Gilgamesh Entry #1

"Stormy heart struggled with stormy heart

as Gilgamesh met Enkidu in his rage.

At the marital threshold they wrestled, bulls contending;

the doorposts shook and shattered; the wrestling staggered,

wild bulls locked-horned and staggering staggered wrestling

through the city streets; the city walls and lintels

shuddered and swayed, the gates of the city trembled

as Gilgamesh, the strongest of all, the terror,

wrestled the wild man Enkidu to his knees.

And then the rage of Gilgamesh subsided.

He turned his chest away. Enkidu said:

"You are the strongest of all, the perfect, the terror.

The Lady Wildcow Ninsun bore no other.

Enlil has made you sovereign over the city."

Then Enkindu and Gilgamesh embraced,

and kissed and took each other by the hand." Pg 15, Gilgamesh

This is the first time I read an epic and i ame somehow confused by the format this kind of reading, none the less I notice that they tell the reader that this text is not to be read fast or normaly like any book , but as an epic , a poem with pauses and a rythm. In the passage from page 15 above the two men meet each other none besting the other for they are equal, they are the same , but different to everybody else, they are the two of thier kind , the two strongest of the race of men. at the same time they are different. One, Gilgamesh, comes from the city and the life of a domesticated man but wild all the same, the other, Enkidu, comes from a wild upbringing but is domesticated and seperated from the wild by a woman. I think the reason they fight at first is to prove thier strength to each other, and by fighting they each find and equal in the other, and as they see that none seem to overpower the other they are convinved that they have found another like themselves. Them rejocied by the fact that they are not alone as they thought, they love each other. I was kind of confused at first but realized that in the time the epic came by other mentions of homosexuality had occured, in the city-state of sparta where men loved their comrades a little too strongly. My first read of gilgamesh is different as my first read to any book would be for this is an epic and I think im not understanding it as I should, or maybe I am but not completely.