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Twelve days after the Bull of Heaven was slain, Enkidu fell ill.
Gilgamesh immediately set the best healers of the land to cure him, and they did their best.
As Enkidu lay there with Gilgamesh watching over him with worry, Enkidu smiled. "My friend... I must thank you."
"Thank me?" Gilgamesh frowned. "If this is for the healers, then-"
Enkidu interrupted him, a rare occurrence. "No, my King. I must thank you for making my life happy."
"What do you mean?"
But Gilgamesh's question went unanswered. For at that moment, Enkidu's illness finished its vile work, and the man died.
He did not know the source of the illness, but in his anger, Gilgamesh believed Ishtar to be at fault. As the one who had sent the Bull of Heaven and had cursed Gilgamesh's name, she was known to act on her fury... and Enkidu had insulted her after the defeat of the bull.
The king of Uruk grieved. Days turned into weeks, and still Gilgamesh was filled with sorrow over his closest companion's death. Slowly, his grief began to change, but not into acceptance. No, instead it turned to fear: a fear of death.
Gilgamesh had not ever considered his own death before this, for he was the king of Uruk and powerful enough to face down any threat. But it had been an illness that had killed Enkidu, a threat that could not be properly fought or defeated. Filled with this newfound terror, Gilgamesh searched for a way to escape death. He had an ancestor who still lived, and it was this ancestor that Gilgamesh set out to find. Ut-Napishtim, a man who had been born long before Gilgamesh - yet still lived, long past when age should have ended him.
Through mountains full of wild beasts Gilgamesh traveled, eventually learning of Adad-Ea, Ut-Napishtim's ferryman. He went to him. Adad-Ea advised Gilgamesh to turn back, to give up on seeking Ut-Napishtim, but when Gilgamesh remembered the thought of dying as Enkidu had, he refused the advice. Only when Gilgamesh went so far as to threaten to destroy Adad-Ea's boat with an axe did the ferryman agree to take Gilgamesh to Ut-Napishtim.
They traveled to Ut-Napishtim's home, but Gilgamesh fell ill with a grievous illness along the way.
He felt weak, unable to do anything as the illness ravaged him. The fear of death swirled in his mind, and Gilgamesh could only curse his weakness and his failure. Was this how Enkidu felt? This uselessness and despair?
When Gilgamesh awoke, surprise and relief flooded his body. Ut-Napishtim had taken pity on Gilgamesh, taking him in and healing him. But soon, the terror of death returned to Gilgamesh's mind, and he demanded the secret to immortality that his ancestor clearly had.
Ut-Napishtim refused, telling Gilgamesh the tale of how he had gained his immortality. The deity Bel had wished to flood the world, and Ut-Napishtim had saved humanity from the flood. The other gods intervened, convincing Bel that his actions had been going too far, and in repentance for his attempt, Bel blessed Ut-Napishtim. But even after learning of this knowledge, Gilgamesh was still insistent. He had watched Enkidu die, watched his closest companion lose his life to an illness that could not be fought. He would not go the same way!
Eventually, Ut-Napishtim relented. He told Gilgamesh of an herb, a plant of life that would give immortality and eternal youth to any who ate it. It was a weed growing at the bottom of the ocean that would prick the hands of the gatherer, protecting itself.
Gilgamesh set off, with Adad-Ea accompanying him at Ut-Napishtim's request. Without hesitation, Gilgamesh dived down to the ocean's floor, and ignoring the stabbing pain in his hand, plucked the weed and swam back to the surface. He set out to return to Uruk, bringing the herb with him.
He himself was not sure why he waited to eat the plant. Perhaps it was a fear that there would be some dire side effect that Ut-Napishtim had withheld from him, or perhaps it was due to a wish to grow more of the herb. Whatever compelled him to wait, it was a mistake driven by his emotion.
Along the way to Uruk, Gilgamesh stopped to camp at a well of fresh water. After his long journey, clean water to drink and wash himself with was a comfort. Gilgamesh had been driven by his fear for his entire journey, and the stress had exhausted him; now that he had his goal, he allowed himself to relax. But while he was distracted, a snake came by. The snake was no intelligent beast nor a creature sent by a god, but simply a serpent that saw something to eat. Before Gilgamesh could even notice its presence, the snake had swallowed the plant of life whole and slithered away.
When he saw what had occurred, Gilgamesh fell to his knees, all of his terror now turned to despair. He wept for the loss of the herb, and he wept as his fear of death slowly transitioned back to what it had always been: grief over the loss of his friend.
He had been unable to save Enkidu, and now he was unable to save himself.
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Author's Note:
Not much changes from the original story here. I added a small bit of dialogue at the beginning here, but much of what I would want to have Enkidu say here is better revealed in the last story. The first section does feel a bit weak, but unfortunately I'm not sure how to make it stronger without taking away from the last story.
The rest of the story is more of a summary than I would like as well, but I tried to add focus in on how much Gilgamesh was being driven by his fear. This fear of death is a huge aspect of why Gilgamesh seeks out the plant of life, and I wanted to make it clear that this desperation was unusual for him. His fear of death was coming from grieving the loss of Enkidu, and since there is no one else that he cared for as much as Enkidu, this grief turns into a desperate fear to keep himself from dying the same way.
The story of the flood that Ut-Napishtim talks about is actually a sizable story of its own, but my focus in this Storybook is on Gilgamesh so I just summarized it. However, it is an interesting story, especially since unlike the more well-known story with Noah in Judaism and Christianity, the flood was considered to be the act of a vengeful god who then realizes he was wrong.
Image: Greece Cave Formation on Pxhere. Web Source.
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