The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem, literally the first of its kind dated back to 2,000 BCE. The text was founded in Mesopotamia, what is now called Iraq, written on tablets in a form of writing called cuneiform. This version of the story has a lot of gaps in it and hopefully will one day be complete. The Epic of Gilgamesh is about a man named Gilgamesh and his struggle against cheating, or in other words, defeating, death. He has a fear of death and part of his journey includes finding a way to become immortal. (Epic of Gilgamesh, Intro)
During this period of time, going on thousands of years, various people came up with many stories to explain the creation of the universe, Earth and humans. Historians wrote these all off as myths because they couldn’t find any proof of the things that happened in these stories. They realized that these myths are actually important in understanding different societies and how they interpreted the beginning of time. (Spodek, 5-6)
The two main characters in this epic are Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Gilgamesh was the ruler of Uruk. His soon to be friend, Enkidu was originally made by the gods to be equally as strong as Gilgamesh because Gilgamesh wasn’t a very good person. The people realized this, and they complained to the gods and the gods then repeated these complaints to the goddess of creation, Aruru. This is when Aruru created Enkidu. Enkidu is very in tune with nature and he’s a man who enjoys solidarity and animals. Moving along, Enkidu starts butting heads with a trapper, the trapper eventually finds out about Enkidu’s strength and they make Gilgamesh aware of this fact. Gilgamesh and the trapper basically form a plan to make Enkidu weak by tricking him and having a prostitute seduce him so the animals would run away from him and essentially, make him weak. The trappers father says “When next he comes down to drink at the wells she will be there, stripped naked; when he sees her beckoning him he will embrace her, and then the wild beasts will reject him.” (Epic of Gilgamesh, 64) Afterwards, it turns out he was correct. They spent about a week together and when he returns back to his home to animals all run away.
And now the wild creatures had all fled away; Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of man were in his heart. (Epic of Gilgamesh, 65).
Now, Shamhat (the prostitute) gives Enkidu clothes and teaches him how everyone else lives. She brings him to Uruk and tells him that Gilgamesh will know in his dreams that he is coming. Gilgamesh decides to get married but chooses to sleep with many women and this upsets Enkidu and that is when he proclaims he is going to battle Gilgamesh. They eventually get into the fight and they realize each other’s gargantuan strength. Enkidu tells Gilgamesh “there is not another like you in the world” (Epic of Gilgamesh, 69) and they finally form a friendship.
There are multiple gods portrayed in this epic, they’re portrayed as if they all don’t have much patience. They’re portrayed as quite not so happy gods, they are all upset for various reasons throughout the epic. One god who is portrayed as an especially angry god is Ishtar. Ishtar is the god of love, sex and beauty. She proposes to Gilgamesh after he defeats Humbaba and he rejects her because he believes she has rejected all the men before him. Gilgamesh says to her “Which of your lovers did you ever love forever? What shepherd of yours has pleased you for all time?” (Epic of Gilgamesh, 86) Ishtar is so enraged about his rejection that she says she will plague the world of the dead if her father doesn’t release the Bull of Heaven, she makes this obvious when she says “My father, give me the bull of heaven to destroy Gilgamesh” (Epic of Gilgamesh, 87) Eventually because of all of this, the result is Enkidu’s death. Gilgamesh expresses a lot of grief and says “How can I rest? How can I be at peace? Despair is in my heart.” (Epic of Gilgamesh, 97) This is where his fear of death starts to connect and come into the story. Enlil is another god who is very irritable and angry. He becomes so annoyed with humankind that he that he believes they should be destroyed by a flood. Ea is the only somewhat level-headed god. Ea extremely disagrees with the way Enlil decides to punish humanity. There are many other gods in the epic but the overall behavior of the gods is somewhat immoral. They definitely behave superior towards humans but they don’t act like a god that most people believe a god should act.
Some actual historical changes that are reflected in the epic’s flood story include the fact that in 12,000 and 7,000 BCE, the world started warming up. It started raining a lot more and the oceans levels started rising as well, because of the glaciers melting. The memories of this is what resulted in the flood myths from different cultures. (Flood myths handout) As stated earlier, the Epic of Gilgamesh contains it’s own flood myth, when Enlil becomes enraged with humankind and convinces the other gods that humankind should be destroyed by a flood.
The Assyrians altered the epic and that’s when the it was incorporated into the Hebrew creation literature. (Flood myths handout)
Overall, I learned that much like the more known Greeks and Romans, the Sumerian society was the first people to come up with the stories about creation. Without the Sumerian Society we would not know very much about the origins of myths or even the origins of civilization. I learned that Mesopotamia has many, many different things in it and it is much bigger than I could’ve imagined. It has so much more history than I could’ve ever thought of. The things that interested me most about the poem were the gods and how they behaved. The way they acted more like humans than humans acted like humans. The way they had no patience for humanity when they’re the ones who created them. It was overall a very interesting epic and every person who is studying any topic of the origin of humanity and/or the creation of humanity should read this poem.