Enkidu

Enkidu fighting a lion

Enkidu is a character from Sumerian mythology, adventure companion of the king and mythological hero Gilgamesh.

His legend tells that, in view of Gilgamesh's strength and great vanity, the goddess Aruru decided to create a creature capable of defeating the Sumerian king in combat. She then forms Enkidu out of clay and sends him to earth.

Enkidu appears as a primitive, uncivilized being and even a practitioner of bestiality, although he is still a positive character who becomes the hero's companion. He represents nature and rural and peasant life against civilization and urban values that represent his friend Gilgamesh.

Enkidu or Eabani was a primitive and wild man, who lived covered in animal skins. He abandoned his task of herding animals in the city of Uruk after being seduced by an Ishtar priestess. He found himself facing Gilgamesh in a fight, but then they became friends and together they fought against the Bull of Heaven (Gugalanna) and defeated him. The two collaborated in the rebirth of the city and its strengthening. Due to their union, they advanced and renewed the Chaldean-Babylonian culture approximately 5,000 years ago. Gilgamesh's friction with the priests and some differences with the practices of the sanctuary of Ishtar caused them to invoke the gods and disease and many problems in society. As a consequence, Enkidu or Eabani died. The death of his friend was a hard blow for Gilgamesh, who tried to understand the immortality of the soul.

It doesn't exist outside of stories related to Gilgamesh. According to current knowledge, he was never a god to be worshiped and is absent from the deity lists of ancient Mesopotamia. It appears to appear in a paleo-Babylonian invocation intended to silence a crying baby, a text that also evokes the fact that Enkidu would be claimed to determine the measure of time during the night, apparently in connection with his role as guardian of the flock at night in the epic.