One day, as Enkidu was mounting Shamhat, he looked up and saw a young man hurry past. His senses piqued by this, he said to Shamhat, “Bring that man here so I might speak with him.”
Calling out, she went to the man and asked, “Where are you going in such haste?”
Knowing that the priestess spoke on behalf of the giant, the man said to Enkidu, “I am heading off to the wedding banquet, which I have arranged for the husband-to-be, with fine food heaped upon his table for the occasion.
“The priest will bless the couple, the guests rejoice, the husband-to-be stepping aside for the king of great-girded Uruk. The unbroken girl will await Gilgamesh in her husband’s bed.
As he listened, Enkidu’s face turned pale with anger.
“It is He who first takes the lawful bride. When he is spent, the new husband follows, taking his turn. This is so, by will of the gods. Since the moment the king’s birth-cord was cut, every girl’s hymen has been his to break.”
Enkidu raged, “I shall go to Uruk, now, to the palace of Gilgamesh the Mighty. I shall challenge him, shall shout in his face: 'I am the top man! I am the man so mighty as to make the world shake! I shall be king!'”
Notes
This passage addresses the friction caused by the rule over a monogamous agrarian community by a nomadic, herding-based, ruling class practicing polygyny [multiple wives]. The friction would be made more intense by the existence of the Cult of Ishtar [represented by Shamhat, the irresistible “well-endowed” high priestess, who may well have represented an ancient Mesolithic fertility cult] which was obviously a holdover from an earlier tradition of polyandry [multiple husbands].
The fact that a priest, rather than a priestess, blesses the marriage demonstrates that the indigenous tradition of the city is patriarchal, with any remnant polyandry only tolerated in the forms of the cultic sex practices of Shamhat and the other priestesses of Ishtar.
