*

In the Ancient World snakes were renowned for wisdom.

For most westerners they are now associated with both temptation and sin…

*

As with much else in the Epic of Gilgamesh,

we are treated to a brief, tantalising glimpse of the Old World Wisdom.

May it be sufficient to sustain us…

*

Our serpent emerges from Beyond the Veil,

and slithers to the Watering-Hole,

where Gilgamesh, ‘The One Who Never Sleeps’, again lies sleeping…

*

‘The sleeper and the dead, how alike they are!’

*

So says Utnapishtim, the immortal

who lives in a paradisical garden of ‘jewel-bright’ trees,

at the source of two rivers.

*

But if sleep and death are so similar, what then is dream?

*

In his dreamless sleep Gilgamesh still clutches his prize,

the herb of eternal youth, retrieved by him,

from The Deep over which he now considers himself the lord…

*

As Gilgamesh sleeps,

the snake steals the herb,

eats it,

sheds its skin,

and then returns,

back Beyond the Veil…

*

Could anything be clearer?