The Search for Everlasting Life

Gilgamesh wanders. He has thrown off the city. He has thrown off the kingship. He sleeps where he falls, eats what he kills, dresses in skins. The fear that started when the worm came out of Enkidu's nostril has not let him sleep clean since. Somewhere, he has heard, there is a man who escaped the verdict that comes for everyone — Utnapishtim the Distant, who survived the flood, whom the gods made immortal and placed beyond the waters of death. He sets out to find him.

He travels until he comes to the twin mountains of Mashu, where the sun rises in the morning and sets at night. The mountains touch heaven; their roots reach the underworld. They are guarded by scorpion-men, half-human, half-monster, whose glance is death. Gilgamesh approaches in fear, unable to look at them. They examine him, recognize his two-thirds divinity, and consider letting him through. The female scorpion advises mercy. They warn him: no mortal has ever taken this path; the tunnel beneath the mountain is twelve hours long. Gilgamesh, weeping, says he must go anyway.

They let him in. He enters the tunnel. The dark begins to thicken almost immediately. At the first hour he can still see; at the second he cannot see his hand; at the third the dark has weight; at the fourth he is walking by feel along the wall. He walks for twelve hours. Each hour the poem reports the dark again. The sun is somewhere ahead of him in the same tunnel, racing for the eastern exit. At the eleventh hour Gilgamesh sees the first glimmer. At the twelfth he comes out — into a garden at the edge of the world where the trees bear jewels instead of fruit. Carnelian apples; lapis grapes; agate pomegranates. He has walked out of the world.