Gilgamesh •Enkidu is civilized through his encounter withShamhat, a prostitute. As opposed to our own society, what does this say about views towards sexuality and femininityin ancient...

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Femininity and Sexuality and the Struggle against Gods: The Modern and Mesopotamian Contexts
Enkidu was civilized through his encounter with Shamhat, the temple prostitute. Quite interestingly, in the epic, the wild forces of nature have eventually been tamed by the gracefulness of femininity, depicting the fact that in ancient Mesopotamia the views towards sexuality and femininity were ingrained with divine perspectives. The constant evolution of sexuality, gender and gender role though has eroded the essence of divinity and purposefulness of femininity in the modern society to a large extent, in the context of ancient Mesopotamia the same did survive explicitly. It should be noted that the views towards sexuality and femininity in ancient Mesopotamia also paved the way for the evaluation of the constant struggle between the good and the bad depicted through the constant contradictions between Enkidu and Gilgamesh in terms of defying the gods. And it is this representation that characterized the worthiness of the risk taken by each of the protagonists in the epic. What should be taken into account is the gradual evolution of how people today struggle against gods in the lights of the worthiness of the struggles once faced by the protagonists in the epic. A legacy of the struggle should be assessed for the sake of understanding the changing facets of the society that again and again emphasize the struggle humans experience in consolidating with the vagaries of divinity.
Prostitution is embedded thoroughly in the gender relationships that have changed historically on the basis of the regulations imposed by the state and the society (Bruckner). The critical role of power...