Gilgamesh Origin
The study of The Epic of Gilgamesh is conducive to interpretation of origin, for in a character’s roots lies their motivations and compulsions. In Enkidu’s creation is revelation: he is not a mirror to Gilgamesh, but a superior foil of divine origin and mortal sustenance, a buffer between the gods and humanity.
In observing the first few lines of the excerpt, it is obvious that Anu (the speaking god) asks for the making of a physical match for Gilgamesh’s capabilities; what is instead created is inferior in body but a fitting moral superior and counselor to the tyrant king. In Anu’s opinion, fire is to be met with fire, a new tempest birthed to “be a match for the storm of [Gilgamesh’s] heart” (I.97). Anu’s folly here is that he fails to value …show more content…
This divine conscience, incubated by Aruru, is given shape in a clay, human, mortal body, and in this marriage of natural and supernatural, the perfect counter to Gilgamesh is born. Strangely, before forming the body, Aruru specifically “washed her hands”, the tools with which she molds her medium (I.101). In doing this, she insulates herself from her work; so as it is clay’s nature to be sticky, greedily and irreversibly absorbing any impurities introduced, so is human nature relentlessly eager to learn and grow. To be a foil in mind yet a parallel in body to Gilgamesh, the forming pawn of the gods must be human, and not divine, in form. Having modeled her ‘clay’, Aruru “threw it down in the wild,” violently casting the body away from herself, away from her essence, flinging it below her godly understanding of existence, in accordance with the rest of humanity’s distance from the heavens (I.102). But, this wild vessel has no contents; it is an empty bowl, a lifeless shell. It is only now, after separate creation of mind and body—one done so divinely and the other organically—that the two may be joined, for the first time forming what neither were by themselves: Enkidu. Note that, as he may not be himself without his human form, though god in mind, he is inherently mortal, a paradox unto
In observing the first few lines of the excerpt, it is obvious that Anu (the speaking god) asks for the making of a physical match for Gilgamesh’s capabilities; what is instead created is inferior in body but a fitting moral superior and counselor to the tyrant king. In Anu’s opinion, fire is to be met with fire, a new tempest birthed to “be a match for the storm of [Gilgamesh’s] heart” (I.97). Anu’s folly here is that he fails to value …show more content…
This divine conscience, incubated by Aruru, is given shape in a clay, human, mortal body, and in this marriage of natural and supernatural, the perfect counter to Gilgamesh is born. Strangely, before forming the body, Aruru specifically “washed her hands”, the tools with which she molds her medium (I.101). In doing this, she insulates herself from her work; so as it is clay’s nature to be sticky, greedily and irreversibly absorbing any impurities introduced, so is human nature relentlessly eager to learn and grow. To be a foil in mind yet a parallel in body to Gilgamesh, the forming pawn of the gods must be human, and not divine, in form. Having modeled her ‘clay’, Aruru “threw it down in the wild,” violently casting the body away from herself, away from her essence, flinging it below her godly understanding of existence, in accordance with the rest of humanity’s distance from the heavens (I.102). But, this wild vessel has no contents; it is an empty bowl, a lifeless shell. It is only now, after separate creation of mind and body—one done so divinely and the other organically—that the two may be joined, for the first time forming what neither were by themselves: Enkidu. Note that, as he may not be himself without his human form, though god in mind, he is inherently mortal, a paradox unto