Unsucky English, Lecture 4: The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards (Gilgamesh, Book Two)
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Gilgamesh - the Earth's Oldest Epic - in Stephen Mitchell's brilliant 2004 translation.
[The Unsucky English Gilgamesh series so far: 1: Dangerous Questions ~ 2: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job ~ 3: Adam and Eve, Backwards ~ 4. this post ~ 5. Good and Evil, Nature and the Hero - Backwards]1
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Beyond the Giggles: More on the “Seven Days’ Erection”
As we saw last episode, seven days of sex with Shamhat, the temple prostitute of the goddess Ishtar, gave the innocent, wild, and Adam-like Enkidu2 more than seven days of carnal pleasure: “knowing what a woman is” in this way also humanized him, making him lose his animal essence, making his “mind grow,” making him understand language, making him suddenly yearn for that most civilized thing - friendship.
It’s worth speculating that Enkidu’s epic sexual marathon with Shamhat might itself be another “gift of civilization,” since animals, so far as I know, don’t draw out the raw sexual act across days, don’t turn it into a sacred art form the way Ishtar’s hierodules3 do, and thus don’t experience this natural act with anywhere near the range of sensations, thoughts, and emotions that humans do. Without being literal about the sex scene’s “seven days” - any more than Bible readers should be literal about the forty days of Noah’s flood or of Jesus’ meditation in the desert, which are probably the ancient culture’s variation of our own “dozens” or “hundreds” or “millions,” when we just mean to say “many” in a hyperbolic way - the fact remains that the poets of Gilgamesh chose to emphasize that Enkidu’s sexual initiation was no animalistic quickie, but instead something lasting an unusually long time. Why? Because what humans can learn through erotic love, seen as sacred, cannot be learned in a hurry.
Some of you will think I’m crazy at this point, but I’ll counter by pointing out that Hinduism is another major religion that does not damn sex as a sin, does not freak out at this centerpiece of the natural order, and on the contrary, has among its sacred scriptures the Kama Sutra, which is essentially a Sanskrit sex manual aiming to instruct men and women in the arts of love-making - so that families, with happier husbands and happier wives, can be stronger.4
So after one last bit of love-making in their natural paradise, Shamhat gives Enkidu one of her robes - you have to love the “Adam as cross-dresser” bit - and they begin their trip to Uruk, the only big city in that mind-bogglingly distant ancient world, twice as far from us in time as the Bible.
The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards: Enkidu’s Moral Education Continues
They stop on the way at some shepherds’ huts, where Enkidu creates quite a stir. The shepherds all compare him to King Gilgamesh in strength and stature, and speculate who would win if the two supermen came to blows. ESPN, Sumerian-style. Whatever.
More interestingly, though, they provide Enkidu with his next taste - literally - of civilization: bread and beer. Shamhat, still the teacher and initiator, tells Shamhat:
“Go ahead, Enkidu. This is food,
we humans eat and drink this.”
Let’s stop here and think about the pattern so far of Enkidu’s “civilized education”: the first stage was sex, a physical pleasure; and now we come to bread - eating - another physical pleasure, and beer, which is complicated.
Because beer is not just the “drinking” equivalent to “eating,” the way water or milk would be. Beer is an intoxicant.
How would most of today’s Christian preachers advise us to regard this food and drink? I can only point to the status of “gluttony” - the love of food - as one of the “Seven Deadly Sins,” and to the general disapproval of alcohol among most serious Christians today5 to support my argument that these two “civilized gifts” would be unpopular in Christian circles.
But in Gilgamesh, again, we see that religious viewpoint turned upside-down. Enkidu eats the bread until he’s full, and more interestingly, likes the beer so much he drinks “seven” pitchers - after which:
his heart grew light,
his face glowed, and he sang out with joy.
No moralizing at all here. Beer is a good thing. (And please note, I think there are secular arguments against beer now, in the age of the automobile and drunk driving, that make alcohol one of the worst intoxicating substances to encourage - not because it’s sinful, but because so many irresponsible people don’t know how to drink, and don’t know better than to drive after doing so. In the pre-automobile age, though? It’s harder to argue that there’s something wrong with a beverage that makes our “heart grow light” and our voice “sing out with joy.”)
This pattern of “Good, Blessed Things” being the opposite of what we see in popular Christian morality today is something to remember. We’ll return to it later, when we ask the question, “Why does the Bible forbid and demonize the things that the Sumero-Babylonian culture praises as good?” Those of you who know Jewish history - and that Christianity is essentially a radical form of Judaism - probably have the same type of answer to that question that I do. But that’s later.
Back to the story. Enkidu undergoes a couple more transformations into civilized life while with the shepherds: he gets a hair-cut, takes his first bath, and oils his skin, thus becoming, according to the poet, “fully human,” and “handsome as a bridegroom.”
Do I have to point out that caring about your appearance could qualify as the sins known as “vanity” or “pride” in the Christian tradition? And that this is yet another detail in the overall pattern that the flesh is good?
Finally, the poet follows up this last detail with evidence that Enkidu, though now more of a city-type and hedonist, enjoying sex, food, beer, and a good hair-cut and skin treatment, is still morally innocent. My evidence? After enjoying all these things, Enkidu takes the night shift for the shepherds, watching and protecting their flocks as they sleep, and retaining that compassion for nature’s living things that was among his chief traits “before Shamhat.”
I’ll stop there for now, after this warning: those of you who think, based on this series so far, that Gilgamesh is a text that unambiguously argues that civilization is better than nature, that humanity without limits or divine punishment is “good,” and so forth? You have another thing coming. As we work our way through the changes that both Enkidu and Gilgamesh undergo throughout the rest of this story, I hope you’ll agree that this ancient story is far more subtle, more disturbing, and to repeat, more wise than we would expect.
Next episode: 5. Good and Evil, Nature and the Hero - Backwards
The Gilgamesh Series So Far:
1. Gilgamesh: Dangerous Questions
2. The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job
3. Adam and Eve, Backwards
4. The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards
5. Good and Evil, Nature and the Hero - Backwards
If you like this post, please spread it: 
(But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
- All quotes taken from the beautifully poetic 2004 Stephen Mitchell translation of Gilgamesh. [↩]
- please don’t take the Adam comparison too literally; there are differences distinguishing Enkidu and Shamhat from Adam and Eve that we have to recognize also. [↩]
- ”Hierodule” is the word for a temple prostitute in the ancient world. [↩]
- The Kama Sutra is more than that, and much of its caste-system dogma is objectionable, which is inevitable when seen with modern, post-scientific and post-democratic eyes; but the point remains: Hinduism, like the Sumero-Babylonian religion, embraces the sexual and erotic as social goods, when practiced with a sacred consciousness instead of a dark, taboo, guilt-ridden one. [↩]
- Though I’m damned if I can find much scriptural precedent for the sinfulness of drinking alcohol in the Bible - can anybody help? [↩]
- Unsucky English, Lecture 3: Adam and Eve, Backwards (Gilgamesh, Book One)...
- Unsucky English, Lecture 2: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job...
- Good, Evil, Nature, and the Hero - Backwards: Unsucky English, Lecture 5 (Gilgamesh, cont’d)...
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I am really enjoying your series on Gilgamesh. I think I may go out and read it now. Continue please!
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 15th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Jamilee, it’s a book that deserves a place on anybody’s shelf. It’s blowing me away all over again. (I re-read it in one day last week.)
Thanks for the encouragement, by the way. It helps.
[Reply]
Jamilee
12 Sep 08 at 12:44 pm
Just stumbled into your blog and read it all, I find your posts very interesting and will now have to add Gilgamesh to my book list, but I am currently reading Atlas Shrugged. I do not find anything offensive in whatever you had your students read, and I would like to believe that people should have no reason to. I took literature in the IBO programme in my high school in Monterrey, Mexico where I learned to appreciate it and read more than Harry Potter and R.L. Stine. I now am fascinated by it and reading your blog took me back to my old lit class where dialogue, interpretations, and knowledge were appreciated (in my college they are not). I do not know how your story ends but I do hope that you at least inspired one kid to give up the “good” way of thinking.
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 15th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Thanks Jose. You’re one of several students from IB schools to mention that no topics were taboo in your English class. It’s weird that they are in your college class. Why, do you think?
How do you like Rand? If you haven’t explored Nietzsche, I think you might find him more soulful (he’d hate that word, but I mean it figuratively).
Thanks for taking the time.
[Reply]
Jose De Obeso Reply:
September 16th, 2008 at 7:14 am
I thought I had made it clear when I said I was from Monterrey, Mexico. Mexico is a country with a population of over 85% declared catholics and Monterrey is one of its largest cities and is part of the conservative north. It is in fact the central hub for social conservatives in Mexico, the college that I go to is not religious in any strict sense, but since religion permeates every aspect of society everyone is assumed to be a good catholic. In fact in my ethics class we pretty much see everything from the point of view that God exists and there is one God as a given that no one argues, except me. I could fill pages about the complex social role that religion takes in my local society. Priests have a lot of power here, but at the same time do not pursue incredibly stupid agendas as in the US (creationism in school for example), they tend to give the state its place and everyone values secularism because our government has had its socialist tendencies and we have had two wars to try and end religious influence over the government. Its a very weird place, and very different from many places in teh world, because even the supposed catholics here are not true catholics, they follow some sort of weird catholicism that has merged with old pre-conquista mexican traditions. There are just too many reasons to list, but to sum up: the reason it is not taboo is that IBO values questioning authority and bringing forth new ideas, it is an integral part of their diploma and programme. In college the system is not designed for the few gifted to learn a little about everything, rather it is designed to speciliaze people in a single thing and make them good workers and masters of their degree.
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 16th, 2008 at 7:30 am
You are really making we want to work at an IB school. And you’re also making me hope you find a way to study elsewhere.
[Reply]
Jose De Obeso
12 Sep 08 at 12:50 pm
Another great post. I have my thoughts on why the values regarded as ‘good’ here are seen as evil in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but I’ll hold off on commenting until you get to it later.
Keep them coming!
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 15th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Thanks Jack. When we get to that million-dollar question, I look forward to your input
[Reply]
Jack641
13 Sep 08 at 1:15 am
So does this beg the question about excess?
If all of the “seven deadly sins” are in the end the things that make us human, then is it the indulgence in the excess of these very human things that makes up the “sin”? Is it necessary to subdue our passions to live a Judeo-Christian “virtuous” life?
We are reading Ben Franklin in my autobiography class, and he claims to be actively working on 12 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility and chastity. Someone suggested he should add a 13th - humility.
Franklin says that pride is the hardest passion to subdue, “for, even if I had completely overcome it, I would probably be proud of my humility.”
And what does this say about those of us in the world who use more than our share of natural resources (excess) and then drive a Prius to show we care?
Kate Tabors last blog post..An open letter to the NCAA Clearinghouse
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 15th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Interesting as usual, Kate - especially the insertion of the word “virtue.” To me, that takes us out of the realm of “good/evil” morality (religion) and into the realm of “good/bad” ethics (philosophy).
“Sin” involves notions of divine rules; “virtue” involves those of human guidelines or wisdom. The first also involves fear and punishment of an irrational sort, whereas the second involves only reason and ideas of cause/effect.
“Virtue” - or more richly, “virtue_s_”, as the ancient Greeks and Romans understood them (Alisdair MacIntyre wrote a great book called, I think, _The Death of Virtue_ about the history of the devolution of our ethical sensitivity suggested by the historical change from the plural “virtues” to the singular “virtue”) - “Virtue,” I was saying, is very often described in terms of moderation of pleasures, not denial of them, as the worst impulses of Christianity and Islam advise. Aristotle and Buddha both agreed on this one, for example.
(I don’t consider Buddhism as much a religion as a psychology, the misguided Buddha-worshipers notwithstanding.)
[Reply]
Kate Tabor Reply:
September 16th, 2008 at 1:56 am
So if virtues are based in the human and sin in the divine, then Mr. Franklin was “moderating pleasures” and not so much avoiding sin. Then does Enkidu, as he discovers the very passions that make us human, begin to explore reason and to experience longing (that living for the future that gives our old friend Sigmund Freud his conception of ego and superego as a way to both satisfy and moderate passions)?
(and I think of Buddhism and Confucianism as ethical philosophies more than religion.)
Thanks for giving me something to think about.
Kate Tabors last blog post..Itchy Friday…
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 16th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Interesting Freud connection, threatening my head with an over-expanded balloon pop. It’s been a while since I’ve read Freud.
Franklin was a Deist, wasn’t he? He didn’t buy the Bible, did he?
[Reply]
Kate Tabor Reply:
September 16th, 2008 at 9:38 am
I’m not a BF scholar, and Franklin may have been a Diest; as far as his Autobiogaphy goes, he mentions God a handful of times, though Jesus only once that I can find (Virtue 13. “HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”) I imagine that living in Quaker dominated Philadelphia there was no urge to hew to a strict construction of the Bible. Though a catholic (small c) and avid reader, he is clearly conversant with the text and he does quote the book of James in his exhortation to ‘do’ good not just speak of doing good. Near the beginning of his narrative he thanks God:
“And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them success.”
Did he “buy” the Bible? Maybe, but he didn’t seem to believe in any one “way” to experience the divine. His youthful beliefs he sums up this way:
“That there is one God, who made all things.
“That he governs the world by his providence.
“That he ought to be worshiped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving.
“But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man.
“That the soul is immortal.
“And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice either here or hereafter.
All of these (with an exception perhaps for the last) would fit within many wisdom traditions across many an age.
I have to stop this interesting line of inquiry as my daughters are all demanding my brain space - so to stuffy heads, homework, and post dinner clearing. Thanks again - it’s a such a pleasure.
Kate Tabors last blog post..Itchy Friday…
[Reply]
Kate Tabor
13 Sep 08 at 4:04 am
Interesting that the seven ‘deadly’ sins: pride/greed/lust/anger/gluttony/envy/sloth may all have a silver lining?
I’d vote for sloth at the cottage.
How about envy or anger in search of the truth?
Paul Cs last blog post..Men from Mars, Women from Venus?
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 15th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
It seems clear to me that the Sumero-Babylonians (whose religion was alive, in total, far longer than Judeo-Christianity has lived so far, by the way) would laugh at the notion that these are “sins” at all. It’s really a later invention by first, the Hebrews, and later, the Catholic Church.
But more on all that soon. Thanks as usual, Paul.
[Reply]
Paul C
14 Sep 08 at 2:56 am
I can’t wait until the next post! I hope it comes soon!
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 15th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Thanks Rory. Encouragement helps. Feedback is also welcome
[Reply]
Rory
14 Sep 08 at 8:33 am
Outstanding!
tommy schmitzs last blog post..http://Baloooma.stumbleupon.com/review/25354406/
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 15th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Thanks for that, Tommy.
[Reply]
tommy schmitz
14 Sep 08 at 6:33 pm
I’m in the middle of reading “History of the World in 6 Glasses” (highly recommended) and it’s reminded me of how much we as modern people fail to understand historical perspectives on alcohol. We’re so strongly influenced by the viewpoint of the temperance movement, and the availability of both distilled liqours and drinkable water that we often forget that beer (ale) and wine were pretty much the only safe things to drink for most people throughout history.
It’s worth emphasizing how strongly beer and bread were associated with civilization, with the whole idea of “let’s create a city” when the idea hadn’t happened before.
—–
I was also reading something on the origins of the Christian anti-alcohol stance and I can’t remember now. I know in the US there’s the more recent connection to the 2nd great awakening and the reform movements of the mid 19th century, one of which was temperance.
Penelope Ms last blog post..Dear Hollywood: Go make insipid movies about some other profession
[Reply]
Clay Burell Reply:
September 19th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Fascinating. Keep those coming, thanks.
[Reply]
Penelope M
19 Sep 08 at 9:01 am
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Good, Evil, Nature, and the Hero - Backwards: Unsucky English, Lecture 4 (Gilgamesh, cont’d) | Beyond School
23 Sep 08 at 7:31 am