Enkidu

Design of Enkidu

According to the legend, Enkidu was creates with clay by the Goddess-Mother Aruru at the request of the people of Uruk to bring back king Gilgamesh in the right way. Aruru made Enkidu with the image of Anu the god of the sky and of Ninurta the god of war.

“Aruru was penetrated of what Anu dictated to him. Being then washed the hands, it took a piece of clay and deposited it in the steppe. ”

Transformation

At the beginning of the epopee Enkidu represents the prototype of the man-savage:

“Abundantly hairy by all the body, it had a hair of woman, with the loops abounding like an ear field. Not knowing neither fellow-citizens, nor country, equipped with the savage. ”

Enkidu lives with the wild beasts and protects them by destroying the traps. But its actions irritate a hunter. This one entrusts to his/her father who advises to him to go to find king Gilgamesh.

“It will give you the Lajoyeuse Courtesan… She will reveal her charms… Then its herd, high with will become him, him hostile! ”

The hunter thus will find Gilgamesh which gives him Shamat “to corrupt” the wild man. Enkidu is immediately allured. After six days and seven nights spent with Shamat, he wants to set out again, but its herd pushes back it and he does not have any more the force to follow it. Enkidu lost in force but it wakes up with the intelligence.

Meet with Gilgamesh

Pushed by the praise of Gilgamesh made by Shamat, Enkidu decides to go to face the large king to prove his force. It also reveals to him that Gilgamesh dreamed of him and that it impatiently awaits it Uruk.

Enkidu meets finally Gilgamesh, but the control of the king with his people causes his anger. Follows a titanic combat. In the final analysis, each one grateful in the other equal sound, the two heroes swear an eternal friendship.

Exploits

Enkidu helps Gilgamesh in its combat against Humbaba, the monster guard of the forest of the cedars. In spite of its opposition to this search, it ends up cooperating and Humbaba is embanked. Then it lends hand-strong to Gilgamesh to drive out the celestial Bull sent by the goddess Ishtar.

Died of Enkidu

After an unfavourable dream, Enkidu starts to decay. It curses the hunter and the courtesan sent to civilize it. Little before its death, following the words of the god Shamash, it ends up rehabilitating it. Gilgamesh cries his/her companion hopelessly. The disappearance of Enkidu pushes Gilgamesh to be left in search immortality.

Analyzes historical

Of many ways, the metamorphosis of Enkidu can represent the power of seduction exerted by the city-States of Mésopotamie. Its origins (steppe) and its life in the middle of the wild beasts suggest the alive hunter-gatherer in margin of the territory of the first farmers of southernmost Iraq. Its transformation and the acceptance of the town life represents the slow assimilation as of this wandering population by agricultural civilization.

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