The Question of Mankind

These two tablets of Gilgamesh are very important to the meaning of the book and life in general. They start with Gilgamesh mourning the death of Enkidu which shows how important having someone to accompany and love you is. “It is Enkidu, the companion, whom I weep for, weeping for him as if I were a woman.” Gilgamesh is hit very hard with the death of Enkidu and tells everyone to weep with him and to honor Enkidu. He builds statues of him and decides to go out into the forest in answer to the question of life and death. In a certain point Gilgamesh asks himself if he must die too, and then decides he will go seek the son of Ubartutu, Utnapishtin. “He said to himself that he would seek the son of Ubartutu, Utnapishtin, he the only one of men by means of whom he might find out how death could be avoided.”

This is the part of the tablets that I liked because it showed me that since the start of civilization we have always had a question which is that of life and death. Gilgamesh starts asking himself this question and heads out to find the answer. “I come to seek the answer to the question that I must ask concerning life and death.” When I read this I realized that it is one of the greatest questions of mankind. The only thing we know for certain is that we will die. The world knows that and has always tried to find an answer. Today modern medicines have tried saying that you get sick and therefore die but nobody knows why it was you who got sick. In the past they left those questions up to the gods but really no one has ever gotten even close to finding the answer. I wonder if this question can ever be solved, and really I doubt it because man was sent here with ought the answer to many things much simpler than life and death, and we will not know why we die unless we start solving some of the simpler questions.