In the short story of tablet XII, Gilgamesh accidentally drops his drum and drumsticks and they fall through a hole to the Nether World, the world after death. Enkidu, his companion and the love of his life, goes into the Nether World to retrieve it for him. Gilgamesh told him not to do specific things like not wearing shoes, not putting on clean clothes, carrying no staff nor bow, etc. so that he wouldn't bring up such a commotion down there. But, Enkidu decides to (I don't know why) do everything that he wasn't supposed to do and he ends up trapped there because of Ereshkigal, Queen of the Nether World. In other words, he had died and was now stuck forever in the world of the afterlife. Knowing this, Gilgamesh asks the god of Ea for help. Ea hears his heeds and orders Nergal, King of the Nether World, to let the spirit of Enkidu rise up out into the Upper World. So then, Enkidu appears, rising up from the ground. Gilgamesh, full of curiosity, asks Enkidu about the things he saw in the Nether World. Enkidu is reluctant to tell him because it's so horrifying, but the short story of tablet XII ends as he describes his seeings to Gilgamesh.
Tablet XII was kind of confusing for me, because I didn't know whether it was part of the actual main story or not. This tablet did have the same two main characters (Gilgamesh and Enkidu) as the other tablets, but the story was kind of different. It seems to me as if this tablet was another version or another different story apart from the one from tablets one through eleven. The main difference was that this short story had an afterlife, the Nether World. And, of course this makes the whole story different because the original story was written as if there was nothing after death. Almost half of the original story was about Gilgamesh struggling with the fear of death after his companion, Enkidu, had passed away. So, the existence of the afterlife in the original story would have affected it a lot. But, besides that, most of the characteristics of both stories seem to be very similar. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are still, of course, lovers and soul mates in tablet twelve:
"The spirit of Enkidu, a puff of breath, came forth from the Nether World into the Upper. Then Gilgamesh and Enkidu, companions, tried to embrace and kiss one another, companions." (p. 90)
What seemed the most interesting in the short story of tablet XII, however, was the description of the Nether World told by Enkidu. He described the afterlife of men with different amounts of sons. And, the more sons a man had, the better afterlife he had. I think that the author was indirectly trying to tell or even persuade us that having more sons was better, in a sort of a demonstrative rhetoric:
"How is it with the man who has one son? I have seen the man. He sits by the wall and weeps... How is it with the man who has four sons? His heart rejoices as the heart rejoices... How is it with the man who has seven sons? As if he were companion of the gods he sits upon a throne and listens to music." (p. 91-92)
Through this dialogue, the author might be showing his belief towards the happiness of having sons. In a way, he is telling us to have more sons if we want to be happy.
So, I guess that's the end of the book. At first, I thought that the story would be very different from the ones that I'm used to reading and that it would be hard to understand. But, even though some parts of the story were very unexpected, it wasn't hard to understand and I actually enjoyed reading it. There were random events from time to time in the story, but I think that was what gave the unique touch to the book.
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