Gilgamash and Enkidu: Dreaming in Antiquity

Pre-scientific thinking about sleep and dreaming is often said to have revolved around two notions: of the soul leaving the body during sleep, and of the body being visited by spirits, gods and demons offering revelations and glimpses into the future, or wandering nightmares.

In classical Europe and the Middle East, dreams were often taken as portents of the future or guides for action. The Assyrian poem 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' is regularly punctuated by dreams, both the hero's and his great friend Enkidu's. They foretell events, providing a sort of rationale for the extraordinary exploits, failures and tragedy of Gilgamesh. The poem dates from the third millennium BC and is a eulogistic account of the life of King Gilgamesh of Uruk in Mesopotamia. It clearly ranks as the first written literature of any consequence. It is also remarkable for its universality and its enduring appeal after five millennia. (The tablets on which it was recorded were discovered in the mid-nineteenth century, and their decipherment was not largely completed until the end of that century!) It starts: N. K. Sanders' (1960) summary of the plot of the epic sets the scene:

When the story begins he is in mature manhood, and superior to all other men in beauty and strength and the unsatisfied cravings of his half-divine nature, for which he can find no worthy match in love or in war; while his daemonic energy is wearing his subjects out. They are forced to call in the help of the gods, and the first episode describes how they provide a companion and foil. This was Enkidu, the 'natural man', reared with wild animals, and as swift as the gazelle. In time Enkidu was seduced by a harlot from the city, and with loss of innocence an irrevocable step was taken towards taming the wild man. The animals now rejected him, and he was led on by stages; learning to wear clothes, eat human food, herd sheep, and make war on the wolf and lion, until at length he reached the great civilized city of Uruk.

Enkidu's arrival at Gilgamesh's court was announced to Gilgamesh in two dreams. In the first Enkidu was symbolized by a meteor (ailing from heaven, whose attraction to Gilgamesh was mysteriously 'like the love of a woman', and when it was shown to his mother she pronounced it his brother. In his second dream he found an axe on a street in his city. Again, he was deeply drawn to it, loved it like a woman and wore it on his side. His mother Ninsun, a minor goddess, interpreted both these dreams for him, identifying the meteor and the axe as a new friend he was about to make.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu became inseparable companions. When Gilgamesh later dreamt that Enlil, the father of the gods, had decreed his destiny, it was Enkidu who interpreted it for him, explaining that it indicated his certain mortality as well as the gifts of unexampled supremacy over the people and victory in battle. When the two embarked on a mission against the giant Humbaba they both had dreams that were highly significant to their project. These were apparently induced, or incubated, by Gilgamesh, who dug a well, went up to the mountain and poured fine meal on the ground before saying 'O mountain, dwelling of the gods, bring me a favorable dream'. Encouraged by their interpretations of each other's dreams they set off to cut down Hum-baba's cedar forests.

As well as killing Humbaba they also slaughtered a semi-divine bull, the Bull of Heaven, which belonged to Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven and patroness of Uruk. Enkidu now dreamt that they had offended the gods so deeply that one of them must die, and he promptly succumbed to a fatal illness. During his illness he dreamt of the afterlife, where kings, rulers and princes were reduced from their high station to fetching and carrying as servants, and only the high priests, gods and one or two favored dead kings were allowed to preserve their earthly privileges.

After Enkidu's death Gilgamesh wandered far and wide in his grief, encountering amongst others the proverbial survivor of the great flood, Utnapishtim, who told him how, in a dream, he had been warned by a god of the imminent deluge and instructed to build a great boat, aboard which he was to take the seed of all living creatures. Because of his obedience he had been granted the gift of eternal life. Gilgamesh went on to search for the secret of immortality, and according to the legend he almost succeeded.

Gilgamesh did not have any significant dreams after Enkidu's death, and despite his continuing effort to penetrate the mysteries it became increasingly apparent that his powers had waned and the gods had turned against him. As a test of his strength Utnapishtim challenged him to stay awake for six days and seven nights:

But while Gilgamesh sat there resting on his haunches, a mist of sleep like soft wool teased from the fleece drifted over him, and Utnapishtim said to his wife, 'Look at him now, the strong man who would have everlasting life, even now the mists of sleep are drifting over him.'

Despite his human limitations he managed to retrieve the underwater thorn that would give immortality, although it was stolen from him by a serpent on his journey back to Uruk. The epic ends with his death in his own city, which he was largely responsible for building:

This too was the work of Gilgamesh, the king, who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, and he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn out with labor, and returning engraved on a stone the whole story.

It is impossible to do justice to the beauty of the poem in such a brief account. As Sanders (ibid.) says, it is a mixture of pure adventure, morality and tragedy, and Gilgamesh is the first tragic hero of whom anything is known. It is clear that even five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia people had achieved a degree of subtlety of belief that defies analysis into one or two dogmas. The recognition and acceptance of the mysteries of mortality, earthly hubris, privilege and their futility were carried through two thousand years, as this epic was copied and repeated in various versions. The role of dreaming in all this was to provide a channel of communication for the gods to inform and warn those few mortals who were sufficiently significant to attract their attention, at critical moments in their lives. Presumably most people's dreams were not interpretable as messages from deities, as even Gilgamesh was only favored with two or three of these in his lifetime.