Enkidu
Mesopotamian · mortal · mythic · mortal
Enkidu was missing, which is the single most conspicuous absence in a registry that already held Gilgamesh, Ninsun and Lugalbanda. He is made in the wilderness as the king's equal — the gods' answer to a complaint about Gilgamesh's tyranny — and he lives with the animals until Shamhat takes him out of that life, after which the herd will not have him back. The epic is unusually clear that becoming human is a bargain with a loss in it. He and Gilgamesh kill Humbaba and then the Bull of Heaven, the gods decide that one of the two must die for it, and Enkidu is the one. Everything after Tablet VIII — the journey, Siduri, Utnapishtim, the failure to stay awake — happens because a man watched his friend die and could not accept it.
Domains
- wilderness
Powers
- to graze and drink with the wild animals, and to undo a hunter's traps