The Oldest Tale
And the oldest thing to know
The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew George
The oldest story in human history is collected on tablets that exist only fragmentarily. In the old days, those ancient days, a demigod named Gilgamesh was born. He was a great admixture, two-thirds a god and the final third a man. Greater than all men, greater than his charges, Gilgamesh ruled the city of Uruk. He did not rule it sparingly but instead, as he was a demigod, he ruled without check on his power. Those who lived in Uruk did so under the rule of Gilgamesh. They were his subjects and knew no other master, nor any escape.
Gilgamesh overreached, as tyrants must. He was unjust as tyrants always are. The gods — watching on, overseeing — saw that Gilgamesh was a great tyrant and more, that he needed humbling. They used their powers to make a man of a new kind, a man to test Gilgamesh. The gods make Enkidu, a wild man of the outer society, a wild man from the forest distant from the city of Uruk and its people and its ruler. A man impossible to describe. And he ventured to Uruk and its surrounds to challenge Gilgamesh the ruler, who had grown too used to his being greater than all men and beyond their powers to halt or restrain. Man could not harm Gilgamesh, but Enkidu may yet. It was the will of the gods.
The two met and they foght as they must. The gods watched on as they fought. Gilgamesh’s strength was great and Enkidu was a creation of the gods, a hard and fierce man unlike other men. Yet as Enkidu and Gilgamesh fought, they realised that they were alike — that they were matched. The one was sent by the gods to humble and to punish the other, yet their confrontation did not end that way. Gilgamesh defeated Enkidu yet he spared him. The two of them became friends. They embarked together to leave Uruk and to travel the world completing labours. Theirs was a story of adventures, a story almost of innocence. They hunted and they saw what there was to be seen. They did this in open, if tacit, defiance of the gods.
And the two of them arrived after much travelling at the great Cedar Forest. There, Gilgamesh and Enkidu were confronted by a dangerous man named Humbaba. Humbaba was the fearsome guardian of the Cedar Forest and he did not like the new entrants. They had entered his turf and they were not friendly. Humbaba challenged Enkidu and Gilgamesh. He said that they could not arrive at the Cedar Forest without his commanding them to fight. It was a pas d'armes. Humbaba threatened the two of them to fight, and together, Gilgamesh and Enkidu defeated fought Humbaba. They beheaded him and claimed for themselves the cedar trees of the great forest.
The goddess Ishtar, deity of love, saw Gilgamesh and she wished to be his companion. Gilgamesh spurned her embraces and her suggestions. And Ishtar, powerful in her rage and scorn, sent the Bull of Heaven to earth to do the damage she wished, to punish Gilgamesh. The Bull was a terrifying beast, immense and powerful. It laid waste on all sides. The two friends knew that they had to be the ones to stop the rampage of the Bull. Enkidu and Gilgamesh fought the Bull. killed the Bull, but as punishment, the gods decreed that Enkidu was doomed to die in combat with the Bull by the wrath of the gods. And the punishment of the gods was great, and it was cruel, and Gilgamesh learnt from it the most awful thing possible about the world.