Pinched from clay by a mother goddess to be an equal for an overbearing king
Aruru makes him in the image of Anu, hairy and immensely strong.
Myth · Mesopotamian
Enkidu
Mesopotamian mythology — wild man and companion of Gilgamesh
The wild man of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Pinched from clay by the goddess Aruru to be a match for the tyrannical king of Uruk, he lives with the gazelles until a woman civilises him. He and the king fight, become inseparable, kill an ogre and a divine bull, and then the gods demand a life for it. His death is the hinge of the poem: it is what sends his friend off in search of immortality.
How to spot them
- ▸Made of clay and covered in hair, he grazes with the herds and fills in the hunters' pits
- ▸Civilised by a week with the temple woman Shamhat, after which the animals flee from him
- ▸His death drives the hero of the oldest epic to seek eternal life
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Aruru', 'Shamhat', 'the House of Dust', 'a life for a life'
Stories & episodes
Ran with the gazelles and wrecked the hunters' traps until a temple woman tamed him
Shamhat spends six days and seven nights with him; the herds then reject him.
Blocked the door of a bridal chamber and wrestled the king of Uruk in the street
The fight ends in a draw and a lifelong friendship.
Tore the haunch off the Bull of Heaven and hurled it at the goddess who sent it
An insult that helps seal his fate.
Condemned by the gods to die for killing the guardian of the cedars and the divine bull
Shamash argues for him; Enlil insists on a life.
Dreamt of the underworld as a house of dust where the dead wear feathers like birds
One of the bleakest visions of the afterlife in ancient literature.
Dying, he cursed the woman who had civilised him, then took the curse back and blessed her
The sun god reminds him what her bread, beer and friendship gave him.
Quick-fire facts
- •He is created by the goddess Aruru (Belet-ili) from a pinch of clay
- •The woman who civilises him, Shamhat, is a temple prostitute (harimtu) of Ishtar
- •His name is usually read as something like 'lord of the pleasant place'
- •He and Gilgamesh kill Humbaba in the Cedar Forest and the Bull of Heaven at Uruk
- •Enlil demands his death; Shamash the sun god speaks in his defence
- •In older Sumerian poems he is Gilgamesh's servant rather than his equal
- •Tablet XII, appended to the standard epic, is a partial translation of a separate Sumerian poem in which he is fetched from the underworld
- •His death occupies tablets VII and VIII of the standard Babylonian version
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Andrew George — The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation
- Stephanie Dalley — Myths from Mesopotamia