Gilgamesh's Quest for Immortality

The death of Enkidu, the wild man turned closest companion who had shared in Gilgamesh's greatest exploits, leaves the king of Uruk devastated and, for the first time, confronted directly with the reality of his own mortality. Refusing to accept that he too must eventually die, Gilgamesh sets out to find Utnapishtim, the one human being the gods are known to have granted eternal life, believing that if he can only reach him he can learn the secret and claim the same gift for himself.

The journey takes Gilgamesh to the twin-peaked mountain of Mashu, guarded by monstrous scorpion-people who question his right to pass but ultimately allow the demigod king through into a stretch of total darkness he must cross before emerging into a garden of jeweled trees. From there he reaches the shore of the waters of death, which no ordinary vessel can cross, and after breaking the magical punting poles of the ferryman Urshanabi in his impatience, must cut new ones from the forest himself before Urshanabi will carry him across to the far shore where Utnapishtim lives in isolation.

Before reaching Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh first wanders in the wilderness in mourning, dressed in animal skins and letting his hair grow unkempt, and meets the ale-wife Siduri, who keeps a tavern at the edge of the world and tries at first to turn him away, then, hearing his story, advises him that the gods reserved eternal life for themselves when they made humanity, and that a wiser use of his remaining days would be to enjoy food, music, clean clothes, and the company of his family rather than continuing so grim a search, counsel Gilgamesh hears but does not yet accept.

Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh the story of the flood and his own unrepeatable survival of it, making clear from the outset that his immortality was a singular exception granted by the gods rather than a status Gilgamesh could hope to earn or acquire through effort. To underline the point, Utnapishtim challenges Gilgamesh to a much smaller test first, simply to stay awake for six days and seven nights, and Gilgamesh, exhausted from his long journey, falls asleep almost immediately, failing even this modest trial and demonstrating how far he remains from any claim on true immortality.

Taking pity on him as he prepares to leave, Utnapishtim's wife persuades her husband to tell Gilgamesh of a thorny plant growing on the seabed capable of restoring youth, which Gilgamesh dives for and retrieves, planning to test it on an old man back in Uruk before using it himself. On the journey home, while he bathes in a pool, a serpent snatches the plant and eats it, immediately shedding its old skin, an episode the epic offers as an explanation for why snakes renew themselves while humans do not. Gilgamesh returns to Uruk without the immortality he sought, but the poem closes with him instead taking pride in the great walls of his city, a legacy that will outlast him in a way no potion could have provided.