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Gilgamesh
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Baba Brinkman
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1
Run your fingers over the stones of this ancient city
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These temples of worship and places of business
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And picture them falling into desolation
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Just drifting sand and standing walls and vacant buildings
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You can't take it with you where you're going
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But someone who comes here in five thousand years
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Exploring might unearth a recording
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That tells the world your story
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Some confabulation of words stored in a subterranean
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Purgatory could well emerge to tell those
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Who still dwell on earth that you were born
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And that your works were worth reporting
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Well this is the first story; not the oldest
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Told by troubadours, but the oldest in written form
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"˜Cause who can say whether troubadours don't improve
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Their sources, of course the origins of the story are oral
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But it was preserved for thousands of years
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In Akkadian verse tablets and Sumerian cuneiform
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Preserved like Cuban cigars in a humidor
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So we can be sure that it's true to its source
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Not a folk story transformed in ten thousand villages
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But a relic of the ancient world, preserved with diligence
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The oldest narrative that still exists
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The epic of Gilgamesh
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When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body
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Like Arnie when his films were still impressive
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Like Conan the Barbarian, physical brilliance
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Like sculpted steel as flesh
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The gods endowed him with strength and courage and fine
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Features; in terms of appearance he was the first in line
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Brad Pitt would have looked liked a turd beside him
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He was one third mortal, and two thirds divine
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And as an aside, I guess the Sumerians when this poem was written
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Were not aware of chromosome division
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Or Mendellian genetics; no organism
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That reproduces sexually is two-thirds of anything
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Maybe they calculated paternity as a percentage
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Of the number of men that the mother had been with before she got pregnant
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Which is the case with certain indigenous South American Indians
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Increasing the incentive for the men to collaborate on parental investment
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But when the gods are involved these calculations are irrelevant
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Because they're practically omnipotent
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And Gilgamesh was a mortal man with two-thirds god genes
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In the Sumerian catalogue of kings
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He's listed as the fifth ruler of Uruk after the flood came
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And washed away all things
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So our story begins with Gilgamesh in charge of the peace
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And the people of Uruk, not pleased
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And why were they less than pleased?
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Because Gilgamesh was an extreme sex fiend
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To put it simply, he deflowered every virgin
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And slept with the wife of every peasant and the daughter
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Of every nobleman whenever he felt the urge and
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For the people of Uruk, this was a heavy burden
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In fact, the original version only says
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That the men found it a heavy burden
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Which begs the question: was the consent of these women earned
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Or did he just take it?
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My inclination is to stay with the basics
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Nowhere is he referred to as Gilgamesh the rapist
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Which means he had game and the men were jealous haters
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But don't these questions always plague men of status
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Was he Bill Clinton-esque or Tiger Woods with a waitress?
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Or was he Roman Polanski or Mike Tyson dangerous?
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I can't possibly say from these ancient pages
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But I'd prefer to work with a sympathetic protagonist
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So in my version, he gets the benefit of the doubt
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Gilgamesh impressed the women with his physical prowess
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But his sexual endowments were hateful to his people
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So they huddled in their houses and prayed for relief
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To the gods, like "Please, make him an equal!"
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And the gods heard their pleas, and created Enkidu
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Enkidu was a wild man
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Tarzan of the highlands
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His body was covered in hair in fine mats
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He knew nothing of civilization and finance
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A feral child, he ran with the Ibex
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And ate nothing but plants, plus he was massive
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He had this habit of releasing animals from traps
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And snares whenever they got captured
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And eventually one of the trappers ran back to
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The city to ask Gilgamesh for some answers
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He said: "There is this massive hairy man
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Who keeps smashing the traps we set in mountain pastures
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He's either half-animal, or he's an animal rights activist
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But either way I'm at my wits' end, any suggestions?
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And Gilgamesh said "Here's what you do
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You go to Ishtar's temple and you get a prostitute"
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Now, Ishtar was the Goddess of love, and destruction too
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And her priestesses offered free sex to the multitude
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Maybe religion is something even Christopher Hitchens
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Could've gotten into if that's what it offered you
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So Gilgamesh said, "Yeah, you get this temple ho
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This child of pleasure, and you get her to go with you
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Down to the watering hole, and you get her to take off her clothes
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And this wild man, well, he won't be wild no mo"¦"
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Whoah, forgive the ebonic
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Inflections, but I just always wanted
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To use the word "ho" in an epic
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Anyway, it happened exactly as Gilgamesh predicted
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Enkidu came down to the lake to take a drink
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And he saw this beautiful, soft, naked being
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This succulent, supple lady, and she
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Embraced him and"¦ shwing!
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For six days and seven nights they lay by the lakeside
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Insatiably shagging, and it was his first time!
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But after when he tried to go back to his animal friends
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They just looked at him and fled
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Innocence lost
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Enkidu's intimate frolics with the temple harlot
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Had cost him his connection with nature "“ never again
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Would his animal friends accept him as one of them
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And from that day forward he was civilized
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The prostitute fed him bread and wine
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And said "Enkidu, you are wise, why sleep in the wild
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When there's shelter nearby?" And she took his hand
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And led him like a child to the shepherds' tent
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And bade him step inside and she clothed and bathed him
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And he stayed with the shepherds for a stretch of time
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And protected them from lions
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Enkidu stayed with the shepherds for a while but soon
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Word arrived from the city that there was a wedding
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And Gilgamesh was claiming his birthright
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The privilege of "First Night"
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That is, the right to be the first to fertilize
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The bride on her wedding night
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Just like the English did to the Scottish before 1305
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When William Wallace kicked their asses, which served them right
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Well, the Sumerian groom was also quite perturbed by
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This incursion into his personal life
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And when Enkidu heard about this, he turned white
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With anger and traveled to Uruk, determined to fight
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The bridal bed was made; a virgin lay within it
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A trembling, nervous babe
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As Gilgamesh approached the house, determined to get laid
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But Enkidu stepped in front of him and blocked his way
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Clash of the Titans
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Their grasps were like vice grips as they grappled and tightened
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Their massive biceps, striving like angry bisons
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Each man trying to gain the upper hand on his rival
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It was a wrestling match that cracked the keystones
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In the walls of Uruk and shook the ziggurats
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And the foundations of peoples' homes
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But in the end, Enkidu was thrown
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He paid his respects to Gilgamesh for besting him
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And Gilgamesh was impressed that someone had even tested him
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Because every man he'd ever met until then was estrogen
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And from then on he treated Enkidu like his next of kin
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Now, Gilgamesh was obsessed with legacy building
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He wanted his name to be etched on bricks
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And listed where the names of famous men are written
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So they embarked on a campaign of adventurism
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They traveled to the Lebanese hills
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To the cedar forest where they cut down trees
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And defeated the "evil" demon guardian
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The protector of those sweet resources
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Everyone tried to warn them off this quest
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They said: "Don't go! The demon's jaws are death
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When he says humbaba, humbaba, hum-humbaba
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It's like he has napalm for breath
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But no one could convince them to stop
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Because Gilgamesh believed that he was on a mission from God
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And when they reached the demon, his defenses were weak
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They overpowered him easily and he fell to his knees
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Pleading like a refugee, like a fugitive
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In a spider hole, begging for his life
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But they were icy cold, they executed him
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With three precise blows and turn their eyes towards home
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Other adventures awaited, Ishtar tried to
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Seduce Gilgamesh by offering herself to him naked
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But he rejected her and she flew into a jealous rage
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Full of indignation, determined to take veangence
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She released the Bull of Heaven, a personified drought
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Which they defeated with a sword strike, somehow
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But Gilgamesh was really swelling with pride now
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So the gods said; "Time to take this guy down"
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They took the side route; they knew that Enkidu was
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His Achilles heel, because he was the key to his
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Feelings, so the gods decreed that Enkidu would
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Soon cease to exist, and he fell into a deep sickness
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And had a feverish dream vision of life after death
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In which he was a feathered wretch, sitting in pitch
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Darkness, staring ahead at an endless stretch
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Of time, and he cursed everyone he'd ever met
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Since he left the wilderness, the prostitute, the trapper,
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Everyone except for Gilgamesh
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Who stood by his side singing a death lament
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Until Enkidu's final breath was spent
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For the rest of this story
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Gilgamesh is an emotional wreck in a state of perpetual mourning
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On a desperate quest to make his flesh immortal
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And it's interesting, but it isn't worth reporting
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It's fragmented and repetitive and it never really finishes
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Although it does contain a fascinating parallel with Genesis
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Suffice to say, immortality eluded him
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And he returned to Uruk in a state of disillusionment
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And lived out his life just like the rest of us do
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By having children and making civic improvements
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So he didn't live forever, but he did leave descendents
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Which means his genes probably make up one tenth of one tenth
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Of one percent of one hundred thousand Middle Eastern residents
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But this form of immortality is just divisive
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And he left us his story, the Epic of Gilgamesh
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Which he chiseled into the walls of his city while building it
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And it tells us that this human obsession with living forever in
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The face of certain death is something we've always wrestled with
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Which tells us something about what it is to be human
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If immortality exists, then I guess you're listening to it
Baba Brinkman - Gilgamesh
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