Gilgames, Enkidu, and the Underworld

The narrative drive of Gilgames, Enkidu, and the Underworld leads from the creation of the world to a meditation on the nature of existence in the afterlife. It begins by describing how, in far-distant days, the universe was formed and its parts divided among the deities. Enki, the god of the subterranean freshwater ocean, was sailing towards his allotted domain when a severe storm blew up. The same storm uprooted a tree growing on the banks of the Euphrates. The goddess Inana took the tree to her earthly home in Unug where she replanted it, hoping that it would provide timber for furniture. However, malignant creatures infested the growing tree, thwarting her hopes.

In despair, she turns for help first to the sun-god Utu, recounting to him the story so far. He provides no assistance and so she repeats her story to Gilgames, who takes up his weapons, defeats the infesting creatures, and turns the tree into timber. With some of the wood, he makes two playthings, an ellag and an ekidma, whose identities remain uncertain (and similarly the pronunciation of the latter word). Putting the two into action, GilgameS

Exhausts the men of Unug in a game, and the women of Unug with providing refreshments for their men. The next morning, as the game restarts, the women complain and the two playthings fall down into the Underworld.

Now it is Gilgames’s turn to despair, but Enkidu vows to retrieve the playthings for him. GilgameS warns Enkidu not to draw attention to himself when he goes down to the Underworld, the domain of the goddess Ereskigala who spends her time mourning for her son Ninazu. Enkidu, however, behaves in exactly the opposite way and the Underworld claims him. Gilgames appeals unsuccessfully to the god Enlil in Nibru for help, and then to the god Enki in Eridug, this time successfully: Enki instructs the sun-god Utu to bring up Enkidu’s ghost from the Underworld.

Reunited, Enkidu and GilgameS embrace, but a dialogue on the nature of existence in the Underworld soon darkens the joy of their reunion. As Enkidu’s initial answers to GilgameS’s questions reveal, the more sons a dead man has, the more offerings he receives in the afterlife, and the better is his existence there. In contrast, those with no heir have a joyless existence in the Underworld. Further questions and answers reveal further disparate fates: those who have died from a disfiguring disease twitch like an ox as the worms eat at them, but stillborn children have a compensating afterlife of luxury. The composition ends by describing the dreadful fate of those who have burned to death: having been turned to smoke, they have no existence in the Underworld.

A slightly different version of the second half of this composition, from the loss of the playthings to the dialogue on the afterlife, exists in Akkadian, appended to the Babylonian Epic ofGilgames.