They went to great-girded Uruk, Enkidu in front, Shamhat behind.
Enkidu strode onto the main concourse of Uruk, causing the people to gather, press close, kissing his feet as if blessing a newborn, and wondering at his nature.
“What a huge man!” they murmured, “He is like Gilgamesh, shorter, though more strongly built. He was raised in the wild, nursed by the antelope and deer. This Wildman might rival the mightiest. He is a match for Gilgamesh.”
The priest had already blessed the man and wife, the musicians beating their drums and plucking their lyres, the wedding guests partaking, singing and laughing.
In the wedding bed the bride awaited Gilgamesh, to receive him like a god, his to take in honor of Ishtar, forgetting her husband and submitting to the king.
When Gilgamesh came to the marriage house, Enkidu waited and barred his way like a rock. In a rage, Gilgamesh grappled him, powerful arms intertwined with powerful arms, foreheads crashing together like wild bulls. The King and the Wildman staggered and reeled against houses, the doorposts shuddering, the outer walls shaking. They battled through the streets, wrestling, sweating, locked in the grapple, each huge form straining to break the other’s hold. After long striving, Gilgamesh threw the Wildman into the dust.
His rage deserted him.
He turned away, the contest over.
Enkidu said, “Gilgamesh, you are one of a kind. The Goddess of Creation made you more powerful and more fierce than the rest of humankind, and rightly has the Earth God blessed your rule, for you were destined to be king over men.”
They embraced and kissed.
They stood together like brothers, walking hand in hand.
They became true friends.
Notes
The ritual combat between Enkidu and Gilgamesh would have occurred to wedding music, to the beat of the spirit drum and the strum of the storyteller’s instrument.
Like most epic poetry there is text that appealed to the ruling class of the day, and a subtext, that as often as not, represented the author’s taboo view and/or various submerged poetic traditions.
Text
The above passage concisely orders the world of humankind: the woman submits to the man [Enkidu and Shamhat], the populace recognizes the superiority of their natural masters [Enkidu and the crowd], the people conduct their lives according to the rituals of the priesthood [the wedding party], humanity submits to the will of the gods, reflected in the status of the woman’s owing loyalty to the heaven-sanctioned State before and above her loyalty to her husband [the wife in her wedding bed], and the human masters of civilization conduct their conflicts ritualistically with the human community their battleground, making sure to maintain class cohesion in the face of their ultimate enemy, the herd of people, who, if they became a pack, would topple their rulers.
Subtext
Enkidu is a cautionary figure in terms of the people, as he, the challenger of the order, joins the order almost immediately after his first attempt at wrong-redressing.
In light of the text, which promotes the notion throughout, that the conditions of civilization are feminine and stifling to the male spirit, a man might free himself from this domesticity through finding and engaging his second self or other half, the Wildman, represented by Enkidu. For, the conclusion of Book Two, which was the story of the seduction of the Wildman, results in the spiritual liberation of the civilized man, Gilgamesh. The implication is that as long as a man identifies himself with his dominance of the domestic feminine realm, he will forever remain a slave, until such time as he finds himself in the primal masculine realm of combat.
