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Chapter 4
🕑 Added 2021-08-27 18:38:22 +0000 UTCLoneliness.
If there was one word to describe Gilgamesh's life, this would be it.
When his memories started to pass through me it wasn't just them.
It was his experience, memory and feelings.
All your pain, sadness, hate, anger, joy everything.
Gilgamesh was born the son of the King of Uruk Lulabanga and the Sumerian Goddess Rimatsu-Ninsun.
He was a supreme and transcendent being, so divine that he was two-thirds of the gods and one-third of humans, and no one else in the world could match him. He was a despot who possessed a high deity that he believed was invincible.
Born with a body that was of the highest degree by mortal standards and knowledge that attained the truth, Gilgamesh was born, appointed King and Wedge of Heaven to connect the ascending humans and the vanishing gods.
He was sent to secure the humans and hold the earth slowly leaving the Age of Gods. He was a being who personified the two sets of life forms, with the blood of those who ruled and the blood of those who would rule from then on.
He should be the last neutral party able to discern their respective flaws, judging from their respective positions.
There was no fault of the young King, during his first years of reign he was praised as a kind and gentle King, always being praised by his people, his only fault being that he had never submitted to the gods.
But as he transcended adulthood he was changing, the King at another gentle time became a tyrant, practicing absolutism, oppression, coercion, demands and the maximum decay of self-interest, the people of the kingdom lamented the change, and even the gods were perplexed by the extent of the expected transformation.
The reason was simply that he was born with the conclusion already drawn, existing independently as a being neither fully divine or human.
He acquired the characteristics of both, so that his field of vision reached beyond what the gods were able to comprehend.
His overwhelming power created an overwhelming isolation, but his strength of self prevented him from abandoning his royalty or fleeing the mission imposed on him. By revering the gods and loving mankind, he decided to follow the path to its completion, deposing the gods and hating mankind.
The Gods already foreseeing this created even in the childhood of Gilgamesh a being to stop him.
Enkidu.
Created from clay by the King of the Gods Anu, and the Goddess of Creation Aruru.
Enkidu was neither a man nor a woman he was just a being created out of clay for the purpose of being the chains that would return the cornerstone, Gilgamesh, back to the control of the Gods.
Gilgamesh first encountered Enkidu outside the temple of Uruk, who immediately declared that he would rebuke the king and rectify his arrogance.
They entered a battle that lasted several days, and Gilgamesh was forced to use all his strength to match his transforming opponent. He was irritated or surprised at having met his equal for the first time, taunting Enkidu like a clod of mud. He was forced to draw out his treasures which had been carefully guarded, marking the first use of the [Gate of Babylon] as a weapon, and although it was initially a reluctant and forced humiliation, he finally began to appreciate them and brought them out. . No regrets.
He ended up emptying the vault, and Enkidu was left with only a tenth of his clay. Instead of continuing, Gilgamesh dropped onto his back as he roared with laughter, following Enkidu. He noted that there would be only one chance to attack for each of them and, without any means of defense, that would leave only two silly corpses. Enkidu was never able to interpret whether this meant it was a draw or whether Gilgamesh wanted to make it so that there was only one corpse.
Enkidu asked, "Don't you regret the treasures you spent?"
To which he replied in a bright voice, "Well, if it's someone I should use it on, it's not unthinkable to do him a favor."
Gilgamesh and Enkidu became close friends later, marking the only story of eternally unchanging value in the entire world.
He became the greatest and richest king on Earth, who ended up acquiring all the treasures in the world.
Uruk became unprecedentedly prosperous, and Gilgamesh was considered so powerful that even the gods could not ignore his existence. One goddess, Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, even fell in love with Gilgamesh and proposed marriage to the perfect king.
He rejected her immediately because he knew she was an unfaithful witch, cruel and the corrupter of all men. She was furious, feeling that he had insulted her, and went to her father, the god Anu, for revenge. She begged him to release the Bull of Heaven.
The unquestioned beast of the gods caused seven years of famine and destruction on earth. Working together, Gilgamesh and Enkidu defeated him after linking him to the [Chains of Heaven], causing the dark clouds that covered the world to fade and saving the earth from the flood. Ishtar's reputation was once again crushed, and her fury did not abate. She asked that they be killed for the sin of killing a beast of the gods with the body of a human.
Her request was granted and Enkidu, created by the gods, was unable to defy the decree.
It slowly weakened and returned to the clay, while Gilgamesh desperately held the crumbling clod in his arms.
He was irritated by this, believing he was the one who deserved retribution, should the need arise. Enkidu tried to calm him down, telling Gilgamesh that he was just one of the many treasures in Gilgamesh's collection, that he would find countless others greater than himself in time.
Gilgamesh declared: "You have value. Only you have that value. I declare: In all this world, only one will be my friend. Thus - not for all eternity will your value ever change."
Enkidu returned to its original state later, leaving only the shrill bang of Gilgamesh behind.
Until that moment, Gilgamesh had lived by his own standards, collecting wealth, laying down bedding, fighting with his friend, and purging the land of prohibitions.
Enkidu, returning to the dust, meeting death, changed his mind a lot. Death had never inspired grief or fear in him until that moment, and it had never been in his mind, though he knew he awaited everything.
Seeing the one who possessed a power equal to him perish before his eyes, he registered the true reality of death for the first time.
The despair Gilgamesh felt was because he saw death as an escape from his duty as an observer of humanity; in order to fulfill his mission completely, he must observe humanity's path to its end.
Falling into depression and lack of vigor, he sought the herb of immortality, a spiritual herb of perpetual youth and eternal life.
Gilgamesh hated and feared the death that took his friend, leaving him in fear of his own life for the first time since birth. He followed his journey, which he later called a farce, which lasted the same amount of time as he had lived up to that moment.
He wandered the desert for decades, as described in the epic "crawling pathetically" while thinking about nothing but not wanting to die.
He had the same motive as all humans, for not even a child of the gods was different when faced with death.
With "idiocy exceeding that of humans", he continued to try to overcome death, tossing aside the pride, authority and power of the king, not knowing a purpose for doing it or someone to do it for.
