He Who Saw the Deep

The poem opens with a prologue. The walls of Uruk: examine the brickwork, the foundations laid by the seven sages, one league of city, one league of gardens, one league of temple grounds. This is the achievement of Gilgamesh, the man who saw the deep, who knew the countries of the world, who brought back a tale of the days before the flood. The prologue is the poem's frame: what you are about to hear is the story this king inscribed on stone when he came home.

Then the problem. Gilgamesh, two-thirds god and one-third man, is too strong for his city. He challenges the young men to games until they cannot stand. He takes the brides of Uruk on their wedding nights, before their husbands. The people of the city pray to the gods for relief. The gods listen. They agree, between themselves, that what is needed is not punishment but a counterpart — someone strong enough to match Gilgamesh, so that the energy that is breaking the city has somewhere else to go.

The mother goddess Aruru washes her hands, pinches off a piece of clay, throws it into the wilderness. Enkidu is born there. His body is covered in hair; his locks are like a woman's; he eats grass and drinks at the watering holes with the gazelles. A trapper, setting his pits one morning, sees him for the first time and freezes in terror — Enkidu has been pulling the trapper's snares from the ground, freeing the animals. The trapper runs home and tells his father. The father sends him to Uruk to ask Gilgamesh for help. Gilgamesh sends back, with him, the temple woman Shamhat. The two of them go out to the watering hole. They wait.