Enkidu

thumb|Fighting scene between a beast and a man with horns, hooves and a tail, who has been compared to the Mesopotamian bull-man, suggestive of Indus–Mesopotamia relations. [[Mohenjo-daro (seal 1357), Indus Valley civilization.]]

Enkidu ( EN.KI.DU10) was a legendary figure in ancient Mesopotamian mythology, wartime comrade and friend of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. Their exploits were composed in Sumerian poems and in the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, written during the 2nd millennium BC. He is the oldest literary representation of the wild man, a recurrent motif in artistic representations in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Near East literature. The apparition of Enkidu as a primitive man seems to be a potential parallel of the Old Babylonian version (1300–1000 BC), in which he was depicted as a servant-warrior in the Sumerian poems.