Details, Explanation and Meaning About Epic of Gilgamesh

Epic of Gilgamesh Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

The Epic of Gilgamesh is from Babylonia, dating from long after the time that king Gilgamesh was supposed to have ruled. It was based on earlier Sumerian legends of Gilgamesh. The most complete version of the epic was preserved in the collection of the 7th century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.

The contents of the eleven clay tablets are:

  1. Introducing Gilgamesh of Uruk, the greatest king on earth, two-thirds god and one-third human, the strongest super-human who ever existed. But his people complain that he is too harsh, so the sky-god Anu creates the wild-man Enkidu. Enkidu is tamed by the harlot Shamhat.
  2. Enkidu fights Gilgamesh. After a mighty battle, Gilgamesh breaks off from the fight (this portion is missing from the Standard Babylonian version but is supplied from other versions) and they become friends. Gilgamesh proposes the adventure of the cedar forest.
  3. Preparation for the adventure of the cedar forest; many give support, including the sun-god Shamash.
  4. Journey of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to the cedar forest.
  5. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, with help from Shamash, kill Humbaba, the demon guardian of the trees, then cut down the trees which they float as a raft back to Uruk.
  6. Gilgamesh rejects the sexual advances of the goddess Ishtar. Ishtar gets her father, the sky-god Anu, to send the "Bull of Heaven" to avenge Gilgamesh and his city. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the bull.
  7. The gods decide that somebody has to be punished for killing Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, and it is Enkidu. Enkidu becomes ill and describes the Netherworld as he is dying.
  8. Lament of Gilgamesh for Enkidu.
  9. Gilgamesh sets out to avoid Enkidu's fate and makes a perilous journey to visit Utnapishtim and his wife, the only humans to have survived the Great Flood who were granted immortality by the gods, in the hope that he too can attain immortality.
  10. Completion of the journey, by punting across the Waters of Death with Urshanabi, the ferryman.
  11. Gilgamesh meets Utnapishtim, who tells him about the great flood and gives him two chances for immortality. Gilgamesh blunders both chances and returns to Uruk, where the sight of its massive walls provoke Gilgamesh to praise this enduring work of mortal men.

There is a twelfth tablet sometimes appended to the remainder of the Epic, although it is clear that this did not form part of the original work, instead representing an Akkadian translation of the Sumerian poem Gilgamesh and the Netherworld.

The earlier Akkadian version of the epic is known as Surpassing all other kings and dates back to the first half of the second millennium B.C. The "standard" version, He who saw the deep, was composed by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 B.C. and 1000 B.C.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is more widely known today. The first modern translation of the epic was in the 1870s by George Smith. More recent translations include one undertaken with the assistance of the American novelist John Gardner, and published in 1984. The current definitive edition is the two volume critical work by Andrew George whose translation also appeared in the Penguin Classics series in 2003.

;Trivia The Great Flood from the Bible describes a vessel about 133.5 meters long, with a length-to-height ratio of 10 to 1 and a length-to-width ratio of 6 to 1. (Genesis 6:15) There is no account of the exact length of time spent on construction, however a time period of 50 or 60 years is allowed for. (Genesis 5:32; 7:6)

The Great flood from the Epic of Gilgamesh, on the other hand, describes a cube-shaped vessel some 60 meters long on each side that was built in only seven days.

External Links

Sumerian legends of Gilgamesh: (Some versions of the texts date from as early as the third dynasty of Ur, 2100-2000 BC.) Translations for several legends of Gilgamesh in the Sumerian language can be found in Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker, E, Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998-.


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