Have you read the story of Gilgamesh? For the first years of his reign in Uruk, he is a holy terror. He’s not a normal king, hanging out in his palace, making occasional appearances in public behind his guards. Gilgamesh is out there prowling the street, taunting any man willing to face him. Those who do engage he wrestles to the ground with inhuman strength, smashing their bones to bits. When any man in Uruk marries, the man must step aside with head bowed on the wedding night and allow Gilgamesh to rape his bride.
What’s wrong with these men? Some do stand up to their indomitable barbarian king. But Gilgamesh makes short examples of them until pretty much everyone shrugs their shoulders and says “I guess we have to live with him.” A rumor goes around that Gilgamesh is not really a man at all; “They say he’s two-thirds god… How else could the rest of us be so powerless before him?” A cult emerges, and some of the citizens of Uruk are happy to give their strongman anything he desires. Better to follow a godlike man than to have no leader at all.
But other men (maybe even a few who publicly praise Gilgamesh) cry out to Shamash, the sun (100%) god: “Save us from our inexhuastibly horny ape king who beats his chest, humiliates us and defiles our women!”
Shamash hears, and sets a counterforce in motion: another strong man, Enkidu. If this were a Hollywood blockbuster, this hero would be a Gilgamesh clone who dons a tight suit in contrasting colors. But, being a timeless epic from the distant mists of the past many thousands of years before the Greek epics, free of any blockbuster tropes, the gods do something out of left sky: they send a gentle, clueless barbarian to civilize this king who doesn’t know the first thing about a civiized life.
At the moment of his creation, Enkidu is strong but ill-equipped to face Gilgamesh. He must be coaxed from the animal realm into the human one to do this work. This does not happen by attending school. He does not read bestsellers or listen to influencers. No intellectual pursuits can prepare him.
How does Enkidu get ready to face the rapacious Gilgamesh? He starts by having seven days of rapturous sex with a temple prostitute, Shamhat. As she shows Enkidu the glories of the sensual world, beyond survival imperatives, he learns something that Gilgamesh, at the top of human civilization, has missed entirely. Any normal director of this story would have Enkidu in a forest temple, learning Shao-Lin stances or I suppose early Mesopotamian wrestling stances. But no. It must be the physical act of love in the forest, with a willing and caring woman.
The gods are preparing Enkidu in their own way to face Gilgamesh. At the end of this week, they shake him awake from his love-making stupor.
Meanwhile, Gilgamesh, at the height of his power, terrorizes another wedding. It is the eve of his reckoning.
new gods 