Gilgamesh has dreams about lions and his fear and terror start there. It doesn’t help when he has a dream about certain frightening things as well, in which there is a battle, but the winner is unknown. That kind of leaves you hanging by a thread wondering if it’s some kind of foreshadowing or a random dream gone wrong…well.
It turns out Gilgamesh for some reason decides to get himself in even more terrifying circumstances by visiting the mountain Mashu, guarded by Twin Dragon Scorpion beings. If the names themselves don’t make you run away in pure anxiety, I don’t know what will. So Gilgamesh goes, for reasons yet to be discovered, and asks them to let him in, which they eventually do. I can’t believe they let him. I mean, from what I’ve seen so far, Gilgamesh is practically handed everything in a silver spoon.
He gets to the sea, and the page leaves you there until the next tablet starts. What is so special about the sea? That pause between pages and endings certainly gives it more of an apparent importance, which I have yet to figure out.
Gilgamesh says, “I look like one who has undergone a journey and I wander the wilderness wearing the skin of a beast because I grieve for the death of Enkidu my companion.” Here we see the true feelings and love with which Gilgamesh holds Enkidu close to his heart. Here we see that Gilgamesh “The Great” is not incapable of feeling emotion and we finally get to see him yearning for Enkidu, for his companionship, for his friendship, for him.
When Gilgamesh asks the tavern keeper if he must die too and be like that, she repeats what he said in tablet three, about only Gods living forever and, “the life of man is short.” Which brings us back to the thought of there being to point to life, and no ever-after, just long-gone souls.
There is some part in him (Gilgamesh) that really is hoping to escape the act of actually dying. So he asks the tavern keeper he wants to avoid death, so how could he find Urshanabi. He is willing to do anything.
The end is quite nice when the old man says to Gilgamesh, “How long does a building stand before it falls? How long does hatred, for that matter, last?”
He compares death to everyday things that are bound together, but it sounds so deep, in a casual type of way.
The whole point is, everyone dies, it’s no question, but the timing of its occurrence is unknown.
Carpe Diem. Enjoy life now, don’t think of the past, or the future that is unforeseeable. Enjoy as much as you can.
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