Gilgamesh

 I have been reading Gilgamesh for my outside reading I sometimes like to do. Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia which details the journey of King Gilgamesh as he seeks to avenge his friend's death by finding the source of everlasting life. I couldn’t help but analyze one of the quotes in the novel, “Ishtar came, Their city’s patroness, Goddess of love And fruitfulness And war.” (42). I found it so interesting to read about the use of a real goddess In a fictional novel. I understand that we use gods and goddesses all the time in our own sci-fi books, but this was written with the knowledge that this goddess was real, making it interesting to see how she was portrayed. Istar being the goddess of “love fruitlessness and war,” made her such an interesting choice in my opinion, as these three words are all very powerful but seem to contradict each other, while here they are perceived alike. Love is a passionate and gentle thing that holds great power over the people it affects, and so is war; but unlike love, war is rough but they still have a similar ability to hurt those involved. Fruitfulness means to be productive which helps many, but is unlike war which hurts and takes away from people. I found the use of the word, “hinted” to be interesting as it shows Ishtar’s carefulness on her approach to Gilgamesh. Rather than just telling him the gods were upset, she hints to him of this so he can believe he came to this conclusion on his own, knowing he would not believe her otherwise. This representation of female knowledge of men and their careful treading of controlling them, stood out to me in such an ancient tale. The description of war, especially with the diction of “and war.” The positioning of the words and war to be the last thing you see about Ishtar has great weight on the reader's opinion of the character. War is known to cause chaos and confusion and ends with pain. This being the last thing you are presented automatically makes you see her as a temptress or a vixen who only fights and causes pain. Never will the reader acknowledge the power and strength Ishtar wields because of this. Ishtar is a very powerful female character in the novel;  unlike the other women who symbolize goddesses, she is an actual goddess. Ishtar is positioned as an adversary the second the reader is introduced to her as a character. Ishtar is truly the spark to Gilgamesh’s entire journey.  Ishtar’s character represents all women symbolized in the book. They are portrayed to be goddesses who use love to overpower men and have the ability to use their body and words to aid men on their journey’s, whether in a positive manner or a vengeful one. They all also have power in their words and how they use them.