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Hello everyone and welcome back to Myths Matter.
Today, we're gonna try and keep this quick because people seem to like quick.
So we're gonna talk about Gilgamesh,
and the story Gilgamesh and Enkidu. What does it mean? That's the sort of central question.
What are they actually talking about in this story, and when you think about Babylonian civilization
and what's going on at the time, it sort of becomes clearer.
They're actually talking about the process of becoming a civilization. They're talking about this idea of
moving from hunter-gatherers or even small farming communities to actually civic life
having a city right? And so we can see this in every layer of this story.
We start with Gilgamesh himself, right, Gilgamesh is a tyrant essentially.
He is the example of a bad ruler and they call that out, and over the course of this story,
not only is Enkidu gonna get civilized but Gilgamesh himself is going to get "civilized"
um, by his encounters with Enkidu and the power of friendship.
And so we have this bad ruler,
and so what the gods create to counterbalance this bad ruler? A wild man, this Enkidu who they drop in the wild
and what we see happen immediately?Uh, he is moved from becoming just part of this sort of uncivilized,
wild animalistic, uh natural state to slowly turning civilization right?
It's funny that that love is what brings him first into becoming civilized.
But then he's brought to people and learns the ways of a civilized society and a culture and learns to defend
that culture against the wild elements, right?
It's why he's the one put on patrol and sent out to fight against Tigers and all these wild animals, right?
And there's this constant sort of back and forth between civilized and this wild that we see here
which must have been sort of how a lot of people living within Babylonian civilization felt, right?
Right past the borders of that civilization, things are, uh wilderness essentially and there are threats all over.
Okay, so Enkidu moves into the city and confronts Gilgamesh,
and this is that moment where we talk about the political life of the city, right?
This person from outside who's learned the ways of civilization comes in and confronts a tyrannical King.
And this is where we're getting this idea that, uh, tyranny itself that in Arma- in this civilization
that they've got this tyranny can't exist. It's not just ruled by the strong. There's other elements to it and granted,
there's not a lot more to it, right? It's we're not talking modern democracy or anything.
It's still Kings, it's still definitely the person who has the army, but it's a little bit more than just
pure, strong man does what he wants. I mean so we get that moment
and then what happens? They expand out from there, right? What do they do? They go from the city
out to the wilderness to do what, to sort of civilize and reclaim it. If we look at this story, right?
You've got this giant, you've got Humbaba out in the cedar forest, and what's important especially in the area,
cedars are the building material right? They're the thing that they're gonna make boats,
they're gonna make houses, gonna make all this stuff, and here Gilgamesh goes out to claim the cedar forests
for civilization and take it away from the wild animals, right?
From the dangers that are out there, which Humbaba sort of metaphorically represents,
and they go and they fight Humbaba and with the aid of the gods, with the aid of this like uh, this pantheon
of their civilization, they defeat Humbaba, and now they've sort of tamed the wild and
what's the first thing they do? They immediately harvest a tree, right?
They immediately chop down a tree and say "This is going to be a door for our greatest temple."
And so here they are, reclaiming the wild, bringing in and using it, using those resources for civilization.
And so this is the story, metaphorically of a civilization coming to be and starting to understand
what it means to be a civilization rather than simply a group of isolated clans.
And that's a really impressive thing, right? This is a really interesting dive into a culture thousands of years ago
at the dawn of civilization and seeing how our myths always represent what we're trying to
struggle with at the time.
So that's it for me for this week. I hope you all enjoyed this episode of Myths Matter.
and I hope you all join us next week for the first Persian Episodes we're covering on Extra Mythology.
Oh and for any of you who are patrons, thank you so much.
And for any of you who want to influence how we choose, what topics we cover,
go over to patreon.com/extra mythology and uh
come join our patreon and you get to vote for what civilizations and what cultures we talk about
in the next episode. Alright, I'll see you all next week
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