Sexual Desire In Gilgamesh Essay

At a glance, the epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and the Aeneid are some of the greatest works of literature pertaining to violence and its effects on the societies from which they’re derived from. In fact, these three works of literature are meant to teach the audience a lesson about what sin does to people all around the world. For this reason, the epics travel so well into the 21st century. We all can feel how sin pollutes our life. The sin of sexual desire hits us all at our core and tries to break down the barriers of our faith. Sexual desire itself is not sinful, when used in marriage. However, when sexual desire causes catastrophic effects and pollutes our everyday living, it becomes dangerously sinful. Which is gratified in these three epics. Consequently, the sin of sexual desire in Gilgamesh, the Iliad and Aeneid ultimately leads to the humiliation of
women, and constructs a path with the ends resulting in the death of the heroic character of the epic.
Throughout all three epics, women are presented as sexual deviants, which is humiliating and degrades the perspectives of women. For instance, In Gilgamesh the gods are encouraging Shamat to seduce Enkidu, by saying “toss aside your clothing, let him lie upon you, treat him, a human, to women’s work.” (1.175-180)The gods are implying that a woman’s work is to use her sexuality as a weapon to strengthen a man while degrading women at the same time. In the same way, Helen in the Iliad degraded herself by throwing herself at Hector and making him feel at home, just so she will be protected. Her abduction by Paris, sent a sign out in the world that women were powerless and had no rights. As proven in Gilgamesh, and in the Iliad, the gods had a major influence on how weakened a woman was to be. The woman of these epics needed to strengthen up these men to strengthen up their world. While, killing themselves in the process. In support of this, “ but above all, Dido doomed to a plague, about to strike, cannot feast her eyes enough, thrilled both by the boy, and gifts he brings and the more she looks the more the fire grows” (2.850-855)this scene of the Aeneid is a prediction of the dark days to come for Dido. Because, Venus god of love and war put a curse of sexual desire on her, Dido fell too deeply in love with Aeneas, and had sex with him. He has completely turned around and destroys her which leads to her death, which was needed to fulfil his destiny.
The Epic of Gilgamesh lays the foundation for how women were to be perceived in ancient Mesopotamia.
In addition to how women were perceived, sexual sin seemed to lead down a destructive path. As evidence of this, in Gilgamesh we see what Shamat seductive nature has done to poor Enkidu. Enkidu has been civilized and formed a friendship with the daring Gilgamesh and now they’re attempting to kill an innocent beast of the forest, “there dwells in the forest the fierce monster Humbaba, you and I shall kill him” (2.134-135)Gilgamesh is now able to kill Humbaba because, he has help from Enkidu, as backup support. Enkidu can fight now, because Shamat sexuality civilized him in a sense. This same sexualized civilizing leads to his early death. Which is proven in Tablet VII, “may your purple finery, be expropriated, may filthy underwear be what you are given, because you diminished me, an innocent, yes me, an innocent, you wronged me in my steppe.”(6.84-86) this scene tells the audience that Shamat is the cause of Enkidu’s death because if she wouldn’t had seduced him he would still be alive, uncivilized but
alive.

Furthermore, in the Iliad Paris sinful sexual desire for Helen was one of the main reasons for starting the Trojan War. In fact, this sin led to the death of many Greeks and Trojan warriors and the enslavement of women and children. Helen even mentions that its Paris fault and he had placed such evil fate on them. “Dear brother-in-law you bear such a burden for my wanton ways and Paris witlessness Zeus has placed this evil fate on us so that in time to come, poets will sing of us”(3.370-380) Helen said poets will sing of them because she knows they are doomed, and it’s because of the sexual desire that troy women and children are meant to be enslaved to the Greeks. Likewise, sexual desire led to the pain and broken heart of Dido,” but the queen-too long she has suffered the pain of love, hour by hour nursing the wound with her life blood, consumed by the fire buried in her heart” (4.1-5) this scene is so damaging to Dido because the fire burning inside her will lead to the fire burning her flesh. If Venus hadn’t forced her to give in to her sexual desire, she wouldn’t be in such pain.

Virgil uses Dido to illustrate that sexual desires outside of marriage leads to destruction, it may not be on a macro level but a micro level of pollution. When sexual desires creep into our lives, everything it touches rots to the core, which is shown in the later tablets of Gilgamesh when Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh finds the plant of eternal life then loses it to a snake. The snake in Gilgamesh is used to let Gilgamesh know he’s not in control, but, that the gods are. His bad deeds of raping new brides and his disrespect for gods like Ishtar had cost him his life. “Gilgamesh saw a pond whose water was cool, he went down into it to bathe in the water. Stealthy it came up and carried the plant away, on its way back it shed its skin” (12.306-310)The fact that the snake steals the plant then sheds its skin means that sin will continue to take from you over and over again disguised as something new every time. One time, it may be sexual desire the next time it may be the desire to murder. Sin will creep into any corner of your soul lacking faith and bypassing reason. However, this snake is also vital because it sets the stage for how epic heroes are perceived. The epic heroes, are meant to go on a journey for good versus evil, defeat evil, learn a lesson and once their mission is complete they die.
Ultimately, the Aeneid, Gilgamesh and the Iliad transformed how we see the power of sexual sin on our lives. Sexual sin has led to evitable chaos in these three epics, to give us a symbolic interactionism lens to see the bigger picture. Humans were born into a world of sin which is why we are destined to die but we have eternal life with Christ, if we make the choice to deny Satan and stand firm in our faith and be loyal to God. However, we can only choose eternal life if we recognize that sexual sin is a horrible issue in ancient Mesopotamia and in the 21st century, and we must rectify the problems that we create by sinning.