Enkidu

And so toward the end, as Dathan is fading away, Picard is winding up the story and he says, They were victorious.

But Enkidu fell to the ground, struck down by the gods.

And Gilgamesh wept bitter tears, saying, he who was my companion through adventure and hardship is gone forever.

Thanks, Joanne, for that.

And it comes to us from the epoch of Gilgamesh.

It's called Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Underworld.

And basically, Gilgamesh's best friend, Enkidu, goes down to the underworld.

He sees all the dead people.

He comes back and tells stories about them.

I think I was hungering for validation.

I think I bought, to some extent, into what I consider a kind of Gilgamesh complex, where the story of Gilgamesh, if you're familiar with it, after the death of his friend Enkidu, who when they first met they had They had done battle physically, but then they developed a friendship.

And when Enkidu died, he realized the kind of sorrow of mortality.

And so he took it upon himself to search for a way to transcend that human mortality.

There is a difference.

But there, of course, are elements of similarity in the ways that colonialism is furthered.

Just to finish with Israel, I also found the people to be extremely amazing and warm and friendly.

I really had an amazing time there, and I was very impressed with

Yeah, here it is.

You know, the epic of Gilgamesh, you have Enkidu.

Well, first of all, Enkidu is described very much like Nebuchadnezzar.

He's this wild man on the step, shaggy hair for his body.

Not like a bird's, but nonetheless, he's like a wild beast and all this kind of stuff.

And he becomes friends with Gilgamesh.

And later on...

Enkidu goes to the underworld to pursue some objects for Gilgamesh, and he gets trapped down there.

And it was believed to be a bull created by the gods.

And Kaidu told his friend, Gilgamesh, don't go there.

This is a god thing.

Let them handle it, not us.

But Gilgamesh wanted to fight that bull, get rid of it.

And so reluctantly, Kaidu agreed.

And together, the two of them went to the village.

And there they encountered this huge bull.

The Sumerians called this melam, describing it in some cases like a crown and in others like armor.

When the heroes Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay Humbaba, guardian of the sacred cedar forest, in order to get the materials to build a fancy new gate for their city, they must penetrate his terrifying seven-layered melam to do it.

In Egypt, by 1500 BC, the time of the 18th dynasty, the practice was to signify the ruler's divinity by depicting a sun disk hovering above their head.

In the Iliad, Homer describes supernatural light radiating from the great heroes.