Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page A

he asks both the natural world and the world of the city to join him as he mourns his friend. The simple, repeated phrases of his lament are exquisitely sorrowful.
    â€œMy beloved friend is dead, he is dead, my beloved brother is dead, I will mournas long as I breathe, I will sob for him like a woman who has lost her only child.”
    Gilgamesh’s grief is too intense for any understanding to penetrate. There is no way, in spite of Enkidu’s first dream, that he can make a causal connection between the killing of Humbaba and Enkidu’s death. For him, the events just occurred, one after the other, and he can still boast of the killings, unconscious that they have cost him his beloved friend. Indeed, the music of his grief is so enchanting that, for the time being, we don’t even want him to understand.
    â€œBeloved friend, swift stallion, wild deer, leopard ranging in the wilderness—Enkidu, my friend, swift stallion, wild deer, leopard ranging in the wilderness—together we crossed the mountains, together we slaughtered the Bull of Heaven, we killed Humbaba, who guarded the Cedar Forest.”
    Actually, he is in a trance of pain: even if he could understand why Enkidu died, it wouldn’t matter; the brute fact of the event would blot out any other consideration. He is so overwhelmed by the sight of Enkidu’s lifeless body that, a dozen lines after lamenting that his friend is dead, he can no longer even find a name for death. As a great warrior, he has seen and caused many deaths. But now, for the first time, death is an intimate reality, and he can barely recognize it.

    â€œO Enkidu, what is this sleep that has seized you, that has darkened your face and stopped your breath?”
    Even though he has been up all night, sobbing for Enkidu, he can’t let himself know what has happened. It’s as if he has never seen a corpse before. He reacts like a young child, or like an animal sniffing at the dead body of its mate, bewildered. He half-expects Enkidu to answer. When he touches Enkidu’s heart, he seems surprised that it isn’t beating.
    It takes a while longer for Gilgamesh to finally acknowledge that his friend is dead. But even then, his first gesture is to make death into a kind of marriage. He can’t help treating Enkidu as if he were still alive and in mortal danger; after being the desolate bridegroom, he becomes the anxious mother.
    Then he veiled Enkidu’s face like a bride’s. Like an eagle Gilgamesh circled around him, he paced in front of him, back and forth, like a lioness whose cubs are trapped in a pit, he tore out clumps of his hair, tore off his magnificent robes as though they were cursed.
    Finally, it’s over. Gilgamesh orders a magnificent votive statue of Enkidu; he goes through all the necessary rituals to ensure that the gods of the underworld will welcome him and help him to “be peaceful and not sick at heart.” But the ritual gestures, though meticulous, seem desperate. At best, Enkidu will be one of those miserable dirteating human birds who squat or shuffle in utter darkness, forever. This is poor comfort. So, abandoning all his privileges and responsibilities, giving up his roles as warrior and king, reversing Enkidu’s journey from wilderness to civilization, Gilgamesh puts on an animal skin and leaves Uruk.
    His departure is reminiscent of another royal departure a thousand years later, in the legend of the Buddha. Like Gilgamesh, Gotama, the future Awakened One, is transfixed by a vision of human vulnerability and feels compelled to leave his palace and all his possessions behind, so that he can search for the secret of life and death. Gotama’s grief is not personal, though; he hasn’t lost a beloved friend; he hasn’t lost anyone except himself, his own identity. When, for the first time in his sheltered life, he sees sickness, old age, and death, his whole idea of what it is to be human, what it is