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.
I am glad you mention how powerful the women here seem, but then I wonder something else: why do the powerful women have negative qualities? Ninsun, while loving, persuades Shamash to help her sons kill Humbaba by freezing him so that the guardian dies defenseless. Shamash destroys Enkidu's purity by becoming intimate. Ishtar ruins the lives of her "suitors" and manipulates her father into unleashing the Bull of Heaven. The other women, the ones who are raped, are arguably "purer", since they committed no real crimes or manipulation. I wonder what this says about Sumerian/Akkadian gender roles!
ReplyDeleteYou brought up a really interesting point... I know in class we talked about how most of the women in the poem were viewed with respect, but that the exception was the nameless women Gilgamesh rapes. I did not really give this much more thought, I just figured it was an inconsistency with the theme to show how terrible Gilgamesh was in the beginning with much room to grow, but after you pointed out how he also treated the men with equal cruelity, it makes much more sense to me. I don't think I would have thought of that on my own!
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