Epic of Gilgamesh
From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a long, boring, heroic poem by Gil Gamesh, a Babylonian who plagiarized the story from ancient Sumerian sources and claimed that the events of the poem, outlandish though they are, actually happened to him. One of the poem's key episodes is the flood, which, when it is written about in the Bible, is known as the Biblical flood, but, in Gilgamesh, is referred to as The Deluge.
The poem, which, written about 3,000 years B. C., is among the oldest tall tales in Western literature, recounts King Gilgamesh's love affair with his friend, Enkidu, who later dies, abandoning his liege. Even in its day, the poem was unread by anyone but its author and his mother. Hoping to make the story more popular, Gil Gamesh hired a comic book artist to illustrate his poem. The result, some scholars, Walt Disney foremost among them, contend, was the world's "first comic book."
Contents |
[edit] Translations
The poem has been translated by several modern authors to provide fodder for the lengthy textbooks that contemporary college students must pretend to read in order to receive college credit for ridiculous general education courses like A Survey of Western Literature From Antiquity Through The Middle Ages or Core Humanities or Ancient and Medieval Cultures.
[edit] Plot
  Warning: The following text might contain spoilers. This makes the article more aerodynamic, and thus more maneuverable at high speeds. Take caution and carry a first-aid kit at all times if you don't know that Rosebud is a sled, Norrington steals Davy Jones' heart, Saturos and Menardi aren't evil, Luigi's Mansion is an illusion, Neo gets turned into a Smith shortly after causing a reaction that causes all the Smiths to die, thus, he dies, Jack's name actually is Ernest after all, and Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!! |
To this day, the tedious, odious poem remains one of the least read and most hated texts of all time, despite a few risqué passages such as one, early in the story, in which Gilgamesh is castigated by his people for deflowering the women of his realm before their newlywed husbands have had a turn with them.
[edit] Enkidu
To "distract" Gilgamesh, who may have latent homosexual impulses, the goddess Aruru creates a male buddy for him, the wild man Enkidu. First, Gilgamesh fights Enkidu, but they decide to be friends instead of enemies and seek to kill a dragon instead of one another. They love each other like women.
[edit] Shamhat
The priestess Shamhat is one of the first documented members of what would later become known as the “fuck for peace” movement. Though in her case, it was “fuck for the goddess.” Enkidu had been hanging around with the animals and making life very difficult for the trappers around there, filling pits, destroying traps, freeing animals, and just generally being a dick. To help remedy this, the trappers brought Shamhat over to meet him, on the theory that his real problem was that he just needed to get laid. Upon meeting Enkidu, Shamhat used her love-arts to seduce him in a very subtle and understated way, by taking all her clothes off and telling him to fuck her. After some initial reservations, Enkidu took her up on her offer. Apparently, having spent his whole life around animals, and not having discovered all the things he could use his hands for, Enkidu had some built up sexual tensions, as he spent the next week boinking Shamhat’s brains out. His animal friends didn’t really care for him after that as they didn’t really approve of him spending all his time with such a skanky girl and didn’t really want to hang out with him after that, so he decided to go back to Uruk with Shamhat instead. As much as he had enjoyed it, his quality time spent with Shamhat had worn him out a little bit and drained him of some of his life force. With his life force so drained, and his spirit beaten down, he had no choice but to join civilization. Also, apparently the sex with her had been so good that it had brought him to new levels of enlightenment. He suddenly realized he could talk, got himself cleaned up and got some nicer clothes, cut his hair and decided he wanted to go have a talk with Gilgamesh. To stop him from abusing his people the way he was. To tell him he was stronger and he was going to be the one to bear the burden of taking the virginity of all the girls in the kingdom. With this goal in mind, Enkidu and Shamhat set off for Uruk, though doubtless having plenty of time to continue to screw each other silly on the way.
[edit] Humbaba
The creature Humbaba, one of the last members of a once proud species of giant monsters that has now been hunted to extinction, was an evil creature. It is never explained exactly what Humbaba did, other than protecting the forest and keeping people from cutting down trees, but it was evil and that was enough. Gilgamesh said something about driving evil from the world, and Humbaba seemed like a good starting point. Also, he wanted to cut down a big cedar tree and take it back as a souvenir, cedar being extremely rare and valuable at the time and very much in fashion. There was also the whole personal glory aspect of a couple of guys going on a macho quest out into the woods to kill some big animal and hang its head up on a plaque in hopes of impressing the girls. They traveled 1000 miles over a period of 3 days and nights, at a brisk clip of about 14 miles per hour. After this they set up camp and Gilgamesh had a bad dream and Enkidu told him it was nothing to worry about and was in fact a good omen. They repeated this process a total of 5 times, demonstrating the ancient art of copy and paste. They traveled a total of 5,000 miles, which from their starting point in Mesopotamia would put them somewhere in Siberia, South Africa, or possibly Newfoundland. The book makes no mention of them crossing any oceans, though it is actually quite vague on the details of their journey so it is entirely possible they did and that this was just omitted from the story. Every third night they would camp and Gilgamesh would have another dream about being attacked by a big scary monster and then being saved at the last second and he would get all worried and scared and then Enkidu would tell him it was nothing to worry about and was in fact a good omen. Finally they got to Humbaba’s forest. At this point, Enkidu, realizing for the first time that they might actually have to face a big scary monster, started to chicken out. He told Gilgamesh, “fuck this, you can kill the thing by yourself, I’m out of here,” and began running at very high speed back to Uruk. At this point Gilgamesh caught up to him and said “hell no, I’m not dying here by myself, you’re coming and dying with me,” and then said something else about how neither of them was strong enough by themselves but together they might have a chance. After receiving a long pep talk from Gilgamesh about courage and fighting lions and being a warrior, Enkidu finally grew a set of balls and decided to come along. So they walked through the forest together and a little while later they met up with Humbaba. Upon actually seeing Humbaba, Gilgamesh began to wonder what he must’ve been smoking when he thought coming and killing him was a good idea, so he started to turn tail and run in hopes that Enkidu, being closer to Humbaba, would be killed first. At this point, Enkidu grabbed Gilgamesh and said “WTF? You dragged me over here, now go and kill it already.” So they charged at it and got in a big fight with it, the monster stepping and shaking the ground and doing horrible things to the mountains of Lebanon, which, considering the distance they were from said mountains, must’ve been doing some really horrible things to mountains closer by. Either that or they were in fact very close to the mountains of Lebanon and had traveled 5,000 miles in a large circle, or perhaps a number of smaller circles, to get there. In any case, being the big tough guys they were, and with no small amount of help from their god Shamash, Gilgamesh and Enkidu eventually got the better of the poor helpless woodland creature Humbaba, who was really just trying to protect his home against invaders who wanted to come and clear-cut his forest and turn it into a shopping center with a KFC and a ziggurat, where people could come and buy fried chicken to sacrifice to their gods. As Gilgamesh was getting ready to kill Humbaba, he shouted out “Wait! Don’t kill me. I’m an endangered species. If you kill me you’ll face up to $50,000 in fines and up to one year in prison.” Gilgamesh started to hesitate on this, when Enkidu told him “no, don’t listen to him, the endangered species act won’t be passed for another 5,000 years, kill him quickly before they start passing legislation to protect him.” So Gilgamesh got ready to kill Humbaba and just as he was about to die Humbaba said “Damn you! I have a team of lawyers, they’ll sue you for every penny you own,” but in spite of the fear of litigation, with more encouragement from Enkidu, Gilgamesh went ahead and sliced Humbaba’s head off, creating a massive fountain of blood which got all over the both of them and died their clothes a lovely red color. They then went and chopped down some massive several hundred year old cedar trees, doing irreparable damage to the forest’s fragile ecosystem in the process and floated them down what must’ve been a very long river along with Humbaba’s now very pungent head. Of course, nothing will bring two friends closer together quite like killing a big scary monster together, so after this Enkidu and Gilgamesh were the best of buds and were absolutely inseparable. They were both showered in glory upon their return and every whorish goddess in Uruk now wanted Gilgamesh for her personal boy toy. With so much female attention, Gilgamesh did what any man would do in that situation; he took his new best friend out into the middle of nowhere to go find something else to kill.
[edit] Divine Vengeance
The plot slows after they kill the dragon, so Gil Gamesh throws in some more sex, having the latent homosexual king spurn the sexual advances of the goddess Ishtar, whose father is not pleased at Gilgamesh's rejection of his daughter and sends the Bull of Heaven down to avenge her lack of virtue. When Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull, the gods decide that one of them must die, and Enkidu falls ill and soon shuffles off his mortal coil (i. e., dies).
[edit] The Magic Plant
Terrified that he will be the next to die, Gilgamesh journeys to the underworld, where he meets Urshanabi, the Noah of the poem, who has survived a cataclysmic flood, The Deluge. Urshanabi tells Gilgamesh of a magic plant that grows at the bottom of the sea. When eaten, it bestows eternal life.
[edit] Quest
The hero, being a hero, immediately undergoes a quest, braving death and destruction to obtain the plant, setting it aside until he can share it with the council of his hometown, Uruk, but a snake steals the plant, and the disappointed fool returns to his hometown.
[edit] Epiphany
At the sight of Uruk's massive walls, Gilgamesh has an epiphany: men, especially stupid ones like himself, will attain immortality through the deeds that they do, not from eating a plant. He also realizes that "There's no place like home."
[edit] Influences
Scholars see parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey and between Gilgamesh and the Bible's story of Noah and the flood. No one else sees any such parallels, because no one else reads the epic. It bores contemporary readers who try to read it as much as it bored its potential audiences several thousand of years previously. (Some things never change.)
Maybe Disney will make the poem into an animated film?
Jean-Luc Picard related the tale of Gilgamesh to an alien while stranded on a planet. Strangely, the alien did not kill himself.
