself and his rooms. I shared all my concubines with him, holding back none for myself alone. I had a bronze shield made for him engraved with portrayals of the campaigns of Lugalbanda, and a sword that gleamed like the eye of the sun, and a richly ornamented red and gold helmet, and spears of the most exquisite balance. I taught him myself the arts of the chariot, and the casting of the javelin.