Gilgamesh was wise, powerful, courageous, well travelled, resolute, gracious and... and lustful. The inhabitants of Uruk, fearful of his despotic power, complained behind closed doors that he "Rings the bells for his own amusement" - presumably a blasphemous act - "and his arrogance has no limits; he takes the children from his parents and takes for himself any virgin that takes his fancy"... and so the gods decided to create a being who would be able to curb Gilgamesh's excesses. And so the noble Enkidu was created. He had the virtues of the god of war; he had long curly hair like a woman and his body was rough and covered in matted fur like that of cattle: he knew nothing of humanity or of tilling the earth. Meanwhile, in the wooded hills above Uruk: He who sets snares was at work by a water mine... [He who sets snares is a character in this story who never is known by any other name and, for my money, seems an archetype of some importance. Maybe comparable to the modern spin doctor, or the press baron, or the jilted Tory Party donour. He is presented as someone who is out setting snares because the animas are invading his lands and destroying his crops, but in reality he persists in the ensnaring business even well out of this remit]: while in the woods, he saw a terrifying creature consorting with the animal herds: running with the gazelles, suckling their milk and eating the grass on the hillside. This vision frightened the man and he returned to his father, who told him to go to Uruk and tell Gilgamesh of this apparition. And so it was. He who sets snares told Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, that he had seen a scary man, "...different from all others, who roams the pastures; is strong as a star from heaven; helps the wild animals to escape, destroys my snares and fills in my ditches..." [could this be a CND agitator, a primitive ecologist?] As had already been foretold by his father, he who sets snares received from Gilgamesh the obvious instructions in such cases: "Go, you who sets snares, return to the hills, take with you a prostitute, a pleasure woman. At the water mine, tell her to disrobe; when he sees her calling, he will for sure embrace her and then the wild animals will surely reject him." Pretty obvious, really. Who better to carry out this mission than the ensnarer-in-chief himself? I bet he was excited. Whereas the political processes have evolved somewhat, as in people having elections and public enquiries to address the bad behaviour of politicians, the role of women in subverting the natural order and corrupting the innocent has remained pretty much the same. And what have we, my sisters, do to change any of this in the last 8,000 years? 20,000 years? The prostitute and the poacher sat for 3 days facing each other by the water mine, waiting for Enkidu to appear, we are told, before the action really got going. But that is for the next chapter.
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