Roles Of Gilegosh And The Power Of Women In Gilgamesh

After Enkidu and Gilgamesh defeat the divine beast Humbaba, another pivotal sexual interaction tests Gilgamesh’s character and reveals his changed nature. As Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel back from the sacred forest, Ishtar (Babylonian goddess of love and

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

For thousands of years there has been a strong distinction between the roles of men and women. Often times in stories there will be women that are only mentioned for their beauty and charisma. Hardly ever will you see pages upon pages being spent talking about the true character and accomplishments of women characters. Even though stories like The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of Genesis were written thousands of year ago, (when stories were told mostly told from a males perspective) the light shined on women in the texts show them as wise, strong, and greatly influential beings. In The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of  Genesis, the writer shows the women as bringers of knowledge,  guidance, and care to the men in the texts that are lacking thereof.

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

How does the Epic of Gilgamesh help historians to understand gender roles in early civilizations like Mesopotamia? In the Epic of Gilgamesh women play an important role but not quite as large as the role of men. No woman is in a political position of power however we can see that they are powerful based on many important women. Shamhat, Shiduri, Ishtar, Ninsun, and Utnapishtim’s Wife each play a crucial part in reveling the history of women’s role in Ancient civilizations.

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

Ishtar, the goddess, is a powerful woman as if to recognize the power of women as they give life to men through their love as well as their ability to destroy men. The name goddess normally would represent a majestic and noble woman of power. Ishtar however, is portrayed as the complete opposite in The Epic of Gilgamesh. She is portrayed as one who uses the characteristics of a prostitute to lure in the man that she wants, which at the time is Enkidu. Ishtar is told “make your breasts bare, have no shame. Let him see you naked, let him possess your body” (Sandars, 3), “she was not ashamed to take him, she made herself naked and welcomed his eagerness” (Sandars, 4). The story talked about how Ishtar would go for the men she wants and would throw them away after she gets what she wants. This is rather the opposite of how women during the times of this story were. Women were used by men and not the other way. The creators of this epic portrayed Ishtar this way to show the power of women being able to seduce men to have their way.

The significance of women in The Epic of Gilgamesh The women in The epic of Gilgamesh play an unavoidable and yet significant role in Gilgamesh’s process of maturing and his quest for immortality. In The epic of Gilgamesh we are introduced to a few female Characters; Ishtar the goddess of love and war, Ninsun Gilgamesh’s mother , Arura the goddess of birth and fertility, Shamhat the prostitute of Uruk, Sinduri the tavern keeper and the wife of Ut-Napushtim. Every one of these women played a significant role in Gilgamesh’s life, whether it was in his coming of age process (maturity) or his quest for immortality. There are not many female characters in The Epic of Gilgamesh compared to the men.

The Epic of Gilgamesh reveals an essential perceptive of how Mesopotamian society viewed sex and women as a mean to become civilize the men of the story. Gilgamesh struggles with the concept of his own desires of man as he lusted after women to arrogantly proved his power, Enkidu becoming corrupted by the harlot and Gilgamesh denied of the goddess Ishtar can all be tied together to how women are view in the Epic as a stepping stone to further the narrates of the men in the epic. Gilgamesh journey’s started when the Uruk’s community viewed Gilgamesh personality as arrogance and grew impatience with him as he had an ongoing rampage of sexual exploitation of the women’s of Uruk, such as stated in the passage of the Epic “his lust leaves no virgin to her lover, neither the warrior’s daughter nor the wife of the noble” (p. 4). It can be view that as his story could not advance without the women of Uruk, the goddess that made Gilgamesh and Enkidu can be regard as to the start to Gilgamesh story throughout the Epic that by Gilgamesh was guilty of abusing his power in Uruk and the women’s of Uruk lament to the Gods of the horrors of Gilgamesh,

Gilgamesh is the king of Uruk, he is also 2/3 god and 1/3 human making him a demi god. Gilgamesh has an absurd amount of power over regular humans, and so he abuses this power, making his people very unhappy with his way of ruling. The people of his kingdom get fed up and pray to the gods that they might make a man who could be Gilgamesh’s equal. The gods then create Enkidu a wild man who lives in the forest with all the beasts. Enkidu is a savage when he was first created thus giving the trappers in that area major problems. Gilgamesh decides to send a prostitute with a trapper to go tame Enkidu. After being tamed and hearing about Gilgamesh and his wedding day customs, Enkidu decides to go confront him. Once there he stopped Gilgamesh from proceeding with his regular activities. Gilgamesh was enraged by this and a clash erupted between the two. Even though he had good intentions Enkidu lost, but admired Gilgamesh’s power and strength, and so the two of them became best friends. Gilgamesh wants to steal power from the gods and so he plans to go to the cedar forest to kill Humbaba, and take power from the tree. Through out the course of the fight Humbaba tries to convince Enkidu and Gilgamesh to not kill him…to no avail. Gilgamesh kills him, and decapitates him. Both the hero’s return to Uruk to celebrate. Ishtar makes advances on Gilgamesh to make her his wife, but he refuses. When he does refuse she brings down the bull of heaven, but with Enkidu’s help he slays the bull.

The harlot describes Gilgamesh as a, ."..very strong, and like a wild bull he lords it over men," despite him being civilized he rules like a wild animal. Enkidu must travel to Uruk to civilize Gilgamesh. As he enters the city Gilgamesh's people rejoice, seeing Enkidu is a match for even their King. Enkidu and Gilgamesh fight and despite Gilgamesh winning he is forever changed. He has found, in Enkidu, the one thing he has never had in a person an equal. As the harlot civilized Enkidu, he civilized Gilgamesh by his friendship, causing him to change his ways forever.