This video is a follow up to the video I posted in January about Historical examples of gay marriage in ancient history. Here is a link to the original video if you wish to check it out for context
   • The Truth About Gay Marriage In Ancie...  
This video was inspired by some of the comments I've received both on Youtube and on my Twitter/X account, which you will find here   / puremetatron  

If you like my work and wish to support it please take a moment to check out my Patreon page
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For further reference please review "A History of Same-Sex Marriage" (VLR 79, 7, Symposium on Sexual Orientation and the Law, pp. 1419-1513, 1993)

Boswell, vedi pp. 1440-1441

Perspective is a fundamental functional propertie of human language. We'll see why that's relevant to today's topic, on this video.

After making this video, well I wouldn't even call it backlash but I did get a few people annoyed by the information presented. Some people asked for clarification in a professional manner. Some people went as emotional as you'd expect a 12 year old to act.

Some people asked for further clarification other people reacted ina way that makes it seem like their entire reaity is based on whether Gilgamesh and Enkidu's sexuality

I do however wish to clarify and defend the academic reading and interpretation we gave to these passages as a team, 1 because some people have completley misunderstood what I was saying, but most importantly because I think it can give you an insight on how we make these videos.

We cannot define nor consider either of these two gay, neither Gilgamesh, nor Enkidu, but the relationships between the two is described in such an ambiguously erotic way as I'll demonstrate.

The ambiguity itself is revealing since it's common in the ancient world to use that literary approach. Not everything had to be explicit. That's how text is intricately organized.

E non è che sia una novità: nel mondo antico, soprattutto tra compagni in armi, il sesso era usato per cementare i legami e anche per affermare una gerarchia interna. Si può parlare di rapporto omoerotico, non propriamente omosessuale. Ne discute molto la Ackermann in "When Heroes love"

Enkidu isn't gay, we are told he was iniciated to civilization with a sexual intercourse with a female priestess, however in period homoerotic relationships between companions in arms was a thing. We know it was a thing, there is no reason to delete that. So the real question is ok, but is this the case?

When next he comes down to drink at the wells she will be there, stripped naked; and when he sees her beckoning him he will embrace her, and then the wild beasts will reject him.

The matter of translation

When it comes to Hittitology Hoffner was a pioner and his work is always an excellent place to start from, however there are different translations, and he is now considered somewhat dated.

This is why as a team we chose to cross reference it and base our deductions on the translation made by Eskridge, shared by Boswell. You'll find it quoted in "A History of Same-Sex Marriage" (VLR 79, 7, Symposium on Sexual Orientation and the Law, pp. 1419-1513, 1993.

Allegories and play on words are key in ancient literature, but they only way to comprehend them is to understand the culture and more specificly the socio linguistic context. If you don't study the cultural and linguistic background, and you have zero knowledge of the Acadian language, you will read the English translation and you will not get the double meanings.

The full story

In the epic poem of Gilgamesh, he will be seen fighting together with his friend and warrior Enkidu.

Sure the story doesn't explicitly say that they were lovers or that they had any form of erotic encounters but that's to be expected.

So what do we base our statement on?
What's very important about this is what happens right before Gilgamesh meets Enkidu.

Gilgamesh has a dream.

in questo sogno lui vede prima una sorta di meteora una sfera che cade dal cielo e poi un'ascia che cade dal cielo e questo è un sogno che lui fa poco prima di incontrare enkidu
nel sogni gilgamesh dopo aver assistito la venuta di questi due oggetti dal cielo ci fa sesso
e qui la situazione si complica perché si entra nel campo della linguistica della giochi di parole

Through the textual function, language "creates a semiotic world of its own.

#gilgamesh #mythbusting #lgbtq