Gilgamesh Excerpt

Endiku is a beastly kind of man who lives among the animals. He feeds with them and he drinks from the same watering hole as they do. Endiku does not know anything else for "he knew neither people nor settled living." One day, a hunter comes across Endiku and is fearful of the way that this man is living as such a beast. He sends for a prostitute to tame and civilize Endiku. Apparently, women were seen as forces that could convert such wild things. The hunter's and his father's plan is for the prostitute to basically strip for Endiku and then seduce him and have sex with him. Once that all happens, the hunter's father hypothesizes that Endiku will no longer belong to the wild because " his animals who grew up in his wilderness will be alien to him." The hunter and the prostitute go through with the plan and it works! They have sex for an impressive six days and seven nights and then Endiku is so tired from all of the hard work that he has no energy to run with the animals as before. He comes to this sort of revelation that he is not supposed to be some wild person anyway, and he listens to the prostitute tell him how wonderful and godlike he has the potential to be. If only he were civilized... For the Mesopotamians, to be civilized was to give into hedonistic pleasures. Endiku was only civilized once he had sex, ate food, and drank beer. "Eat the food, Endiku, it is the way one lives," they said, "Drink the beer, as is the custom of the land." Only one Endiku did as the others did and left behind his more primal past did he "turn into a human." That line caught my eye, as it implies that prior to becoming civilized, Endiku was nothing but a wild beast.