Gilgamesh was a cruel tyrant.
It was the thought that ran through the heads of the people of Uruk on a daily basis.
How could it not, when he forced the men of Uruk to build walls around the city to keep it safe? How could it not, when he forced women to come to his palace?
When it became too much, they began to pray to the gods for salvation. They needed someone that Gilgamesh would fear, someone to curb their king's cruelty.
One goddess listened, and when she could no longer stand to hear the pleas of the people, she acted. Aruru, the lady of the sacred mountain, lifted clay from the earth and created what the people of Uruk desired most.
A hero.
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His eyes fluttered open, taking in the plains of grass around him.
As he always did, he went to the watering hole nearby, dipping his head down to drink with the gazelles.
He knew little; he had simply awoken one day in a field, with nothing but a language and instincts for survival in his head. So he had lived like the animals around him, finding drink and food.
Until one day, a man appeared to him. Startled, he had run from the other person. The man was the first like him that he had seen... but not the last.
The man returned soon after with another: a woman, dressed in soft flowing garments. The woman's beauty was breathtaking, and all else immediately fled his mind. The animals, the instincts that he lived with: only she was important.
A week passed, and she gave him much. The knowledge of names: hers was Ukhut, and he burned it into his memory. The man's name was Tsaidu. Ukhut even gave him a name: "Enkidu".
She told him of Gilgamesh, its ruler, and how powerful and incredible he was.
Enkidu felt a great desire to meet Gilgamesh; the awe-inspiring tales about the king made him curious. After hearing of all of the tales Ukhut had to tell him, his current life seemed dull. And so when Ukhut asked him to accompany her and Tsaidu back to Uruk, to meet with Gilgamesh, Enkidu accepted.
It was not as far as journey as he expected, and within a few days the walls of Uruk were visible. As the city grew closer, Enkidu's anticipation grew stronger. A combination of his instincts and his time with the animals influenced him, and Enkidu's thoughts led him to the conclusion that in order to befriend Gilgamesh, he would need to battle the king.
The night before their group entered the city, a dream came to Enkidu. An omen, it seemed to him: a vision of defeat, of death, where his battle with the king ended only with failure. Failure to make friends, and failure to live.
When the next day arrived, and Ukhut led Enkidu to meet Gilgamesh, the thought of a fight had fled Enkidu's mind. But nothing else had replaced this idea, and so Enkidu simply stared at the king upon their introduction.
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So, this is who the gods believed would be my bane.
Gilgamesh gazed upon the wild man with a dispassionate gaze.
When Tsaidu had come to him, speaking of a hair-covered man in the wilderness whose strength and speed were beyond all but Gilgamesh himself, the king had immediately known the cause. The gods had decided to meddle in his kingdom.
He did not approve.
Where his citizens and the gods saw cruelty, he saw necessity. The people of Uruk were weak, and he wished them to grow. And what growth could occur without hardship?
But instead they had simply prayed for a hero, and the gods had delivered.
This 'Enkidu' was the result.
"Enkidu." The other man's gaze shot up, and Gilgamesh couldn't help but smile. "It is... a pleasure to meet you."
"...Likewise. I heard much of your strength, and even at a glance it is both more incredible and more terrifying than I expected." Enkidu's hoarse voice gave a surprising reply.
"Oh?" Gilgamesh frowned, even as Enkidu replied.
"You are strong in so many ways, and to fall under your gaze makes me feel weak. Unworthy. But at the same time, that weakness scares me because I see how you wish to change it. How you wish to change everything by force until there is nothing but reflections of yourself in the world around you. Such a world is terrifying to me."
The words shook Gilgamesh. Was that truly what I wanted? ...Is that truly what I have been doing? He shook his head. To change his life instantly on nothing but the words of a wild man would be foolish.
However, to ignore them would be even worse. And despite the blunt and harsh truth of his words, Enkidu's speech brought a smile to Gilgamesh's face.
"You feel weak, yet you are willing to challenge me? The king of Uruk?" Ukhut and Tsaidu, still in the room, began to shrink away in fear.
Enkidu simply nodded, and Gilgamesh's expression grew into a grin.
"Very well! Then you shall stay, so that you may challenge me more often."
All the others in the room could do nothing but gape at the king's words. It was an acceptance of someone who had spoken defiantly against Gilgamesh. The acceptance of someone who had not only revealed the truth behind Gilgamesh's actions, but had as good as told him that his desires were evil.
Once again, Enkidu did not match the actions of others. Instead, he smiled in a mirror of Gilgamesh's expression.
Their friendship began that day, and only strengthened over time. The terrifying and powerful king, and the man who spoke his beliefs and would not be cowed.
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Author's Note:
The beginning of the story of Gilgamesh truly began when he met Enkidu. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Aruru creates Enkidu from clay as a response to people's prayers for someone to temper Gilgamesh's tyranny. She does, although Enkidu does not know much and lives with the animals. Tsaidu finds Enkidu, either by accident or by Gilgamesh's order (the former is the interpretation I use), and Gilgamesh sends him back out again with Ukhut, a sacred woman of the temple of Ishtar, to convince Enkidu to come back to Uruk. Enkidu is enthralled by Ukhut's beauty, and she convinces him to return to Uruk. He believes that he will need to fight Gilgamesh before befriending him, but gets warned that Gilgamesh is stronger than him. It is unclear if Shamash the sun-god sends Enkidu a dream with this warning or if Ukhut herself warns Enkidu. (Again, I go with the former interpretation.) The actual meeting between the two is lost, but it is known that they become close friends after their first meeting.
I tried to focus more on the thoughts of Enkidu and Gilgamesh in the story, as well as their actual meeting and how they became friends. As I said in the introduction, the Epic of Gilgamesh that I am using mostly just tells of what happened, with very little focus on the interaction between characters beyond what happened. I intend to focus more on the characters themselves, and give Gilgamesh and Enkidu personalities that can show how they can have opposing ideologies in many ways but still become close friends.
Image Source: Gazelles Drinking from Waterhole by Garysimons on Pixabay. Web Source.