Epic of Gilgamesh

When the hero Gilgamesh travels to Dilmun to seek immortality from Utnapishtim, he is subjected to a little test to prove his worthiness. Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh must stay awake for six days and seven nights to prove that he is ready for immortality

Gilgamesh starts to mentally prepare himself by sitting down to wait out the necessary period, but "a mist of sleep like soft wool teased from fleece drifted over him." Utnapishtim unimpressed says, "Look at him now, the strong man who would have everlasting life, even now the mists of sleep are drifting over him." It will not escape anyone that here we are looking at an extremely early version of sleep as a metaphor for death..

The method Utnapishtim uses to prove to Gilgamesh that he spent a week sleeping rather than just nodding off at the last moment was by bread. Utnapishtim tells his wife to bake one loaf of bread per day. He places the loaves by Gilgamesh's head, and marks off each corresponding day. In the end after seven days, "the first loaf was hard, the second loaf was like leather, the third was soggy, the crust of the fourth had molded, the fifth had mildewed, the sixth was fresh, and the seventh was still on the embers." The spoilage of the bread proves to Gilgamesh that things have been going on while he has slept away six days. It is a method that is coupled with an appealing logic. The spoilage of the loaves is not just a plot device but points clearly to the meaning of Gilgamesh's sleep.

Gilgamesh struggles to stay awake a week; human beings in general struggle against encroaching death; the mist of sleep that comes over Gilgamesh stands for the slow, almost insensible creep of time and its effects. The hero's failure to stay awake parallels our failure to stay alive. O woe! What do I do now, where do I go now? "Death has devoured my body, Death dwells in my body, wherever I go, wherever I look, there stands Death!" As a