Gilgamesh Death Analysis

The Epic of Gilgamesh is seen as the oldest great work of literature, dating back to ancient Mesopotamia. It depicts the great king Gilgamesh, whose tyranny was ended by the arrival of Enkidu, a wild man who soon became Gilgamesh’s closest companion. As the tale progresses, Enkidu dies, forcing Gilgamesh to begin a long journey resulting in him eventually accepting his own mortality. Both Enkidu’s death and Gilgamesh’s journey can be analyzed through Van Gennep’s lens of the rites of passage, as both pass from a pre-liminal to liminal, to post liminal stage, leading to a new position in either society or in a personal understanding of immortality. After Ishtar convinced the gods to punish Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Enkidu fell sick almost immediately. It is in this process that he begins to dream of what lays ahead of him in the afterworld. Enkidu then curses those that led to him meeting Gilgamesh and therefore causing the situation he was in until Shamash reminded him of his great friendship with Gilgamesh and how his death would affect Gilgamesh. He died rather suddenly, leaving Gilgamesh in a state of extreme grief. The

In one of his last nights alive, Enkidu described to Gilgamesh the process of dying and how he would be dragged through the dark into the realm of the dead, where ‘There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness” (Gilgamesh, 14). This idea of passing into an afterlife of darkness can be seen as liminal for Enkidu because it is something he has yet to do, but something that he is headed towards as he lays dying. In this stage, Enkidu cannot be considered fully alive, as he is about to die, but he hasn’t entered the world of the dead, he’s only seen it in his dreams, which could also be considered a liminal state of the human