In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu is the wild man. He is a hairy, naked man of great strength and divine provenance, who lives with the animals at a water hole. People are frightened of him. Gilgamesh the King of Uruk is both concerned and fascinated. He appoints Shamhat the Harlot to tame him. Shamhat finds him by the water hole, with the animals, and strips before him. They spend six days and seven nights together in sacred sex. By the end of it, Enkidu has lost some of his physical powers. He can no longer run as fast as the animals, and his thinking has become wide and far seeing. The animals shun him. Shamhat has done her work as a woman does for a man, as the Epic puts it. She dresses him, teaches him how to drink wine. Enkidu grieves for his lost strength and innocence, but he has a purpose, now that he is fully human, to meet Gilgamesh, who has been dreaming of him, and confront him.
Much of the ensuing Epic is about the bromance between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. It is seen as an allegory of the uneasy pairing of agriculture/the city/society/artifice and foraging/rural/solitude/nature. Shamhat, by making Enkidu fit for society, changes his body and his brain. She is the woman of the city, the woman of art, the prostitute. She is Babalon, the Red Goddess who faces savagery without repulsion, but with love and creativity. She is the fire of lust who ignites the desire for communion.
Whores have always been civilizers, women of the city. I now present you with the worst segue ever as we cut to the Otago New Zealand gold rush of the 1860's.
Gold mining culture was overwhelmingly male. A 1962 estimate found 150 women to 11,500 men. Official attempts were made to import women, mostly as domestic servants to the middle classes, (you really couldn't get the help, you know) but also as wives. The idea was that women were a civilizing influence on the rowdy miners. Women worked on the gold fields as store keepers, bar tenders, miners - and working girls. Gradually the gold rush ended, cities sprang up on the wealth of the gold, and the sex ratio evened out. Shamhat had done her work again. New Zealand's wild west was won by women, among other things. Here is an amusing take on this, by Adam Ruins Everything, 'How Prostitutes Settled the Wild West'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMycRBIXTWk
Second worst segue ever. Cut to sex work today, and how Shamhat continues her work.
I get a phone call. I tried to do anal on my girlfriend and she didn't like it, says a forlorn young male. You're doing it wrong, I reply. Come and see me and I will teach you.
I don't even need to ask questions over the phone to know where he is going wrong. This poor young Enkidu of love needs some skill and some self discipline and to be shown how to work towards the spine, and how we have two sphincters. He needs taught. Men are not born knowing this stuff. We are not born knowing this stuff. We don't know that basic human urges can be transmuted into art, beauty, poetry in the sexual act.
Any good working girl has the wisdom of Shamhat. She will be a teacher, a coach and a counsellor. I worked with men who needed to know specific things, about themselves and their relationships. I worked with one man through the breakup of his marriage, his depression and his new bond with his children. I over and and over taught young men raised on porn about actual human bodies and their limitations. I blew minds, sometimes by doing things that seemed to me to be quite basic. I taught patience and discipline and confidence and respect. Sounds like I was a model of virtue!
Enkidu grieved the loss of his savagery and cursed Shamhat at the end of his long life. He was angry with Shamhat for making him soft, I guess. But also far-seeing and complex and reflective. When Shamhat pointed out to him that she had taught him the benefits of the human world, he saw reason, as he was now capable of doing. He blessed her and told her she would always be desirable.
As always, blessings on you, gentle reader.
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