Many critics believe that the story ends on a note of loss, for Gilgamesh loses the life-giving plant and returns to Uruk empty-handed. However, the tale leaves us with two more positive images. First, although Gilgamesh does not earn everlasting life, he is physically renewed like the snake that sloughs off its skin. The clothes Utnapishtim gives him "would show no sign of age, but would wear like a new garment till he reached his own city, and his journey was accomplished" (1. 115). Physical change and decay, like the loaves of bread, is inevitable, but change is not necessarily to be equated with death.
Second, Gilgamesh actually does not return empty-handed. Urshanabi returns to Uruk with him. Here we see the beauty of the Epic's consistently parallel but antithetical structure. In the first half of.....
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