~ Siduri ~ Part 3
The Great Auroch & Enkidu
[>Part 1 here<] [>Part 2 here<] [>Part 4 here<]
The Great Auroch (Gilgamesh)
In the eco-mythological approach – let me remind you that this is a mytho-poetic (re)interpretation of this myth and its characters –, Gilgamesh, the unpunished representative of the arrogant and dissociated modern Western psyche, is at war with himself. He violates the places and disowns the Goddesses, oppresses his people, and only cares about his immortality –he can represent an entire lineage of kings, or even an entire tribe, and not necessarily an individual.
I called him the Great Auroch because some authors describe him as a bull by birth and behaviour, and 4700 years ago, herds of Aurochs, now extinct, were still grazing on the steppe – aurochs (whose name means "Ur-ox") were 1.80 metres tall and had horns 30 cm long. The last aurochs died in Poland in 1627. In modern Kurdish – one of the two official languages of Iraq, i.e. Mesopotamia – Gilgamesh means horde of buffaloes/aurochs, strength, and savagery. Gilgamesh, the violent tyrant king at war with the gods and Nature, in favour of domestication and civilisation, paradoxically draws his destructive strength from Nature itself.
Paul Shepard, in The Others: How Animals Made Us Human, comments on the role of the bull: "Heroes have taken on the power of the bull in the quest for eternity. The sacred bovids, beginning with the fertile cow and progressing to the virile bull, were finally degraded to a mere substance in the hands of humanised deities. Throughout the Old World, men interceded in the rites associated with the goddess and her "corrupt" tyranny of the animal demon. This masculine triumph was foreshadowed in the myth of Enkidu, a Sumerian hero of the first bullfight, marking the transition from the power of the bull to men themselves."
Wild Twin (Enkidu)
The Wild Man, created from clay by the gods in response to the people's complaints about the violence of the tyrant Gilgamesh, brings the innocence and power of a direct relationship with the mountain and the steppe. I incorporated Enkidu into this tale according to the Double, Wild Twin, or Daemon logic. In the book Tales of the Serpent and the Moon, I mentioned that the Double is a primal concept, being the animal part of one's own self, like an image reflected in a mirror because it is its complementary opposite. The Double brings the image of integration between the domesticated and the wild, rescuing this essential and primordial relationship from exile. If there is one, the goal is some form of reintegration, relationship, and dialogue with our complex ecology.
The loss of Enkidu is not an individual mourning, but a collective mourning of the extinction of the primordial relationship with nature that he represents. Enkidu's tragic journey throughout the Epic of Gilgamesh recounts his origins as the chthonic guardian of the mountains and the animals, right up to his corruption, domestication and subsequent annihilation. The subversion of his sacred role as guardian of nature and cycles is so profound that he is the one who assists Gilgamesh in material and metaphorical ecocide – in the felling of trees and the killing of animals, in insubordination to divine entities and guardians of nature.
Enkidu interprets Gilgamesh's dreams and uses the strength of his savage body to kill the Nature God Humbaba – in Kurdish, the word (Khwa) is still used for God, the Almighty; the similarity between Humbaba (Khwawa) and (Khwa) draws attention to the fact that (Khwawa) is not only the protector of Nature, but also the God of Nature –, cutting down the Cedar Forest in present-day Lebanon in a violent deforestation campaign that turns a lush landscape into a barren wasteland.
We mustn't forget the vital ritual and practical importance of the cedar tree: Inanna prepares her ritual bed with Cedar scents; the Tree, considered indestructible, is the birthplace of the eco-mythological and seasonal gods Tammuz, Osiris and Bitis; Cedar wood is the last to rot and is very valuable for nautical construction and in flooded areas. It is one of the mythical trees of Life and Wisdom, and may have ancestral links with the caduceus.
The Wild Twin's loyalty to Gilgamesh is such that, on his behalf, he affronts and offends the Fecund Goddesses and murders the Bull of Heaven (constellation of Taurus) – in a curious and paradoxical move that cuts both of them off from their divine legacy.
Although Gilgamesh engineers these various campaigns on his journey to control Nature, it is Enkidu who questions himself and suffers the heavy consequences. Cursed by the gods, his psychological and physical pain annihilates him. In a newly discovered part of the story, Enkidu imagines himself being interrogated by Enlil, the king of the gods, and says to Gilgamesh: "My friend, we have turned the forest into a wasteland. What will we say if Enlil asks us. You used your strength to kill the guardian! What anger made you trample the forest?" Enkidu, the Wild Twin is ruined by his guilt and grief, unable to bear the civilizational break with (his) Nature.
His strength and loyalty have been subverted and used against everything he is: from guardian to murderer and omnicidal. He is then torn apart by the pain of ecological dissociation, the sadness of the loss of relationship, and cannot survive the extinction of what he himself represents.
The death of Enkidu causes Gilgamesh to wander aimlessly through the hills, grieving and mortified by the tragic end of his friend and fearing his own Death. In more recent interpretations of the fragments, and following the arrogant vices of the modern individual psyche, the hero Gilgamesh is frightened and only wants to find his own immortality – this search being considered desirable and mature, as a step towards the transcendent. However, I suggest that Gilgamesh mourns the break with what, despite all the atrocities perpetrated, gave him meaning and heart: the intimate and reciprocal relationships with wild and more-than-human Nature (Enkidu).
I believe that the pain he feels is still a recent psychological wound of separation between humanity and Nature, the consequence of the domestication of the walled city. I say that his torn heart finds in Mourning some space for humility and other possibilities for relationships, more responsible and reciprocal, beyond the despotic quest to tame, control and corrupt Death and Nature itself. At the moment of deep mourning, the Great Auroch meets Siduri.
[>Part 1 here<] [>Part 2 here<] [>Part 4 here<]
Siduri’s Nectar
Fermented Wisdom at the Edge of the Underworld
These posts have been updated and edited in a printed book.
At the misty thresholds where life ferments into death, and death feeds new forms of life, stands Siduri. Forgotten goddess, veiled innkeeper, alchemical oracle. Before she was erased and reduced to a mere roadside distraction in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Siduri was a guardian of paradox and pleasure, an elder of ecological wisdom and sacred hospitality.
In this mythopoetic and eco-relational text, Siduri’s Nectar distills an ancient dream into contemporary ferment. Woven from years of study, ritual, grief, and dream, Sofia Batalha reclaims Siduri’s presence from the margins of myth and invites readers into a sensual, cyclical ecology of mourning and renewal.
Through storytelling, dreams, etymologies, lamentation, and the symbolic nectar of fermentation, Siduri’s Nectar offers an invitation to sit on the warm stone beside the veiled goddess, to sip from her cup, to mourn what must be mourned, and to feel your way, again and again, back into life.
This is a book for those: tending grief that won’t resolve into solutions; composting illusions of control and superiority; dreaming with the earth, not above her; seeking an embodied mythic literacy beyond patriarchal and extractive logics.
References
Abusch, Tzvi. Male and Female in the Epic of Gilgamesh: Encounters, Literary History, and Interpretation. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.
Albright, W. F. "The Goddess of Life and Wisdom." The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 36, no. 4, 1920, pp. 258-294. The University of Chicago Press, https://www.jstor.org/stable/528330.
Barron, Patrick. "The Separation of Wild Animal Nature and Human Nature in Gilgamesh: Roots of a Contemporary Theme." PPL - EBSCO, 2002, pp. 377-394.
Brown, Adrienne Maree. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Edited by Adrienne Maree Brown, AK Press, 2019."
Climate Change: From Gilgamesh to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The Marginalia Review of Books, April 22, 2022, https://themarginaliareview.com/climate-change-from-gilgamesh-to-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy/. Accessed September 30, 2023.
Dijk-Coombes, Renate M van. "'He Rose And Entered Before The Goddess': Gilgamesh's Interactions With The Goddesses In The Epic Of Gilgamesh." Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, vol. 44, no. 1, 2018, pp. 61-80. Stellenbosch University.
Dolph, Steve. "The Nature of Our Ruin: Part 1 - PPEH Lab." PPEH Lab, 17 December 2015, http://ppehlab.squarespace.com/blogposts/2015/12/17/the-nature-of-our-ruin-part-1. Accessed September 30, 2023.
Grahn, Judy. "Ecology of the Erotic in a Myth of Inanna." International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, vol. 29, no. 2, 2010, pp. 58-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2010.29.2.58.
McClellan, Andrew M. "Opinion: A Warning from the Dawn of History Echoes in Today's Debate Over Climate Change." Times of San Diego, October 9, 2021, https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2021/10/09/a-warning-from-the-dawn-of-history-echoes-in-todays-debate-over-climate-change/. Accessed September 30, 2023."
(rude diagnostic exercise) - Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures." Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, https://decolonialfutures.net/modern-colonial-infrastructures/. Accessed September 30, 2023.
Sentesy, Mark. The Ecological Predicament Of The Epic Of Gilgamesh. Draft ed., 2022.Sin-leqi-unninni. He whom the abyss saw: Epic of Gilgamesh. Autêntica, 2017.
Verlie, Blanche. Learning to Live with Climate Change: From Anxiety to Transformation. Routledge, 2023.
West, Martin Litchfield. The east face of Helicon: west Asiatic elements in Greek poetry and myth.
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This is not a hero’s journey. This is a remembering.