Love: Friend or Enemy?

Love, romance, and lust are always in every myth and story in every culture. It is the key ingredient to make a story interesting. Love can help or hinder a hero in the mythology. Romance is pretty much both a friend and enemy to the characters in stories. It can torture a poor soul or make them the happiest person in the world. Gilgamesh is no exception to the rule. Love seems to both help and hinder the characters and their actions throughout the epic. But is love the friend or enemy that is the motivation in the core of everything?

The first evidence that love is both is the story of Enkidu and the harlot. Love in this case hinders and helps Enkidu in the whole story. Enkidu is a strong innocent child in a sense. He does not have any knowledge of the civilized world. He is one with the wild. This creates a problem with a local hunter trying to catch some game. Enkidu keeps warning the animals to get from the traps. Frustrated, the young hunter goes to his father for help. The father suggests that his son bring a harlot with him on the next hunting trip. The son follows his advice and takes a whore with him. When Enkidu sees the whore, he falls weak for her. He becomes so enraptured with her that he sleeps with her for seven nights and six days. As a result, he loses all of his strength and the animals now avoid him. Enkidu has been made civilized. The flesh as soothed the savage beast. Because of the harlot, Enkidu is no longer the innocent wild being that he was first created to be. He has been made into a man. This is all because he fell for his love and desire like a rat in a trap. At first, love seems to have hindered Gilgamesh’s rival. But, the story does not end there. Enkidu accepts that he is no longer innocent of the civilized world and goes into the city to start a new life. There, he becomes a close friend and ally to Gilgamesh after he loses a battle with him. The story does not end for the harlot either. She ends up staying by his side as his lover. She follows him everywhere he goes after their long coupling. She seems to become his personal cheerleader in a sense. Even though the harlot does not really talk in the epic, her presence seems to give her lover the strength he needs to came going until his death. Enkidu loves her back as well. This shows when he is about to die. At first, the man is angry with her for taking her away from the world he once knew. He even goes as far as to curse the harlot on his death bed. But after some sense is talked into him, Enkidu changes his curse to a blessing for his lover. His blessing goes like this, “Woman, I promise you another destiny. The mouth which curse you shall bless you! Kings, princes, and nobles shall adore you. On your account a man though twelve miles off will clap his hand to his thigh and his hair will twitch. For you he will undo his belt and open his treasure and you shall have your desire; lapis lazuli, gold and carnelian from the heap in the treasury. A ring for your hand and a robe shall be yours. The priest will lead you into the presence of the gods. On your account a wife, a mother of seven, was forsaken.” (Unknown. Part three Pg. 27.) This blessing is proof that Enkidu still loves his harlot. The blessing is highly passionate. This would make a girl’s heart race like crazy. When Enkidu dies, his lover mourns for him. Their relationship proves that love can both hinder and help a man in his life.

There love also seems to hinder the characters. This case is proven with Gilgamesh and Ishtar. After Gilgamesh kills the guardian of the forest, takes his head the gods, and washes himself clean, Ishtar sees his beauty and falls in love with him. She is lusting after him like crazy. Ishtar asks him to be his lover. Most guys would jump at the chance to at least have a one-night stand with a beautiful goddess of love, war, procreation, and fertility. Does the hero take the offer? No, he does not. Gilgamesh turns her down coldly and states all of the misfortune about all of the other lovers that she had in the past. Needless to say, Ishtar is angry and embarrassed. She acts like a spoiled little child. That is easily understandable because Ishtar is a goddess and is used to getting her way. She rants and complains about how the beautiful has turned her down. The goddess goes to the father of the gods, Anu, and asks for help to crush Gilgamesh. She says, “My father, give me the Bull of Heaven to destroy Gilgamesh. Fill Gilgamesh, I say, with arrogance to his destruction; but if you refuse to give me the Bull of Heaven I will break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts; there will be confusion of people, those above with those from the depths. I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living; and the hosts of dead will outnumber the living.” (Unknown. Part three Pg. 25.) That threat is a powerful statement. She is determined to get revenge or destroy Babylonia. Afraid of destruction upon the people, Anu gives the goddess the Bull of Heaven. This plan does not go too well. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull of Heaven. They give the heart to Shamash and his brothers. Ishtar is so angry that calls a lamentation on the Bull of Heaven and Enkidu ends up dying because of it. This whole story proves how love rejected can hinder the characters and create disaster upon the people involved.

Romantic love is not the thing present in the story. Brotherly love seems to help Gilgamesh survive in the story. He has a great love for Enkidu. Ever since their fight, they have been like brothers to each other. Gilgamesh even asks his mother, Ninsun, to take it Enkidu as her own son. She does out of love and respect for her son. Enkidu holds up Gilgamesh when he falls weak in their forest adventure. The king does the same for his brother when he falls weak. Enkidu by his side seems to hold Gilgamesh up when he is down. However, that strength vanishes after his brother dies. Gilgamesh then adopts the wild ways that Enkidu once lived. He becomes weak and afraid of death. The king is so worried about his own mortality that he goes to the garden of the gods to receive everlasting life. They do not want to give it to him, but Gilgamesh insists and processed onward. He does not get the eternal life because it is not his destiny. But what is the whole point of him going for eternal life if he was going to back empty-handed in the end? The mission is out of love. Gilgamesh loves Enkidu as a brother and because of his death; the king wants to live forever. This story is a great example of how love can help and motivate characters to fight and survive until the day that they die.

Love is always a key feature in stories in general. It is both a friend and an enemy. Gilgamesh demonstrates both throughout all seven books. Without love in any form that it takes, stories would be very dull.

Works Cited

Unknown. “Gilgamesh.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Volume A. Beginnings to A.D. 100.

Lawall, Sarah & Mack, Maynard W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, London, England: 1984