In Praise of Enkidu

On the original boy and his dog.

If there’s one story I love teaching more than any other in our curriculum, it’s the diluvial epic of Gilgamesh, specifically the 1992 prose translation by David Ferry. Unlike the other ancient epics of Homer, the plays of Sophocles, and the Holy Scripture that we read, Gilgamesh is told with a spare, almost aphoristic presentation that renders big emotions and powerful images from short, straightforward sentences. It is easy to read and even easier to read aloud with a group of middle schoolers who are just now dipping their toes into the world of ancient literature. Consider Ferry’s introduction of the titular Urukian king, two-thirds a god, one-third a man:

“This is Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh

the Wild Ox, son of Lugalbanda, son

of the Lady Wildcow Ninsun, Gilgamesh

the vanguard and the rear guard of the army,

Shadow of Darkness over the enemy field,

the Web, the flood that rises to wash away

the walls of alien cities, Gilgamesh

the strongest one of all, the perfect, the terror.”

This is a story that isn’t just made to be read out loud, it is made to be chewed and relished. My students can tell you: I get into it. I’m not a very theatrical teacher until I read the words “the perfect, the terror,” and suddenly I turn into Brian Blessed. Or, even more enjoyably, the epithets for the monster Huwawa (or Humbaba if you’re reading a more recent translation), of which it is said, “seven terrors are his garments. He BREATHES and there is DEATH.” (emphasis mine)

With apologies to Homer and Virgil, Gilgamesh is the most metal thing on our syllabus, and I find that I have a much easier time communicating my love for it to my students than the other works we take on. But it isn’t just the spare, evocative power of its language that inspires such excitement in me, it’s Enkidu.

Enkidu, the hairy-bodied wild man of the grasslands, who is created by the gods to be Gilgamesh’s equal in strength and thereby restrain his tyranny, is the first of a very particular type of character. I first encountered him as Chewbacca in Star Wars. Then as Clank in Ratchet and Clank. Then as Loial in The Wheel of Time. Then Rocket Racoon in Marvel comics (Groot also fits this type of character in a different way). Dog in Half-Life 2. Daxter in Jak and Daxter. Et cetera.

Each of these characters inhabits a certain dynamic in their stories called “a boy and his dog,” a trope which derives its name from the title of a 1969 novella by legendary sci-fi author Harlan Ellison. Generally speaking, “the boy” is the hero, the protagonist, the chief agent of the story, and “the dog” is his companion, who is different from the boy in either species, intelligence, or nature, and yet is fiercely loyal to the boy because their relationship is the heart of the story. Enkidu is the first of these.

Born of clay and water and given life by the goddess Aruru, Enkidu is human in appearance, but lives his early life among beasts, sharing the plains and forests with gazelles and protecting them from hunter’s traps and other predators. We are told he is “as strong as the war god Ninurta” but is gentle and placid among the animals. It is not until he is seduced by the temple prostitute Shamhat that he even becomes aware of his human nature and pursues human community.

Interestingly, although Shamhat is dispatched to mollify Enkidu with her feminine wiles, she goes further than that and agitates his conscience. She tells him of Gilgamesh’s practice of jus primae noctis in the city, and this enrages Enkidu, who (hilariously, to me) marches straight to Uruk, plants himself in the doorway of Gilgamesh’s bridal chamber, and waits for him to show up. When he does, it’s an instant fight, and Enkidu becomes the first person to ever contend evenly with Gilgamesh, who still manages to wrestle the wildman to his knees but is astonished by the existence of someone who can compete with his strength.

And this brings us to one of the primal truths about men: in this moment Gilgamesh and Enkidu instantly become friends. Best friends. Expensive friends. Friends at the bottom of the list. Their bond is both fast and held fast. They become inseparable, and immediately begin plotting their next campaign for greatness: the conquest of the great Cedar Forest guarded by the demon Huwawa. This plot beat is introduced into the story by Enkidu, with a certain nonchalance that comes across as, “Hey, I heard about this really strong guy. He’s really strong. No one is brave enough to go into his forest.” And then Gilgamesh says, “Nuh uh. Let’s go beat him up.” This is their entire dynamic, and it’s perfect.

In that fight, as Huwawa’s face appears “here and there, a confusion of swords and axes,” Gilgamesh experiences fear for the first time, and Enkidu is there with a simple and profound bit of counsel for him:

“Then Gilgamesh saw the face of Huwawa the demon

and fled from the face, hiding himself away,

and Enkidu found him and said: “Two people, companions,

they can prevail together against the terror.”

Two people, companions, they can prevail together against the terror. This becomes a kind of catchphrase for Gilgamesh and Enkidu, thrown between them during their various bouts with all the Saturday-morning-cartoon-gusto of “Yo, Joe!” or “Autobots, roll out!” “Two people, companions, they can prevail together against the terror!” And that’s how you know the smackdown is coming. When Huwawa finally bites the dust, Enkidu and Gilgamesh pull him inside out from his tongue, an image so ludicrously graphic that it feels as if it only could have come from a child playing with action figures, and what lent them the strength to accomplish this ridiculous coup de grace was their shared declaration of unity and teamwork.

The highest moments in Gilgamesh are all like this. Enkidu’s presence in his Nephelimic brother’s life functions as a governor for Gilgamesh’s belly-driven passions. As king, he is feared and resented by his people because they cannot restrain him, but Enkidu’s friendship and loyalty unveils the redemptive side of Gilgamesh, granting him the initiative to fight and destroy existential threats to Uruk, as if Enkidu is his chest and mind, present externally from his body.

This is borne out in the second half of the story, when, having destroyed the Bull of Heaven, the gods decide that Enkidu is an abomination who cannot be allowed to live. They bring him low with a wasting disease and Gilgamesh is thrown into an emotional tailspin. Enkidu’s death marks the first passing of someone for whom Gilgamesh has real love, and it effectively robs him of his chest and mind. Instead of retreating to his former life of kingly excess and sexual gratification, however, he becomes obsessed with escaping death.

His obsession renders him a truly pathetic character. Gilgamesh is a giant, one of the ancient “mighty men, the men of renown” spoken of in Genesis 6. He is the product of ritual conception. “Two-thirds a god, one-third a man.” And we see plainly in the second half of the story what good that does him. He deflates as a character, constantly recounting the final days of Enkidu’s life (“I saw a worm fall out of his nose.”) and asking everyone he meets, “Must Gilgamesh too be like that?”

In the midst of this depressive thrall, he does manage to surmount terrible trials, such as the passage through the Path of the Sun at Night, a totally dark, twelve-league journey on foot through the mountain of Mashu, but his fuel for this feat is his desperation to escape death’s inevitability, and it’s here that the story reaches its emotional nadir, when, terrified by the suffocating darkness, Gilgamesh feebly attempts to rally himself, saying, “Two people, companions…” and trailing off at the realization that his “dog” is truly no longer with him. Humble poetic verse that hits like a freight train.

Gilgamesh is such an important story for those in the early phase of the Logic stage. It tells us so much about the ancient world, from the Sumerian legend of the flood and its designated Noah, Utnapishtim, to the profoundly melancholy tone of the ending, which fades out on an image of Uruk, civilization confronting Gilgamesh with the knowledge that it will outlast him, his various quests for fame and immortality ultimately meaningless. He symbolically steps out of the spotlight and invites his boatman, Urshanabi, to contemplate the splendor of the city. An early lesson that even the mightiest among us have no hope without Christ.

This, however, while true to Gilgamesh, or at least, Gilgamesh’s mythos, is not quite the true ending. Uruk had a good run, even long after Gilgamesh’s passing, but was eventually abandoned in the eighth century A.D. and laid undiscovered for a millennium. It’s ironic. If only Gilgamesh had known that the brotherly, transcendental love he held for his most excellent and dependable companion was what would preserve his story for the modern age to come.

Enkidu is the spirit of the epic, and much like Gilgamesh’s higher nature, the adventure of the story dies with him. His role as “the dog” is one that embodies and facilitates one of the most timeless themes in storytelling- the power of friendship -and it is by his example, his trusty, contented support for his friend, that the story is given a small dose of common grace for us to latch on to and amplify. In that sense, one could argue that Enkidu is the entire reason that pagan literature is welcome in the classical Christian curriculum. If not for him, we might not have first seen the kernels of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness that pervade all the arts and humanities and make them worth studying. Without that, we may have abandoned the ancient epics to time. Speaking for myself, such a world would be a terror against which no one could prevail.

May our Lord illuminate the righteous path He has laid before each of us and compel us to walk it dutifully and with joy.