He’s a dude (directly created by the goddess Aruru) who lived in the wild, until he is cast out from the wild because he slept with a sacred prostitute who Gilgamesh sent out so that Enkidu would stop destroying traps set by a hunter. He has emphatically beastial qualities and some argue that some art represents him with actual animal features, but in the Epic of Gilgamesh he is pretty clearly a human, and the reason he is a “wild man” is to contrast with Gilgamesh, the demigod king of a great city, as part of their rivalry/friendship thing.
He’s a dude (directly created by the goddess Aruru) who lived in the wild, until he is cast out from the wild because he slept with a sacred prostitute who Gilgamesh sent out so that Enkidu would stop destroying traps set by a hunter. He has emphatically beastial qualities and some argue that some art represents him with actual animal features, but in the Epic of Gilgamesh he is pretty clearly a human, and the reason he is a “wild man” is to contrast with Gilgamesh, the demigod king of a great city, as part of their rivalry/friendship thing.
Whenever I read the Epic, I always pictured Enkidu like this.