The Epic of Gilgamesh

   From the start, I did not particularly like "The Epic of Gilgamesh." I attempted to read the introduction, but it was simply too hard to understand, and I gave up. This left a sour taste in my mouth for the first few tablets, but eventually the story began to grow on me. It is understandable the Temple has decided to make this book required for all of its students, being that it is one of the oldest texts in existence. It also expresses many popular themes, such as love between friends and family members, the power of nature, and the depiction of women.  Another aspect of the book that I did not like was how so many words had been added which were not included on the original cuneiform tablets. Granted, the words were intended to reflect the story as closely as possible but it is still very distracting for me to wonder the actual way it was written. My last complaint about the poem was the repetition. I think it did not add to the story whatsoever and it was quite annoying.

   Now that I have all these issues off my chest, I want to focus on the positive points in the poem. There was a vast difference in the treatment and depiction of women. The main female characters were respected, and some even feared. Ninsun is Gilgamesh’s mother and she is also the queen of Uruk. She is a goddess and has the utmost respect from her people. Another theme that I must acknowledge is love. Ninsun has so much love for her son; she adopts Enkidu because she knows they are meant to be brothers. Gilgamesh demonstrates this same kind of undeniable love for his new friend and brother, Enkidu. Ishtar is another main character in “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” She is the goddess of Uruk and she is feared, a man knows not to cross her. One of these men is Gilgamesh, who did not want to get involved with her because of a possibly bad ending. His plan to turn her down did not save him from Ishtar’s wrath, and she unleashed the Bull of heaven. Shamhat is a harlet from Uruk, which is a prostitute. Despite her usually condescending job, she is not looked down upon. I find this job shocking for this time period because men in history have always been dominant and woman are rarely important figures in ancient literature. The only contradiction to this theme of respected women is that Gilgamesh, being a horrible king, would rape the women that were soon to be brides. I think that this was more of an overall mistreatment of his people and not a sexist attack. There is no excuse for raping women, but Gilgamesh also beat the men. This proves he did not only unleash his evilness of women. There is proof in the last tablets that Gilgamesh has improved as a person, so we can only hope that treated women the way they should be treated until his death.