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Having forged an unbreakable brotherhood, King Gilgamesh and the tamed wild man Enkidu vanquished the fearsome forest guardian Humbaba, only for the king to fatally provoke the wrath of the goddess Ishtar.
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This fierce rejection ignited Ishtar’s wrath. She brought her grievances before the god Anu, who bestowed upon her the Bull of Heaven. As Ishtar unleashed the celestial beast upon Uruk, calamities besieged the city; the waters ran dry, and the crops and trees withered into dust.
Gilgamesh, with Enkidu’s help, valiantly saved his city by slaying the Bull of Heaven. But as victory celebrations faded, Enkidu was visited by a vision in his sleep: a council of the great gods, where it was decreed that for slaying the celestial bull, one of the two friends must perish.
The cruel hand of fate fell upon Enkidu. Bedridden by illness for twelve days, he languished in sorrow, lamenting that he was denied an honorable death upon the battlefield – a demise that would have crowned him with an immortal name.
Upon Enkidu’s passing, Gilgamesh wept for his fallen brother for six days and seven nights. He refused to bury him until worms claimed his flesh, and Enkidu’s decaying body crumbled back into mud. In that harrowing moment, a profound terror of death engulfed Gilgamesh, certain he, too, would one day meet his friend’s grim fate.
Consumed by unbearable grief over his companion, Gilgamesh wandered the wilderness aimlessly. His mind was a tempest of questions concerning the mysteries of life and death, and the inevitable doom that awaited him.
He fiercely refused to yield to the specter of mortality, rejecting the thought of descending into the realm of the dead to dwell eternally in shadows, forever exiled from the golden light of the sun.
Thus, Gilgamesh embarked upon a desperate odyssey in pursuit of immortality. His quest was to seek out Utnapishtim, a legendary survivor of the Great Babylonian Flood, who had been granted the gift of eternal life. To be continued.
Amjad Refai is the director of Arabic Programme at the University of Hong Kong
