Unsucky Gilgamesh 3: Book One: Adam and Eve, Backwards
After giving a jaw-dropping NSFW homework assignment, it's Judgment Day.
New here? If you’re coming in late, this post won’t make much sense. This list of the series will catch you up.
Previously, in Episode 2…
So there I was: caught, before all my new 14-year-old students’ eyes, with Enkidu’s pants down – and his titanic Sumerian phallus graphically depicted doing NSF[Home]W things.
And because so many of these Korean kids were evangelically Americanized, I wondered if it would cost me my job.
When we would come to Genesis later in the semester, I knew I’d be walking the netless tightrope over the heads of the many of these kids who, since before their first teeth, had been force-fed and swallowed whole their parents’ and preachers’ literalist teachings about Adam, Eve, and the Six Days’ Creation.
But I had no idea I’d be dealing now, in tender Week Three of their high school careers, with this whopper of a sex scene between Shamhat, the temple prostitute, and Enkidu, the innocent, half-neanderthal and half-Adam “wild man” – and his jaw-dropping seven days’ erection:1
Shamhat stripped off her robe and lay there naked,
with her legs apart, touching herself.
Enkidu saw her and warily approached.
He sniffed at the air. He gazed at her body.
He drew close. Shamhat touched him on the thigh,
touched his penis, and put him inside her.
She used her love-arts, she took his breath
with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him
what a woman is. For seven days
he stayed erect and made love with her,
until he had had enough.2
Again, in the schooly translation I read when I was in high school, somebody had forgotten to include that part.
But the alley cats were out of the bag. Since we were all reading this translation for the first time together that night, half of my students were surely at that very moment in pop-eyed sync with me, “wtf?”-ing their margins and asking the same questions:
Would the “good people” students tell their parents? Were those parents emailing or calling the principal at the very moment we were all sitting there gawking at these lines? Tomorrow, when the monster lumbered into the school-building to corrupt their young, would a mob of torch-bearing parents send this poor, misunderstood Frankenfreak to his tragic end?
All that monster wanted was to give their kids the deepest, most relevant, coherent, and beautiful year of literary studies they would ever receive. And now, because of an unexpectedly graphic scene about what birds, bees, and each of these parents do – or did, at least once, when they made the shiny-eyed wonders brightening my classroom – would it all come down in flames?3
And would they make allowances for the fact that I first found the book in the school library? If I went down, should I bring the librarian with me? (Joking. Joking.)
I was jealous, suddenly, of math teachers. They never had problems like this.
But there was nothing to be done, for now, but finish the homework by finishing Book One. In the end, I realized, it all depended on whether these three-week-old high schoolers could handle it. I couldn’t wait to check the chapter annotations I’d assigned.
I finished the chapter and went to sleep.
Continued below, but:
This is the Part 3 of the “Unsucky English Lectures on Gilgamesh” series.
Part 1, “On Gilgamesh, and Dangerous Questions,” is here.
Part 2, “The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job,” is here.
Part 3, current post.
Part 4, “The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards (Gilgamesh, Book Two)” is here.
…and much more to come.
Trust me, this oldest-recorded-story-on-earth is fascinating, fun, and a relevant missed opportunity in the history of religion. Subscribe now, while we’re still leaving the station.
The Next Day
“Beautiful.”
“Profound.”
“Deep.”
“Lovely.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. All the students’ annotations sang this section’s praises. Not a single immature reaction.
I was so proud of them. And I was saved.
The class discussion was even better.
“It’s a different culture, so it’s not surprising that sex would be treated with a different outlook,” said one.
Answered another: “The sex scene itself is wonderful for its simple narration of the events we study in biology – the voice is so objective, it’s almost scientific.”
A third: “And that shows how radically differently this culture saw sexuality. It’s just another thing in life, described as simply as the weather, or a flower, or a beautiful sunset. It’s not pornographic or anything. It’s just part of life.”
A fourth: “But it’s more than that.”
“Explain that,” I said. “What do you mean?”
This student went on to give the most perfect explication of what happens after the sex scene, and what a deep, beautiful, mysterious, and alien point of view the world’s earliest civilization had, 2,000 years before King David and 3,000 years before Jesus, about the meaning of sexuality.
Before Shamhat
“Look at what happens to Enkidu after the sex scene,” he said, “and compare it to who he was before it.
“Before it, Enkidu was this weird wild man, created by the goddess Aruru – in exactly the same way, by the way, that the later god of Genesis created Adam – from clay – which makes me wonder if this isn’t another Judeo-Christian-Islamic borrowing from the older Sumerian/Babylonian culture.
“He was ‘one-third man, two-thirds animal,’ remember: the perfect ‘double,’ just as the god Anu ordered, for the ‘one-third man, two-thirds divine‘ Gilgamesh. And I mean ‘perfect’ in the ‘balancing’ sense too. Remember, Anu said Gilgamesh’s ‘double’ should ‘balance’ him – to bring ‘peace’ to Uruk by making Gilgamesh stop snatching all the new brides from his subjects’ beds.
“But the ‘balancing’ doesn’t stop there,” he continued. “It gets deeper.”
“How?” asked another.
“Setting, basically. Gilgamesh is the king of the first city in the world, and he knows that and is proud of it. He’s proud of civilization. I would argue he sort of symbolizes it.
“But the setting associated with Enkidu? ‘Wilderness’ – Nature. Enkidu drinks with gazelles at watering holes, runs with them (and as fast as them!), and knows nothing, literally, about cities and civilized humankind.
“So Enkidu ‘balances’ Gilgamesh by symbolizing Nature – the opposite of the city, and its civilization, which literally has a wall to keep Nature out.
“But it gets deeper still, this ‘balance.’ Because contrary to what we’d expect, ‘civilized’ Gilgamesh is not superior to ‘wild and natural’ Enkidu. We see that because Enkidu saves the other animals from the ‘civilized’ hunter’s traps. He’s compassionate, this natural man. And he’s innocent. Gilgamesh, though, is screwing the brides of every groom in town. The civilized king is glorious, yes – he built Uruk’s walls and is semi-divine, after all – but he’s also really flawed by his heartlessness. Enkidu ‘balances’ this, too.
“Finally,” he continued, “Enkidu ‘balances’ Gilgamesh in his physical strength. It’s like Achilles and Hector in the Iliad – perfectly matched superhero types. So that’s it: Aruru did a bang-up job of creating exactly what Anu ordered – a ‘balancing double’ to Gilgamesh.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Who was this kid? I had to break in: “Did you steal my annotations?” I asked. “Who are you? I haven’t memorized all of your names yet.”
“Not now, Mr. B.,” he said. “I’m on a roll. Don’t interrupt. I’ve only covered the ‘before Shamhat’ Enkidu. I want to get to the ‘after Shamhat’ stuff now.”
Could I adopt this kid? Buy him from his parents? He was too good to believe.
“Wow. My apologies. Go for it.”
After Shamhat
“I’ll keep it short. It’s this: Gilgamesh’s mysterious ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of the wild man worked brilliantly – though I don’t quite get why. Sex with this prostitute from the goddess Ishtar’s temple transforms Enkidu. And it does it in clear stages. I numbered them when I annotated.
“First, this sacred sex lifted him above the other animals that he used to hang out with. He doesn’t realize it – this is the weird thing – but the other animals do. They all run away from him when he tries to rejoin them at the watering hole.
“It’s mysterious, for sure,” he said, while I fought back exultations over this kid’s genius. “But the best guess I can give is this: All animals have sex, so it can’t be the simple sex that makes the other animals realize he’s no longer like them. So the only thing I can figure is that the poet is trying to say that sex seen as a holy thing – initiation into Ishtar’s mysteries, maybe? – is what separates man from animal. Seen this way, it’s not a brute act with Shamhat.
“And did you notice,” he went on, “that thing where Enkidu tries to run after the fleeing animals – before Shamhat, he was as fast as them, remember – but now he can’t catch up with them? Where is it . . . . yeah, here:
He tried to catch up
but his body was exhausted, his life-force was spent,
his knees trembled, he could no longer run
like an animal [he emphasized this line], as he had before.
–doesn’t that remind you of the story of Samson and Delilah in the Bible? It did me. I tell you, Mr. B., you’re right about that one. You see a million things in Gilgamesh that you thought were unique to the Bible. My preacher says the Bible is ‘the word of God.’ Well if that’s true, God sure seemed to plagiarize a lot from the Sumerians and Babylonians.
“But he also reverses them. Because in the Bible, Delilah is bad for Samson, while in Gilgamesh, Shamhat is good for Enkidu.”
“I never thought of that,” said another. “I think I see what you’re saying.”
“Yeah. It’s all there. The next thing that happens because of Shamhat is deeper still: Enkidu realizes – where is it -
his mind had somehow grown larger.
He knew things now that an animal can’t know.
“So what are these things he ‘knew’? It doesn’t say. But it reminds me of the scene in Genesis where Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and it doesn’t tell us what they learned either. All it does is show us that they covered their private parts.
“But here, they don’t cover anything, and no god gets angry. Instead, Enkidu just keeps transforming. Since the bell’s about to ring, I’ll rush: the next thing he learns sitting ‘at Shamhat’s feet’ is language and communication:
He understood all the words she was speaking to him.
“And man, those words were interesting:
Now, Enkidu, you know what it is
to be with a woman, to unite with her.
You are beautiful, you are like a god.
“‘You are like a god‘” he repeated. “So what’s happening here? Gilgamesh is ‘two-thirds god,’ remember. Is it okay, Mr. B., to read into this that sex with Shamhat maybe makes Enkidu less of a ‘balance’ to Gilgamesh now?”
“It’s okay to read anything you want into it, as long as you can justify your interpretation with good evidence,” I said. “And you’re doing fine so far.”
“Because I was thinking that again, it was Gilgamesh that sent Shamhat in the first place. He wants to bring Enkidu over to his ‘civilized’ side. And it seems like it worked.”
“How?”
“Because the next thing that happens is that Shamhat tells Enkidu that he should not ‘roam the wilderness and live like an animal,’ but should instead come with her to Uruk, to Ishtar’s temple, and to Gilgamesh’s palace. And he goes. Because of Shamhat, a temple prostitute, Enkidu is no longer an animal. He’s closer to the gods now; and because of Shamhat, Enkidu is about to become civilized.
“And that’s like Adam and Eve upside-down and inside-out.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s obvious,” he said. “Eve seduced Adam and the result was God’s curse. Shamhat seduced Enkidu and the result was Ishtar’s blessings of godliness and civilization for Enkidu.”
“Strictly speaking, weren’t Adam and Eve cursed for disobeying their God?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s still pretty opposite. After all, the gods here aren’t giving any orders at all – the absence of orders is the opposite of their presence, right? – and the result of the seduction is a blessing, the opposite of a curse.”
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see what happens. It’s been ten years at least since I read this story, remember – and I’ve never read this version, either. I’ve forgotten most of it. So I’m as clueless as you about what will happen next.”
“There’s just one thing I wanted to ask, though,” he said.
“Shoot.”
“The plot’s really weird. The gods create Enkidu to make Gilgamesh change his ways. But now, instead, we see Enkidu changing, not Gilgamesh. What’s going on?”
“It’s a mystery to me, too. We’ll see. But you left one thing out.”
“What?”
“You didn’t mention the last way that Enkidu changed: when Shamhat described Gilgamesh to him, isn’t his reaction confusing? The narrator tells us Enkidu ‘felt‘ something ‘deep in his heart . . . . the longing for a true friend.’ So that’s one more point for your theory that Shamhat civilizes him – he wants to escape his solitude and join human society, enjoy friendship.
“Again, that’s what he felt. But what he says is totally unexpected:
Take me with you
to . . . the palace of Gilgamesh the mighty king.
I will challenge him. I will shout to his face:
I am the mightiest! I am the man
who can make the world tremble. I am supreme!
“Those hardly sound like words of friendship to me,” I said. “So maybe the gods’ plan for Gilgamesh is not as off-track as it seems.”
After the Bell Rang…
…I turned off the alarm, and rose to get ready for work. An interesting bit of fantasy that dream was. “Too good to believe” indeed? I could only hope. I’d find out after the shower and drive to work.
The Reality
It should be obvious now that the dream student’s interpretations above are mine.
Here’s what really happened in class that day:
Most of the annotations from the girls in the class were minor variations on: “ewwwww.” Sometimes three w’s, sometimes ten.
The boys? Smiley faces in the margins.
I wonder if those gender reactions for this age group are cross-culturally similar, or different. And I don’t know.
I imagine I tried to elicit discussions like the points made by the dream student above.
When I explained to them that I was as shocked as they were to read the scene, and was afraid they wouldn’t be able to handle it, they all assured me it was unexpected, yes, but nothing they hadn’t seen before online.
“But it was weird to see it in English class.”
Next: “Lecture 4: The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards (Gilgamesh, Book Two)”
And did I later joke in class, “This guy’s a walking Viagra commercial”? Or, “And you thought the Six Days’ Creation was impressive”? Or, “Talk about needing a rest on the seventh day”? I don’t remember. But if asked, please say that I did.
all excerpts taken from Stephen Mitchell’s admirable 2004 translation of Gilgamesh. Criticisms of his adaptation by Ancient Near East scholars welcome!