Gilgamesh's Final Words

Gilgamesh’s Final Words

Gilgamesh lay on his death bed, wrapped in fine linens and attended by a servant woman:
         “Oh the lamentable sunlight on this wretched day.
         Oh, that I were not as I am, withered and fading.
         It was not to be this way.
         I, Gilgamesh, was to last through all eternity.
         I, Gilgamesh, was to last through all time. 
         My works are great.  And what have I to show for them?
         I have slain the beast Humbaba.  I have killed the Almighty Bull of  Heaven,
         Yet I myself am bested not by means as great as these have.
         Time.  My enemy.  My determined foe has made haste for my life.
         Now I wither and die in disgrace.
         Time.  My invisible enemy.
         Only he could slay me, and it puts me not at ease.
         A man birthed of the gods is to fight through life.
         He is to fight for his honor and his status.
         He is to fight even to don a crown of dignity in his final hours.
         What is it, then, that I fight?
         I take not up my sword in hand against a wandering lion-headed beast.
         I struggle not against any serpentine creature bent on binding me about the neck.
         I fight not any winged apparition.
         Only those who fight in death as well as life are worthy of eternal dignity,
         And since my body fails of my own accursed mortality,
         I have become as a diseased tree, mighty in its youth, but producing no fruit after
         Time takes its spirit.
         I have become as a lion who has ruled his pride nobly until time ages his bones
         And he is driven out by a cunning, scheming usurper.
         I embody no more strength than weakness, no more brilliance than darkness.
         Oh this wretched death bed.
         It has brought my ruin instead of my triumph.