Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld
Bilgames and the Netherworld
The dead can still speak to the living, but only through a crack opened by a friend's sacrifice, so that even the underworld's silence is shown to be a boundary that grief and loyalty can briefly cross.
- underworld rules broken by loyalty
- a ghost's report on the afterlife
- the origin of Gilgamesh Tablet XII
- the huluppu-tree as narrative frame
Gilgamesh loses two objects, a ball and mallet made from a tree he tended for the goddess Inanna, into the underworld, and Enkidu volunteers to retrieve them. Ignoring every rule of underworld conduct, Enkidu is trapped there permanently; Gilgamesh appeals to the gods until Enki arranges for Enkidu's ghost to rise and describe the fates of the dead. The closing catalogue of who suffers and who is honored in the afterlife became the source, via translation, for the grim vision of death appended centuries later as a twelfth tablet to the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh.
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