Achilles and the Caucasus - Université de Montréal

Achilles and the Caucasus (K. Tuite) — août 17, 2007 — pg. 39
in Achilles and Gilgamesh, followed by the inquiry into the sense
of the human condition which forms the heart of both epics. In the
end, the Mesopotamian and Greek heroes, despite their semi-divine
pedigrees, accept their humanness, and the mortality it entails. The
lessons derived from these two quests for immortality are different,
though the difference is essentially one of highlighting particular
consequences of the human condition. The Iliad foregrounds the
quest for ‘incorruptible fame’ (kléos áphthiton), as the only hope
for anything approaching the immortality of the gods. This twoword
expression can be reconstructed as a key formula in the
Proto-Indo-European poetic vocabulary (Schmitt 1968), and as an
integral part of early IE ideology. 41 The Epic of Gilgamesh places
particular emphasis on what human beings make of their life
before death, and in particular on their development as members of
society. In view of what Charachidzé’s study of the Amiran cycle
revealed about the tensions between savage freedom and civilized
constraint in the imagination of the traditional Caucasian male, the
representation of social development in Gilgamesh merits a
digression here.
Enkidu, of course, is a marvelous example of humanization in
its most literal form. When he is first spied by a hunter, he is living
in a state of nature: “ His whole body was shaggy with hair … He
knew neither people nor settled living, but wore a garment like
Sumukan 42 … He ate grasses with the gazelles” (I.86-91). Along
with other aspects of human intercourse, Enkidu is untouched by
41 The fostering of belief in post-mortem reward through good reputation may
have contributed to keeping the violent impulses of warriors directed toward
external enemies, and not against the structures of IE society itself (Lincoln
1987: 4-15). The quest for undying fame is by no means absent from the
Gilgamesh epic, though it does not receive the same degree of emphasis, nor is it
expressed the same way. On returning home empty-handed from his search for
immortality, Gilgamesh tells the ferryman Urshanabi to inspect the solid wall
encircling the city of Uruk, which he had built (XI.310-319). The implication is
that the wall at least will remain as a testament to him after his death.
42 Sumukan = “God of wild animals” (Kovacs 1989: 6); “Gott der Jagd”
(D’jakonov 1977: 336).