GUILGAMESH

The people call out to the sky-god Anu, the chief god of the city, to help them. In response, Anu creates a wild man, Enkidu. This brute, Enkidu, has the strength of dozens of wild animals; he is to serve as the subhuman rival to the superhuman Gilgamesh.

One of the temple harlots, Shamhat, is to offer herself to the wild man. He submits to her and lose his strength and his wildness, but gains understanding and knowledge. He laments for his lost state, but the harlot offers to take him into the city where all the joys of civilization shine in their resplendence; she offers to show him Gilgamesh, the only man worthy of Enkidu's friendship.

This extraordinary friendship begins by a furious fight until Gilgamesh wins. Both Enkidu and Gilgamesh gradually weaken and grow lazy living in the city, so Gilgamesh proposes a great adventure : they are to journey to the great Cedar Forest and cut down all the cedar trees. They will need to kill the Guardian of the Cedar Forest, the great demon, Humbaba the Terrible...

After these events, Gilgamesh attracts the attention of the goddess Ishtar, Gilgamesh refuses her favours with insults. Ishtar returns to heaven and begs her father, the sky-god Anu, to let her have the Bull of Heaven to wreak vengeance on Gilgamesh and his city. Working together again, Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay the mighty bull. Ishtar is enraged.

The Chief Gods have decided that someone should be punished for the killing of Humbaba and the killing of the Bull of Heaven, so of the two heroes, they decide Enkidu should pay the penalty. Gilgamesh is torn apart by the death of his friend, and utters a long lament, ordering all of creation to never fall silent in mourning his dead friend.
Here takes place the scene "FUNERAL OF ENKIDU" from the ballet.

Gilgamesh now realizes that he too must die and the thought sends him into a panic. He decides that he can't live unless granted eternal life and undertakes the journey to Utnapishtim and his wife, the only mortals on whom the gods had granted eternal life. Utnapishtim was the great king of the world before the Flood and, with his wife, was the only mortal preserved by the gods during the Flood.

Utnapishtim offers Gilgamesh a chance: if Gilgamesh can stay awake for six days and seven nights, he, too, will become immortal. Gilgamesh accepts these conditions and sits down on the shore; the instant he sits down he falls asleep. Gilgamesh sleeps without ever waking up for six days and seven nights. Utnapishtim's wife convinces the old man to have mercy on him; he offers Gilgamesh in place of immortality a secret plant that will make Gilgamesh young again. But he doesn't use it because he doesn't trust it; rather he decides to take it back to Uruk and test it out on an old man first. while he is sleeping, a snake eats the magic plant (which is why snakes shed their skin).