To the extent of current knowledge, he was never a god to be worshipped, and is absent from the lists of deities of ancient Mesopotamia. Įnkidu has virtually no existence outside the stories relating to Gilgamesh. The deep, tragic loss of Enkidu profoundly inspires in Gilgamesh a quest to escape death by obtaining godly immortality. In the epic, Enkidu is created as a rival to king Gilgamesh, who tyrannizes his people, but they become friends and together slay the monster Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven because of this, Enkidu is punished and dies, representing the mighty hero who dies early. The tales of Enkidu’s servitude are narrated in five surviving Sumerian poems, developing from a slave to a close comrade by the last poem, which describes Enkidu as his friend. Though equal to Gilgamesh in strength and bearing, he acts in some ways as an antithesis to the cultured, city-bred warrior-king.
Enkidu embodies the wild or natural world. Thereafter a series of interactions with humans and human ways bring him closer to civilization, culminating in a wrestling match with Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. There have been suggestions that he may be the "bull-man" shown in Mesopotamian art, having the head, arms, and body of a man, and the horns, ears, tail and legs of a bull.
The apparition of Enkidu as a primitive man seems to be an innovation of the Old Babylonian version (1300 - 1000 BC), as he was originally a servant-warrior in the Sumerian poems. He is the oldest literary representation of the wild man, a recurrent motif in artistic representations in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Near East literature. Their exploits were composed in Sumerian poems and in the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, written during the 2nd millennium BC. Enkidu ( Sumerian: 𒂗𒆠𒄭 EN.KI.DU 10) was a legendary figure in ancient Mesopotamian mythology, wartime comrade and friend of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk.
0 kommentar(er)
