Introduction
Shamhat is a temple priestess (sometimes translated as a sacred prostitute) of Uruk, sent by Gilgamesh to find and civilize the wild man Enkidu before he could arrive in the city.
Family
- No further family relationships recorded in this tree.
Civilizing the Wild Man
Shamhat's encounter with Enkidu in the wilderness — described in the epic as a prolonged period of intimacy — is credited with transforming him from an animal-like creature living among wild beasts into a being capable of human speech, reasoning, and culture, after which the animals of the wild no longer accepted him as one of their own, marking his definitive transition into human society.
Mesopotamian religion spans Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sources composed and recopied across nearly three thousand years, so names, genealogies, and even a deity's role often shift between traditions (Sumerian An/Enki/Inanna alongside their Akkadian/Babylonian forms Anu/Ea/Ishtar); the account above follows the most widely attested version, usually as consolidated in the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh.