The hero and his friend represent the power of brute strength in taming wild nature. The Bull is "nature" at its worst, destructive and terrible. As the Bull was brought into being at Ishtar's behest, it is clear, once again, that she stands for the unbridled passions that lurk beneath the surface of cultured society. Gilgamesh and Enkidu attack the Bull as they would any dangerous animal:
After they had killed the bull they tore out his heart.
They set it before Shamash.
They withdrew and worshipped Shamash.
They sat down, blood-brothers, the two of them.
VI.v.153-156
The heart symbolizes the seat of passion and of the soul. The Bull is not merely killed in the physical sense - it is dismembered and deprived of the spirit that empowers it. By setting the heart before the god Shamash, Gilgamesh and Enkidu show that they are prepared to dedicate their feats of strength to the higher pursuits of life and enlightenment. Shamash is the god of the sun. The sun and its light symbolize the life force within the universe, and also the illumination that leads to greater knowledge and wisdom. The death of the Bull is a triumph of the forces of light over darkness - a common theme in Western religious and literary traditions in the millennia to follow. Gilgamesh' slaying of the Bull also indicates that the hero...
Gilgamesh and God The cultures of ancient times were often dominated by the religious system and religious ideology of the populous. Many stories from ancient cultures define how that culture viewed those in power, either secular power such as their king or religious power such as their deity. Often, the two types of authority were combined so that the king was in some way descended or connected to their god or
This is quite valuable in his culture, because he is a leader to his people, and he is leading them to a new home, but to a new faith as well. Defying Satan shows that he is a man to be reckoned with, and a man to follow. Both men are strong, capable leaders and good men, but one believes in God, and the other believes in many gods,
" (97). However, as both Utnapishtim and Siduri (the tavern keeper Gilgamesh meets on his journey) stress, and Gilgamesh eventually embraces "death is inevitable…" (107-108). "When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be
Things Fall Apart and Gilgamesh Despite being conceived and written during distinctly different eras in human history, both Chinua Achebe's modern indictment of colonial conquest in Africa Things Fall Apart, and the anonymously authored tale of legendary heroism The Epic of Gilgamesh share the common thread of a protagonist struggling to reconcile personal expectations with the rapidly changing world around him. One of the earliest known surviving examples of ancient literature,
Sleep is often a poetic euphemism for death; Utanapishtim even says as much when Gilgamesh finally catches up with him... "How alike are the sleeping and the dead..." In any event, Gilgamesh's foreboding deepens as they face the entrance to the forest. Gilgamesh and Enkidu find and confront Humbaba, and Humbaba tries to pursuade Gilgamesh to make friends with it, but Enkidu advises him to kill it, for fearing the
connecting the reader with the time period in which it was written. This is why the writings of the distant past, even in translation, are among the most fascinating to modern scholars. Anthropologists such as Saussure, Joseph Campbell and others were seminal in uncovering mythological themes in ancient texts. As archeology supplemented legend, the literary world found evidence that the mythical worlds evidenced by the works of antiquity was
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