Role Of Women In Gilgamesh

Two understand how the gods influenced our hero, Gilgamesh, one must first look at the various ways the gods meddled into his life. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a tale of a half-mortal man whose quest to break his own boredom turns into a tale of friendship, immortality, and kingship. However, his tale would not have been able to happen if it was not for the influence of the various Sumerian deities. After the people of Uruk complained to the gods about Gilgamesh’s child-like behavior, the goddess Aruru creates the man that will become Gilgamesh’s closest friend, Enkidu. Enkidu was created as an equal to the king so that Gilgamesh would have a way to occupy his time. Unfortunately, after the two friends defeated the giant Humbaba, a terrible demon creature, the god Enlil becomes enraged, but despite Enlil’s best effort, he is unable to punish the two.

These actions define the king as despotic by Babylonian standards. Further, his entrapment of Enkidu shows Gilgamesh using sex to corrupt. Enkidu lived a life of ignorance and bliss in the wilderness. He did not know fear, age, and many human constructs that make life arduous. Gilgamesh weaponizes sex by sending a prostitute to Enkidu, in aims of domesticating him. This sex removes Enkidu from the natural world and forces him to adopt attributes of humanity (alcohol, clothing, shaving). The Mitchell translation of the scene shows Enkidu’s sudden loss of power and separation from his natural life, explaining “He set off towards his beasts. When they saw him, Enkidu, the gazelles shied off . . . he could not run as before” (Mitchell 13). Therefore the act of sex marks his irrevocable entrance into civil society; through sex, Enkidu desecrates his innocence and is barred from his pure life. In this sense, Gilgamesh begins with one man the abuser of sex, and the other the abused. As both men build their relationship, Gilgamesh begins to incorporate Enkidu’s mature understanding of compassion into his character and diverges from his initial status as a cruel tyrant.

In The Epic of Gilgamesh it starts off talking about how Aruru forms a man named Enkidu out of clay that is supposed to be just like Gilgamesh. One day a hunter spots Enkidu in the woods and becomes terrified because of how wild he is. The hunters father tells him to go to Uruk and ask Gilgamesh for a prostitue to tame Enkidu. The hunter gets the prostitute and goes to a watering hole to wait for Enkidu, they waited for three days. Eventually Enkidu shows up and the hunter tells the prostitute to lay down and expose her breasts so that Enkidu will see them. Enkidu notices the naked woman and goes up to her and they have sex for six days and seven nights. After that Enkidu tries to go back to the animals and he noticeably is weaker. His mind seemed to be awakened and confused. He went back to the prostitute and she assures him that things will be fine. The first thing I noticed when I read this is that they never called the prostitute by her name which is pretty demeaning. Also did they have to use a woman to lure Enkidu into becoming less wild and more civilized? I feel as though they could have done it without using the prostitute. They only used her for her

The story starts off with Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, who is one third man and two thirds god. This story is about a man's quest for immortality in addition to the importance of boundaries between the realms of animal, man and gods. Women symbolize the importance of locative boundaries in the text. These boundaries are set by the harlot Shamhat, Ishtar, Siduri, the tavern keeper, Ninsun and Utanapishtim's wife. By giving women this role of wisdom and boundary enforcement, The Epic of Gilgamesh reflects how Mesopotamian society actually valued women.

After passing through the twin mountains of Mashu, Gilgamesh encounters Shiduri, the tavern keeper. Lost in his wanderings, he is forced to seek advice from her on how to reach Utanapishti. It is ironic because after his blatant abuse of power and mistreatment of women, as mentioned above, it is a woman that he seeks advice from in one of his weakest moments. She tells him how to reach Utanapishti and the dangers that lay in between and tells him to find Ur-shanabi so that he may continue his journey. In addition to providing guidance, women also play powerful roles. Shamhat, for example, uses the power of sex and curiosity to lure Enkidu away from his wild environment. After having sex for seven days and seven nights, Enkidu was no longer able to return to live amongst the animals and was forced to learn the ways of civilized life, which Shamhat taught him. It is easy to see that at this point in the epic, Shamhat clearly possessed the upper hand over Enkidu. He succumbed to her every word, learned the ways of morality and man, and was even convinced to go stand up to the mighty king of Uruk, which ultimately led to the friendship between Enkidu and Gilgamesh.Ishtar also takes on the role of a powerful woman. The goddess of love used her sexual power over men. Not only did she use it to get the man she wanted, but she used this power to dominate and hurt the men that loved her. Knowing that her love would eventually lead to his loss of independence and

Aruru’s skill is recognized and respected, and by tasking her with the creation of Enkidu, it proves that the gods trust her skills even though she is a woman. Aruru is not the only women in the play who is a respectable character, as the harlot Shamhat was also entrusted with a great task.

The women of The Epic of Gilgamesh are used to guide and give knowledge to the men. Even when the men in the story take them for granted, the women are still are shown to play an essential role. The two main women of the epic are Shamhat and Siduri, in which they both convey intelligence and learning. We are first introduced to Shamhat in Book 1 where she is sent to tame a man named Enkidu(a giant human raised by animals that is later civilized by Shamhat). Since Enkidu is animal like, the humans of Uruk feared him, so Gilgamesh sent Shamhat out to give her body for sex as an act to civilize Enkidu (Gilgamesh 77). In order for Shamhat to civilize Enkidu, she is to be taken into the wilderness, and must “strip off her robe and

The others acknowledge Aruru for her great powers and responsibility, and then simply command her to perform a task. “You, Aruru, created the boundless human race, now create what Anu commanded” (The Epic of Gilgamesh 101). She is expected to, and never asked to; create life on command, just to make others happy, as if it were her only purpose. This could be a parallel to how men view women: solely as baby makers. Regardless, Aruru does as she is told and creates Enkidu from clay. It is implied that women are only good at a certain job, making it seem as if their ability to procreate is all that matters. This kind of belief also shows that women were mostly seen as sex machines for men, for their use and convenience. Women were viewed as replaceable; their jobs were to be mothers, wives, or harlots. Women were controlled, and those who were unable to be controlled were deemed as dangerous.

The women are, Shamhat, Ninsun, Ishtar, and, “The tavern keeper”. The first woman in Gilgamesh’s quest for eternal life is Shamhat. Shamhat was a prostitute who lived in the city of Uruk. (8). As the story goes, Gilgamesh was an arrogant and abusive king to his people, so they complained to the

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender plays a very significant role. While women were not the most powerful gods nor the strongest or wisest of humans, they still had tremendous influence. Though the main characters of the story, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are male, women did not play a necessarily minor role. With all the women that play a role in the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender is a topic worthy of discussion.

Although men are the Epic characters of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey, women also play a very important role in both stories. In general, these two stories portray women as being overly sexual, deceptive, and having a power over men. Women use their sexuality to hold control over men, to confuse and deceive them.

Gilgamesh's friend Enkidu runs wild until he sleeps with a harlot, after which the wild beasts which were once his friends reject him, suggesting that femininity is also a source of male disempowerment. Although Aruru is the source of both the life of Gilgamesh and his beloved companion Enkidu, the two friends create a society between themselves that is essentially masculine. This masculine relationship is the most positive force in the epic. Gilgamesh is known for his sexual prowess amongst women, but his feelings for Enkidu run much deeper and are more profound. He is said to be drawn to Enkidu "as though to a woman" but no relationship Gilgamesh has with women parallels the one he has with Enkidu (2).

The division becomes prominent between the power-struggle of Gilgamesh vs. Enkidu. Gilgamesh represents the civilized person and Enkidu represents the natural world. Therefore, he represents the gifts of nature, such as the forests, vineyards and gates. Gilgamesh directly ties in with books 1-3 of The Genesis. The relationship between Adam and Eve is extremely proportionate to the relationship between Enkidu and Harlot. Both of the stories have far reaching implications on the contrast between men and women and their role in the natural world. All Adam, Enkidu and Harlot face isolation and rejection from the women they used to depend on them for support and assistance. Harlot entices Enkidu. He chooses to bring him to the world of humans. Similarly, Eve persuades Adam to have the apple of their sin. This causes the rejection by God. Although in Gilgamesh women were subordinate to men, the Book of Genesis provides an extremely different light. In the Book of Genesis women take center stage. Their triumph has them dominate the center of the universe and this enables them to maintain female position dominate in the world of

Changing Women's Roles in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Canterbury Tales

Women in The Epic Of Gilgamesh and Mesopotamian Society In the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender plays a very significant role, because while women were not the most powerful gods nor the strongest or wisest of all humans, they still had tremendous influence over others around them, and even today, over those who study and learn about the women of the time of Mesopotamia. Though the main characters of the story, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are male, women did not necessarily play a minor role. Throughout The Epic of Gilgamesh, the roles of women are mixed. Women are represented as harlots (Shamhat), as wise (Ninsun), and as gods (Ishtar). There is a substantial amount of gods which are represented as women and it could represent a society with multiple