"There is no permanence"

Gilgamesh comes to Utnapishtim, the man that was given immortality by the gods, asking for the secret of eternal life. Utnapishtim replies by saying "There is no permanence" (106). He is telling Gilgamesh that nothing last forever. The world is constantly changing; by the time I wake up tomorrow the world will have changed and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it. This inevitable change gives us a need to try to hold on to the past.

If you drive around you will likely pass one of our attempts to hold on to the past. These large collections of individual monuments dot the landscape. People come to these places to remember the parts of the past. It is same as when Gilgamesh spent seven days mourning the death of Enkidu. Gilgamesh was unable to move on, and it was his grief over Enkidu that caused him to seek out Utnapishtim and immortality. But these memorials have another purpose, they stand as your individual, eternal, legacy.

In these graveyards each person has a piece of stone that says that they were born, they lived and they died. The steady change of the world creates this desire to have something that will last for a long time attached to your memory. Gilgamesh is the same way, “None will leave a monument for generations to come to compare with his” (118).

Although nothing can last forever, people achieve “immortality” in less physical ways. People reach a kind of everlasting existence by being remembered. For most people it is their friends and family, specifically there children, which preserve their memory. Gilgamesh ultimately achieved his immortality threw stories that we have of him, it is now over four thousand years latter and we still know the Epic of Gilgamesh.