Siduri

Siduri keeps a bar at the end of the world and bolts the door when she sees Gilgamesh coming, which is a reasonable response to a man in a lion skin. What she then says to him, in the Old Babylonian version, is the oldest carpe diem speech we have: the gods kept life for themselves, so fill your belly, keep your clothes clean, wash your head, hold your child's hand, let your wife enjoy you. This is the whole answer to the epic's question, offered in Tablet X by a tavern-keeper, and Gilgamesh ignores it and goes on to Utnapishtim to be told the same thing at greater length. The standard Akkadian version cuts the speech down, which later readers have regretted.

Domains

• brewing
• wisdom

Relations

• guide of: Gilgamesh

Sources

• Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet X; Old Babylonian Meissner fragment.
• Reference treatment of Siduri as the alewife who lives in a tavern at the edge of the ocean and advises Gilgamesh to accept mortality.