The Sun-Herald

The Tribal Mind: The original hero's journey

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by David Dale
AVATAR and Gilgamesh are the bookends of 4,000 years of human storytelling - although neither of them is actually a book. Avatar is James Cameron's latest MEMEM (Most Expensive Movie Ever Made), showing on 588 screens across Australia, and seen by 1.5 million of us in its first seven days. It's been described as "Aliens meets Pocahontas" and "Dances With Wolves meets Apocalypse Now".

Gilgamesh is the OSEP (Oldest Story Ever Published), an epic that used to be called He Who Saw The Deep, which was scratched onto baked clay screens around 2000 BC. It was as much of a technological breakthrough in its time as Avatar is in ours. Before He Who Saw The Deep, cuneiform writing was used only to keep the financial accounts of the kings and priests of Mesopotamia (an area now labelled Iraq). Then a group of adventurous scribes stretched this new communication tool by attempting a permanent record of a hero's journey which until then had only been spoken.

Lets do a checklist to compare humanity's oldest epic with humanity's newest epic:

Do you need special tools to get the best from the story?
With Gilgamesh, you need a translator from Akkadian into English, and a writer who can capture the poetry (I recommend Stephen Mitchell, in the edition published by Profile Books). With Avatar, you need 3-D glasses, which are ever-so-slightly disorienting and add to the dreamlike quality.

Does the hero go through a transformation and gain self-knowledge?
Yes, in both. In Avatar, the hero is a soldier named Jake Sully, who is initially committed to the profits of a mining company but becomes the champion of an oppressed indigenous race on a distant moon called Pandora. In Gilgamesh, the protagonist is an arrogant king who rapes his female subjects and bashes his male subjects, but comes to realise the only way to achieve immortality is to do good things in his lifetime. In a dazzllng twist, he also becomes the narrator of his own transformation.

Is there an ecological message?
Yes, in both. King Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu anger the gods by killing the guardian of a cedar forest (in what is now Lebanon) and chopping down sacred trees. As a consequence, Enkidu grows sick and dies, and Gilgamesh spends his life mourning his friend. In Avatar, the mining company angers the planet goddess by bombing a sacred tree, and I won't spoil the suspense by telling you what happens.

How's the sex?
Good in both, but Gilgamesh scores higher. Enkidu starts as a wild man who is civilised by making love for seven days with a priestess named Shamhat. Jake Sully comes to understand the native mindset through a night of love with a warrior named Neytiri.

Are there jokes?
Avatar is about as funny as Titanic (ie humour is not James Cameron's strong point), while Gilgamesh contains a hilarious discussion between the king and the goddess Ishtar, who has developed a crush on him. She says: "Marry me, give me your luscious fruits", but Gil details how all her previous husbands met horrible deaths: "If I too became your lover, you would treat me as cruelly as you treated them." Ishtar throws a hissy fit, and sends The Bull of Heaven to kill Gil and Enk.

Memorable female characters?
Again, Gilgamesh scores higher. Avatar has Sigourney Weaver in the mentor role -- a scientist who wants to understand the planet's biodiversity -- and Neytiri, Pandora's answer to Pocahontas. Gilgamesh has Shamhat the seductress, the goddess Ishtar and a wise barmaid called Shiduri, who warns Gil that "the gods gave death to man and kept life for themselves".

A strong villain?
Avatar's Colonel Quaritch, who embodies the US war machine, tells his troops: "There's an aboriginal horde out there massing for an attack. We'll blow a hole in their racial memory so big they won't come back for a hundred years." Gilgamesh is less obvious. The king starts out bad but comes good, Ishtar is just a spoiled brat, while Humbaba, the "monster" in the forest, tells his two attackers: "You know that this is my place and that I am the forest's guardian ... If you kill me, you will call down the gods' wrath, and their judgement will be severe. I could have killed you at the forest's edge and fed your guts to the shrieking vultures and crows. Now it is your turn to show me mercy." (They don't, leaving the reader wondering who is the real villain).

Would Gilgamesh make a great movie? Would Avatar make a great clay tablet?
Yes to the first (I envisage Brad Pitt and Matt Damon as Gil and Enk, with George Clooney as Humbaba, Megan Fox as Ishtar, Tina Fey as Shamhat and Meryl Streep as Shiduri). But I'm afraid Avatar is a single medium phenomenon -- it could only ever be a movie (but a damn good one).

Go to Comments to discuss the significance of Avatar and Gilgamesh.

David Dale is the author of The Little Book of Australia -- A snapshot of who we are (Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.