The Epic of Gilgamesh

Context
Many hundreds of years before Homer wrote his Iliad and Odyssey, and before the Old Testament scriptures were written, poets and scribes in ancient Mesopotamia (the area in modern-day Iraq known in its most famous ancient incarnation as Babylonia) were composing, transcribing, and redacting different retellings of a still-more-ancient story, The Epic of Gilgamesh. This story of Gilgamesh's struggle with himself--of a lonely king in the dawning years of civilization learning how to conduct himself as a man in society, limited by mortality and responsibility--is possibly the world's first literary masterpiece. Gilgamesh speaks to enduring themes, among them fate, responsibility, maturation, and friendship, that continue to be relevant today. However, contemporary readers are separated from Gilgamesh by thousands of years and vast cultural distances. So to understand Gilgamesh, it is first important to understand something about the civilization that produced it.
Around the year 3000 B.C.E., the inhabitants of the fertile plains watered by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers began to establish some of the earliest governments in the history of mankind. The historical record indicates that one of these early city-states, Uruk, was ruled in the twenty-eighth century B.C.E. by a king named Gilgamesh. By the twenty-sixth century, a cult-religion had developed around Gilgamesh, who was worshipped as the ruler and judge of the underworld; the degree to which Gilgamesh had grown into myth is attested by the fact that his reign as an earthly king, it was reputed, had lasted 126 years. Around the same time, literature began to appear in Mesopotamia in the form of wedge-shaped characters, known as cuneiform, inscribed on clay tablets. Two principal languages were used: Sumerian, a language with no known relatives that predominated among scholars and in the urban south, and Akkadian, which was more common in the rural north.
There was never one version of Gilgamesh in the same way that one can speak of a single, widely accepted version of, say, The Great Gatsby. The oldest surviving fragment of a written Gilgamesh poem has been dated to the twentieth century B.C.E. But scholars hypothesize that bards began to compose oral poems about Gilgamesh and his life in the last centuries of the third millennium B.C.E. This oral composition is supposed to have reached its most prolific period in the court of King Shulgi of Ur during the twenty-first century B.C.E. Very possibly, King Shulgi also had his scribes produce written versions of the poems. Certainly, we now have fragments of five separate poems about Gilgamesh--called by his Sumerian name, Bilgames--all traceable to the eighteenth century B.C.E. Possibly, these are copies made from master-copies in King Shulgi's library.
The city-state of Babylon, under the famous King Hammurapi, rose to power in the eighteenth century B.C.E. The earliest existing major Akkadian-language version of the Gilgamesh story--known by a salient line, "Surpassing all other kings"-- dates to the time of King Hammurapi's reign. This version, of which we now only have fragments, certainly shares a great deal with the Sumerian Gilgamesh poems that preceded it, but it represents its own, discrete literary work.
Sometime between the years 1300 and 1000 B.C.E., a Babylonian poet named Sin-liqe-unninni redacted previous stories about Gilgamesh into a single, coherent narrative, a poetic epic that spanned 3000 lines and 11 clay tablets. Sin-liqe-unninni preserved much from earlier versions, but he also left much out and inserted some new material. Over the centuries, this version may have been altered somewhat, but scholars believe it is substantially the version of the Gilgamesh story found on many fragmentary manuscripts throughout the region, and most importantly in the libraries of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who ruled in Nineveh from 668-627 B.C.E. This version--known, from its first line, as "He who saw the Deep"--has become accepted as the standard version of the Gilgamesh epic, and it will be the text referred to here as Gilgamesh.
As one might imagine given the antiquity of the story, we do not have a single, intact copy of the Gilgamesh epic. Instead, we have more than eighty different manuscripts, some extremely fragmentary, some relatively intact, which were produced over a period of thousands of years, in different ancient languages, and under differing conditions. It is only through comparing and attempting to reconstruct these manuscripts from the many cuneiform-covered shards recovered by archaeologists working in the Near East that scholars can begin to reconstruct the various different retellings of the life and deeds of Gilgamesh. What we call today the standard version--the Akkadian "He who saw the Deep," redacted at the end of the second millennium B.C.E. by Sin-liqe-unninni and copied in the library of Ashurbanipal of Assyria--is an incomplete masterpiece: of 3000 lines, more than 575 are completely missing, and many more are incomplete. This commentary on Gilgamesh follows what was at the time of writing the most recent and authoritative major translation of "He who saw the Deep," the Penguin translation by Andrew George. This translation follows "He who saw the Deep" but inserts fragments from other versions of the Gilgamesh story when there is a gap of missing lines in the standard version.

Characters
Note: Gilgamesh has its roots deep within the Babylonian mythic and historical tradition. It contains mention of numerous names unfamiliar to most contemporary readers, names of members of the various pantheons of gods, ancient heroes, and places both historical and mythic. An exhaustive directory of Gilgamesh's reference points would need to cover the entire corpus of Babylonian history, myth, and literature. What follows here is instead a selection of names essential to understanding the main sense of Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh - The epic's title character. When we first meet the king of Uruk, he possesses beauty, strength, and unequaled potential for greatness, but he is a tyrannical ruler, callow and impetuous. Gilgamesh is the story of the hero's growth to full maturity, as he develops through his friendship with Enkidu and his quests for renown and immortality. Although Gilgamesh fails to attain immortality in his lifetime, he became posthumously deified as the ruler and judge of the dead, according to Babylonian mythology.
Enkidu - Enkidu was created by the gods as a rival and companion to Gilgamesh: only Enkidu, "mighty as a rock from the sky" (I.125), is a match for Gilgamesh. He grows up among wild animals in the unsettled areas outside of Uruk but is tamed and civilized by the prostitute Shamhat. He quickly becomes inseparable from Gilgamesh and tempers Gilgamesh's impetuosity with his wisdom. Eventually, Enkidu dies, victim of an illness sent by the god Enlil; his death triggers Gilgamesh's wanderings in search of immortality.
Uta-napishti - Uta-napishti's name means "I found Life"; he is also known as Atra-Hasis, which means "Surpassing Wise." He plays the role of the biblical Noah in the Babylonian story of the Deluge. The god Ea allowed him to build a boat and survive the Deluge, after which he was made immortal by a convocation of the gods. Gilgamesh travels to Uta-napishti to find out the secret of eternal life, but he is frustrated, finding only Uta-napishti's patience and wisdom and the advice to appreciate his kingly good fortune and accept the inevitability of death.
Shamhat - Shamhat is the prostitute who seduces Enkidu when he is still living in the wild. With her charms--"her allure is a match for even the mighty" (I.141)--she separates him from the herds of wild animals, persuading him to enter civilization. When he learns that he is doomed to an early death, Enkidu curses Shamhat for the seduction that cost him his innocence, but he is eventually persuaded to relent and bless her.
Enlil - The chief ruler of earth and its inhabitants; his name literally means "Lord Wind." In Gilgamesh, Enlil is implacable and harsh: it is Enlil who sends the Deluge to destroy every human being and who is furious when Uta-napishti survives. And it is Enlil who decrees Enkidu's doom.
Humbaba - The tusked ogre set by Enlil to guard the sacred Forest of Cedar. In the first of Gilgamesh's great heroic ventures, he and Enkidu, aided by the god Shamash, kill Humbaba.
Ninsun - Also known as "Lady Wild Cow" and frequently referred to as "Wild-Cow Ninsun." She is Gilgamesh's mother, a minor goddess who offers him counsel and intercedes on his behalf before his encounter with Humbaba.
Shamash - The sun god. Shamash, the ancient patron of travelers, is particularly protective of Gilgamesh and Enkidu in their quests for glory. It is Shamash who sends the "thirteen winds" to blind the ogre Humbaba so Gilgamesh can kill it, and it is again Shamash who intercedes in vain on Enkidu's behalf when Enlil pronounces his death sentence.
Ishtar - The patron goddess of Uruk, Ishtar is the goddess of sexual love and war and the daughter of Anu. She is taken with Gilgamesh and becomes furious when he rejects her, citing her history of mistreating her lovers. In retaliation, she sends the Bull of Heaven to kill him.
Anu - The father of the gods and the god of the sky. He is Ishtar's father. It is Anu who originally conceives of the creation of Enkidu, but it is also Anu who suggests killing either Gilgamesh or Enkidu as punishment for their slaughter of Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven.
Ea - The god of the ocean depths. Ea is a clever god: he is the god who figures out how to save Uta-napishti from the disaster of the Deluge and who sends the Seven Sages to bring wisdom to mankind.
Belet-ili - Also known as Aruru. The Mother Goddess who gives birth to all of mankind, and who, with Anu's assistance, creates Enkidu.
Ur-Shanabi - Assisted by the Stone Men, Ur-Shanabi ferries people to the overseas home of Uta-napishti. At the end of the epic, he is summarily dismissed from Uta-napishti's service, and he travels with Gilgamesh back to Uruk to bear witness to the grandeur of Uruk's walls.
Shiduri - A goddess--her name means "she is my rampart"--who lives in a tavern at the edge of the world. She originally hides from Gilgamesh but eventually tells him how to find Ur-Shanabi, the ferryman to Uta-napishti's home.
Lugalbanda - A past king of Uruk, later deified, who was either Gilgamesh's father or his guardian deity (depending on the tradition).
Analytical Overview
Western literature has few epics of any real greatness: readers can probably name most of them and count them on their hands with a few fingers left over. Of these, The Epic of Gilgamesh is by far the oldest. The standard version of the epic, redacted by Sin-liqe-unninni between 1300 and 1000 B.C.E., preceded Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by centuries. And the story of Gilgamesh's deeds is much older then that--as old, perhaps, as the cult religion that worshipped Gilgamesh as a deity around 2600 B.C.E.
But what does it mean to call Gilgamesh an "epic"? The epic form itself is often traced to Homer, and it is typical for reference works, like M.H. Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms, to ascribe five common features to epics: 1) there is a hero of great national or even universal importance; 2) there is a vast canvas, a setting that may be the whole world or larger; 3) the plot involves battles involving superhuman deeds or a long, difficult journey; 4) gods or other supernatural beings are interested and involved; 5) there is a ritualized, performative aspect, a style more ceremonial than ordinary speech. In Gilgamesh we have a story, older than Homer, which fulfills all of these criteria. Gilgamesh is the mightiest of ancient kings, a cultural hero and, like Achilles, the son of a goddess. Gilgamesh's narrative spans not just the known world of Mesopotamia but also the sea beyond the world's end, and the tunnels through which the sun travels back to its resting place. We have superhuman achievements in battle-- the defeat of Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven--and also a lengthy and difficult journey. We have the active involvement of much of the Babylonian pantheon of gods, including Ea, Enlil, Ishtar and Shamash. And we certainly have a ceremonial style.
Formally, Gilgamesh is a verse poem. It is about 3000 lines long, divided in 11 sections, according to how it was originally recorded on 11 clay tablets. It is divided into "verses," or lines, which are often connected by parallel meaning or otherwise into couplets. There are no stanzas in Gilgamesh, properly speaking: its translators arrange the verses into stanzas according to their understanding of the poem's rhythms and meanings. Unlike modern poetry, Gilgamesh does not rely extensively on metaphor or symbolism. Its highly stylized tone is preserved through the use of repetition. It is an arrangement of formalized structures of language. The reader will notice the abundance of repetition: every time we hear of Enkidu's strength, it is "as mighty as a rock from the sky (I.125)," and Ninsun is always "Wild-Cow Ninsun (III.100)." Most modern poetry gets its strength from idiosyncrasies of language and perception, describing things as they appear to the poet. The world of Gilgamesh is more concrete, less subjective. Gilgamesh describes the contours and colors of its world in terms of set shapes and defined tones.
Though Gilgamesh is epic in scale and tonally formalized, it does not forfeit a capacity for deeply personal emotional impact. It is driven by Gilgamesh's intense, existential loneliness, in the face of society and in the face of mortality. It is the story of Gilgamesh's coming to grips with that loneliness, with his own place in society and in the cosmic order; the story, in modern psychological terms, of his socialization and maturation. At the beginning of the poem, Gilgamesh possesses all the raw stuff of greatness but none of the necessary psychological qualities: he becomes a tyrant, ignorant of the duties of a king, exhausting the local youths and despoiling the maidens in a quest for companionship. His relationship with Enkidu, his mirror image (they are physical rivals, the only two such pure specimens, but while Gilgamesh is a king and unhappy with the duties and rules of a civilized state, Enkidu is of the wilderness, pulled toward civilization), eases his loneliness. And if it is difficult to identify with Gilgamesh, who is, after all, a tyrant, a half-god and a model of physical perfection, the pathos of his grief at the loss of Enkidu (reminiscent of the Greek hero Achilles' grief at his best friend Patroclus' death) humanizes him fully.
By the end of the poem, Gilgamesh has learned a great deal about acting not just like a man but about acting like himself in what the ancient Babylonians considered his proper kingly role. He learns from Enkidu about friendship, wisdom, and sacrifice; from Shamash about humility; from Uta-napishti about stoicism, resignation, responsibility, and mortality. He learns, most properly put, a sense of self. He is no longer the tyrant, the vainglorious youth, the irresponsible and self-involved wanderer: he returns to Uruk and takes pride in his walls, his true claim on immortality being his contributions to the city he rules. In this sense, the epic is about the ancient Babylonian conception of the world. When Gilgamesh reconciles himself to his duties as a king and his human blood takes proper precedence over divine, Gilgamesh learns his place within the hierarchies of man and god.
If the epic concerns itself explicitly with the growth of one extraordinary man, it is also concerned, on a broader level, with an entire culture and civilization: Gilgamesh is one of the crucial foundation-myths of Mesopotamian society. It is about the proper relationship between the individual and society; the way the gods relate to man, and what man owes the gods; the proper way to rule a people, and the proper way to obey a king. From our perspective at the beginning of the twenty-first century C.E., Gilgamesh was a figure who bridged the shadowy area between history and the chaos that was before history. He was that way for the ancients, too: in this epic, it is Gilgamesh who acts to restore civilization after the great Deluge that--in Gilgamesh and in the later, cognate, Biblical story--destroyed all civilized life. Gilgamesh visits Uta-napishti, the survivor of the Deluge, and learns wisdom from him. According to the paean at the poem's beginning, Gilgamesh is the one who "restored the cult centers destroyed by the Deluge,/ and set in place for the people the rites of the cosmos." Gilgamesh's personal triumph is the triumph of an entire culture: when Gilgamesh sets himself right, he sets right the entire ancient world.
Tablet I
Summary
The Epic of Gilgamesh opens with a prologue introducing Gilgamesh as a heroic character. Gilgamesh, the man "who saw the deep," is praised: he is the bringer of wisdom, and the man who built the massive walls around his city, Uruk. He is tall, consummately handsome, and strong, a model of physical perfection. But Gilgamesh is also a harsh tyrant. He exhausts young men with contests of strength, and he claims droit de signeur, the right to sleep with any woman before her wedding night.
Understandably distraught, the women of the city complain to the god Anu, who responds by working with Aruru, the mother of the gods, to create a rival for Gilgamesh. The rival will keep Gilgamesh busy, giving respite to the harried townspeople. Under Anu's direction, Arura fashions Enkidu out of a pinch of clay. Enkidu is a creature of the wild: his hair is uncut, and he grazes with the animals. But Enkidu is out of place at the watering hole with the animals, and one day he is spotted by a hunter. We learn that Enkidu begins to plague the hunter, pulling up all his snares. The hunter travels to Uruk, where Gilgamesh advises him to allow the prostitute Shamhat to seduce Enkidu, which will mark Enkidu as a man and separate him forever from the herd.
Indeed, this is the way it happens: Shamhat unclothes herself in front of Enkidu, who is irresistibly attracted to her. For seven nights, they couple. Afterward, Enkidu finds himself shunned by the herd: coupling with a woman, he has become less of an animal and more of a man. Shamhat encourages Enkidu to leave the wild and come with her to Uruk to meet Gilgamesh. Enkidu agrees to go, bragging of his great strength and vowing to challenge Gilgamesh's supremacy.
Shamhat reacts to Enkidu's aggressive challenge by telling Enkidu about dreams that Gilgamesh has had, in which he foresaw the arrival of Enkidu as a companion and an equal rather than as a rival. Twice, Gilgamesh dreamed strange dreams: first, that a heavy rock fell from heaven and attracted the adoration of the crowds; second, that an axe was lying in the street and merited the same public attention. His mother, Ninsun, explained the dreams: both the axe and the rock symbolized Enkidu--whose "strength is as mighty as a rock from the sky (I. 293)"--who would become Gilgamesh's comrade and savior. Gilgamesh, much in need of a friend and counselor, accepts this news eagerly.
Commentary
The epic starts with a paean that introduces Gilgamesh not as a man but as a hero. We are first presented with Gilgamesh as myth and history have recreated him: sheathed in glory, the man who "was wise in all matters (I. 2)." We are given a summary of Gilgamesh's accomplishments as if they were already finished and sealed into history. It is only in the unfolding of the epic that we learn what was the cost of Gilgamesh's wisdom, and how long it took him to achieve his lofty stature in the cultural memory. It is almost impossible to imagine weakness and failure in this man. But Gilgamesh is nothing if not the story of our hero's colossal failure. On the simplest level, Gilgamesh's quest for immortality is a flop. The triumphant irony of this epic is that the sum of Gilgamesh's human failings is a heroic success: as the opening lines brilliantly summarize the story, this is the story of a man who "came a far road, was weary, found peace (I. 9)." It is only through learning that he is a man with failings--doomed to a mortal death--that Gilgamesh grows to epic stature. And, of course, the story of Gilgamesh's all-too-human struggles makes for an epic that, thousands of years later, ensures the hero's immortality.
The sudden shift from paean of praise to troubled narrative comes suddenly. We learn first, as if it is part of the paean of praise, that Gilgamesh is unmatched among warriors and loves athletic contests. That this, is in fact, a problem comes to light in the next line: "The young men of Uruk he harries without warrant (I. 67)." Gilgamesh exhausts his companions. He allows rest to neither men nor women. The women complain, and the solution of the gods is to create Enkidu, who will be a rival to Gilgamesh. The idea seems to be to distract Gilgamesh's excess of energy toward something, if not constructive, at least difficult. Gilgamesh's problem seems to be that he is without peer. He cannot resign himself to superiority among men: he needs constantly to expend energy, to test himself, and there is nobody who can test him, nor even keep up with him. There is, we know, divinity in Gilgamesh: his mother, Ninsun, is a god, and Gilgamesh is referred to here as two-thirds divine. His place among people is in question. He needs a companion equally strong and equally superhuman. Gilgamesh is, along these lines, the story of a struggle inside Gilgamesh, between the divine majority--which towers above mere humanity and yearns toward immortality--and his human blood, which eventually proves the thicker. And this may be taken as an allegory for the ancient Babylonian perspective on the human condition in general: caught somewhere between the animals and the gods, man must learn his place and his proper responsibilities.
Tablet II
Summary
The wild man Enkidu and the prostitute Shamhat make love for seven nights, at the end of which Shamhat asks Enkidu to abandon his life in the wilderness and come with her to Uruk, where he will find a place among men, with others like him. She leads him to a shepherd's camp, where Enkidu, unaccustomed to even rudimentary civilization, looks askance at bread and beer. But Shamhat prevails on him, and he learns to eat human food; he also allows himself to be groomed and clothed like a man.
Enkidu sees a man going to Uruk for a wedding and learns from him about Gilgamesh's custom of sleeping with brides-to-be before their wedding nights. Repulsed, Enkidu sets off for Uruk, where, on his arrival, he is instantly recognized as a potential rival to Gilgamesh. Public presentiments are born out: Gilgamesh arrives to sleep with the bride-to-be, and Enkidu blocks his path. For a while, they struggle violently; eventually, however, each seems to have earned the other's respect. Gilgamesh breaks off the struggle, and Enkidu praises him as unique, the king of Uruk by divine right. They kiss and form a friendship.
Bolstered by Enkidu's companionship, Gilgamesh resolves to travel to the Forest of Cedars, where he will challenge Humbaba, the forest's superhuman guardian. Enkidu strongly advises against the challenge, warning Gilgamesh of Humbaba's reputation, second only to that of the storm god Adad. But Gilgamesh's determination carries the day, as he reminds Enkidu of man's mortality--and thus, implicitly, the importance of garnering glory--and of Enkidu's own reputation for valor. Together, the two go to the forge, where the smiths cast axes and daggers for them.
In assembly, Gilgamesh announces his plan to the townspeople and elders: he will kill Humbaba and earn an immortal reputation. He asks the blessing of the townspeople on his journey and announces that on his return he will observe the New Year twice over, in celebration. When it comes time for him to speak, Enkidu asks the elders to convince Gilgamesh to abandon his scheme, telling them as he told Gilgamesh of Humbaba's terrifying reputation. The elders echo Enkidu's warnings, but Gilgamesh only laughs at them.
Commentary
The story of Enkidu's seduction and socialization by the prostitute Shamhat can be understand as an allegory about human nature and the relationship between man and civilized society. Enkidu is created wild: he goes unshorn and unclothed and runs unchecked with the beasts of the field. He is purely innocent, ignorant of civilization and its corruptions, exemplified by the despotism of Gilgamesh, who ignores or is ignorant of the proper role of the monarch and who instead tyrannizes his people with the inexhaustible rutting of his will. Enkidu is ignorant, especially, of sex, the selfsame stumbling block on which Gilgamesh, who imposes himself sexually on brides-to-be, trips and falters.
But after Enkidu's first marathon sex session with Shamhat, he becomes severed irrevocably from the natural world. The herd shuns him because he has lost the innocence crucial to wildness. In exchange, he is given the blessing of civilized man: "now he had reason, and wide understanding (I. 202)." Readers will notice the similarity between this story and its more famous heir, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. Like Adam before the Fall, Enkidu lives in a kind of pastoral Edenic innocence; like Adam, he is led into sin by the woman; like Adam--at least according to the Christian tradition--Enkidu looses his innocence because of sexual desire; like Adam after eating from the tree of knowledge, Enkidu sees his innocence exchanged for understanding. And, like Adam, Enkidu eventually pays for his loss of innocence with the loss of his life: Enkidu recognizes this when, on his deathbed, he curses the hunter and Shamhat for taking him from the wilderness, a forfeit that doomed him to mortality. There is also, of course, the obvious Biblical parallel in the fact that Enkidu's first act after gaining understanding and loosing innocence is to clothe himself.
Indeed, readers may notice in general many parallels between Gilgamesh and certain Biblical episodes. Most obviously, Gilgamesh's story of Uta-napishti and the Deluge shares much with the Biblical story of Noah and the Flood. This should not come as a surprise to the reader. It is most likely that the relevant Biblical episodes were written after Gilgamesh attained wide popularity across the ancient Near East; Gilgamesh, then, seems to have anticipated Biblical episodes and perhaps even served as a model. What does seem clear is that the authors of the Bible and the poets who transmitted Gilgamesh in its Akkadian incarnations shared similar languages (Hebrew and Akkadian are both Semitic languages), similar cultural histories, and, it seems, similar mythic traditions.
Tablet V
Summary
Gilgamesh and Enkidu are awestruck by the Forest of Cedars, but the beauty of the forest is only enough to distract them for a short while: they draw their weapons and plunge into the forest, pursuing Humbaba. Much of what follows is missing from the manuscripts, but it seems as if, once again, they each feel fear in turn, and each faltering hero is, as always, bolstered by his companion.
Finally, the moment of conflict is at hand: the companions come face to face with the ogre Humbaba. Humbaba accuses Enkidu of treachery for leading Gilgamesh to the forest, and he threatens to kill Gilgamesh and feed his corpse to carrion birds. At this moment of crisis, Gilgamesh freezes in terror, and Enkidu rallies him with vehement exhortations to courage. The two sides move toward combat, but they are interrupted by a powerful interloper, the sun god Shamash, who--in compliance with Ninsun's request--strikes Humbaba with the thirteen storm winds, blinding and immobilizing him. Thanks to the god's intervention, the mighty ogre is at Gilgamesh's mercy. Realizing this, Humbaba changes his tone, pleading with Gilgamesh to spare his life. Turning to Enkidu, Humbaba twice asks him to advocate with Gilgamesh on his behalf. But both times Enkidu urges Gilgamesh to kill Humbaba, who recognizes that his fate is sealed and curses the two companions to an early death: Gilgamesh, the ogre swears, will bury Enkidu before his time.
At Enkidu's final urging, Gilgamesh shakes himself from his torpor and kills Humbaba. The victorious companions then cut down the finest cedars in the forest as plunder. Enkidu declares that he will make a door out of a tall cedar and hang it in the temple of Enlil as an offering to the great god. Taking the head of Humbaba as a trophy, the two build a raft and sail back to Uruk.
Commentary
Like the great heroes of the Homerian epics, Gilgamesh succeeds in his quest not only because of his personal qualities but largely because of divine assistance. He is favored by Shamash and doing work decreed by the gods, who have determined that Humbaba must be killed. Not that divine sanction is an immediate guarantee of flawless success. Gilgamesh is so appealing as a hero because his human weaknesses are in constant struggle with his divine heritage and the divine favor invested in him. Even with Shamash's help, Gilgamesh can barely bring himself to kill Humbaba; for that, he needs Enkidu's repeated urgings. All of Gilgamesh's earlier reassuring words to Enkidu seem to be forgotten or useless. He is only revived by Enkidu's twice quoting back to him his own calls to arms: "Establish forever [a fame] that endures (V. 244)." It should be noted in this context that here, as with the Greek epics, serving fate is no excuse, and the gods need not be consistent: though Enlil desired the death of Humbaba, he eventually punishes Enkidu for executing Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven.
If Enkidu, in the final analysis, demonstrates his courage and calm under fire through urging Gilgamesh out of his frightened paralysis, it does not come without personal cost. As we have mentioned, Gilgamesh can be seen as the story of Enkidu, the prototypical wild man, becoming a part of civilization, among many other things. It is in this tablet's action that Enkidu makes his final split with the wilderness that raised him.
Enkidu serves as Gilgamesh's guide to the Forest of Cedars. He has been there before. And, it seems, he is familiar with Humbaba: "I knew him, my friend," he tells Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh may believe he can defeat the ogre, but, as he concedes, he is ignorant of their opponent. Enkidu's fear is born of experience. But this experience is not one-sided. Humbaba, in his turn, knows Enkidu; indeed, he has been watching him since his youth. There seems to be a kind of kinship between Enkidu and Humbaba, two supernatural beings living in the wilderness beyond the pale of human settlement. Indeed, there is certain respect. Enkidu, more than anyone else in this poem, fears Humbaba's might; Humbaba grants Enkidu's skills in forestry. Humbaba assumes that their kinship and respect afford mutual protection. Just as Humbaba did not kill the young Enkidu, Enkidu should not ally himself with Gilgamesh, the emissary of civilization, to kill Humbaba. Enkidu has turned his back on his ties with the creatures of the wild: this, in Humbaba's eyes, is treachery. And it is not entirely clear from the text that Humbaba is wrong. In killing Humbaba, and then making the more aggressive moves to cut down the forest to provide a door for Enlil's temple, Enkidu declares himself a man of Uruk rather than a creature of the wild, and his transformation approaches completion.
Tablet VI
Summary
Returning to Uruk after his triumph over Humbaba, Gilgamesh cleanses himself, restoring his good looks. Seeing how handsome he is, the goddess Ishtar, guardian deity of Uruk, proposes marriage, promising her prospective bridegroom a life of honor and vast wealth. But Gilgamesh vehemently--and quite eloquently, if viciously--rejects her proposal. He heaps insults on her: she is toxic, he says, poisoning whatever touches her. Detailing a history of her paramours, Gilgamesh observes that Ishtar is invariably damaging to the one she claims to love.
Enraged, Ishtar flees for redress to her father, Anu, the god of the heavens. Initially, Anu accuses Ishtar of provoking Gilgamesh into insulting her. But when Ishtar threatens to shatter the gates separating the living and the dead, bringing the netherworld denizens up to overwhelm the living, Anu grants her request; he gives her the Bull of Heaven, which she promptly unleashes upon Uruk. The supernaturally powerful Bull wreaks havoc on the countryside, until Gilgamesh and Enkidu feel compelled to confront it.
The two heroes prove more than a match for the Bull of Heaven. Enkidu draws up plans for a tactical assault: while he seizes the Bull from behind, Gilgamesh attacks from the front and slaughters the animal. Immediately, the heroes offer the Bull's heart as tribute to Shamash, the god who has protected them throughout. Ishtar, meanwhile, is both mournful and angry. As if she has not been humiliated enough, Enkidu scornfully tosses the haunch of the Bull at her, threatening her, too, with death. While Ishtar assembles the ritual prostitutes for a mourning rite over the Bull, Gilgamesh has the Bull's horns coated with lapis lazuli and made into vessels for oil; he gives them to his patron god, Lugalbanda. The heroes are riding high. After cleansing themselves, they pass hand-in-hand through the streets of Uruk, attracting worshipful stares. Gilgamesh even starts a cheer among his servants: "Gilgamesh is the finest among men!" There is much rejoicing in Gilgamesh's palace. But that night, as the heroes lie asleep, Enkidu has a very troubling dream.
Commentary
Readers of ancient Greek and Roman myths will recognize Gilgamesh's motivations in rejecting the goddess Ishtar's advances. In Greek and Roman mythology, rarely does anything good happen to a mortal who is loved by a god. It seems this is true also of Ishtar's paramours in Babylonian mythology. The gods are capricious and powerful, a dangerous combination, and anyone who has been unlucky enough to be loved by Ishtar bears the unwelcome mark of her favor.
The story of Ishtar's many unsuccessful loves may be read as an allegory of man's relationship to the gods. Ancient Babylonian man is utterly subject to the will of the gods; even if he manages to flout divine will through an extraordinary act of heroism, he will yet be punished, as Enkidu is punished after he helps Gilgamesh kill the Bull of Heaven. The irony is that even divine favor can be disastrous. The gods are an unknown quantity, and man is in the precarious position of serving them while fearing the rewards of diligent service nearly as much as the consequences for disobedience.
If the catalogue of Ishtar's unhappy love affairs can function as an allegory about the vagaries of divine favor, it also presents an opportunity to enumerate some of the myths that explained the natural world for the ancient Babylonians. Gilgamesh cannot properly be called a myth in the sense that the goal of the poem is not to provide explanations of origins (as Andrew George points out). However, as we have noted--and will discuss later at greater length--this is not necessarily true: Gilgamesh has many facets, and one of those facets is surely a story about the origin of civilization, an explanation for the rise of civilized society after the Deluge. And it is certainly true that the poem does contain many myths, which are sprinkled throughout. Noteworthy among these myths is the story about why the snake changes its skin: as is explained in Tablet XI, it stole the rejuvenating fruit from Gilgamesh and gained the capacity for self-rejuvenation. Ishtar's black book of lovers contains many such mythic references. In the course of Gilgamesh's diatribe against Ishtar, we learn how the "allallu-bird" got his peculiar cry, how the horse became domesticated, how shepherds and wolves became enemies, and how the first dwarf was created. What emerges is a picture of Gilgamesh as a cultural lodestone, a poem that may not be a myth, but which incorporates and references an entire culture.
Tablets VII-VIII
Summary
In his dream, Enkidu sees the gods sitting in counsel. The standard text version of Enkidu's dream has not been recovered, but another ancient version of the myth, written in Hittite, tells what the gods said. Anu argues that either Gilgamesh or Enkidu must die for killing the Bull of Heaven and Humbaba. Enlil spares Gilgamesh and condemns Enkidu to death. Shamash, the sun god who has championed the two heroes, disputes Enlil's judgment, but he is shamed into silence.
The meaning of this dream is clear: Enkidu's fate, once spoken by Enlil, is irrevocably sealed. Enkidu is devastated, and he takes out his frustrations by cursing the door that he cut from the Forest of Cedar and hung in Enlil's temple, an offering that proved ineffective. Gilgamesh initially refuses to adopt Enkidu's fatalistic attitude, vowing to appeal the decision of the gods, but Enkidu reminds him that Enlil is implacable and his decisions are never reversed. Enkidu continues with his string of recriminations, first blaming the hunter who spotted him in the wild and set in motion the events that brought him to civilization. Then Enkidu curses Shamhat, the prostitute who seduced him away from the wild. But Shamash overhears him cursing Shamhat and intervenes, observing that Shamhat did nothing but good for Enkidu and offering what words of comfort he can: after Enkidu dies, he will be amply mourned by Gilgamesh. Recanting, Enkidu blesses Shamhat with success.
Enkidu then has another troubling dream. He sees himself bound and led captive into the underworld, where he sees all the kings who have ruled the land since the beginning of time, and the dread gods of the underworld. After this vision, Enkidu's strength begins quickly to fail. Exhorting Gilgamesh not to forget him, Enkidu slides toward death. On his deathbed, he laments his shameful fate: not to die in combat, with a glorious reputation, but to be struck down by illness.
Enkidu dies, and Gilgamesh mourns his best friend. In a moving and tearful eulogy, he calls upon all the denizens of Uruk--from civilized man to wild animal--to mourn for Enkidu. Gilgamesh assembles craftsmen to forge a lavish statue to memorialize Enkidu, and he provides him with the best in his treasury for his trip to the underworld, where the treasures will be given as gifts to please the gods of the dead. The funeral ceremonies for Enkidu begin, and Gilgamesh vows that once Enkidu is buried he will let himself go unkempt with grief, abandoning his throne to wander the wild.
Commentary
The tragedy of Enkidu's death is that he is a victim of correct action. He kills Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven by divine will; then, the gods turn around and punish him for adhering to their commands. Indeed, when Gilgamesh hesitates before killing Humbaba, it is Enkidu who warns him that to show mercy will be to violate the commandment of the gods. For his obedience, Enkidu is punished, and Gilgamesh goes unscathed. Shamash, Enkidu's advocate in the pantheon, points out the injustice, asking Enlil "Was it not at your word that they slew him?" Enlil does not respond to the substance of Shamash's argument, instead impugning Shamash's right to sit in judgment: "How like a comrade you marched with them daily," the chief god snidely observes. It is not clear from Gilgamesh whether the gods themselves are merely instruments of fate or whether fate is defined as the caprices of the gods, which need have no logical explanation.
Typically, Gilgamesh refuses to accept fate when it is revealed. Just as he will soon attempt to defeat mortality itself--the fate common to all humans--he rejects Enkidu's fated death, vowing to entreat the gods for Enkidu's life. Indeed, Gilgamesh believes that Enkidu's ready acceptance of fate is a moral wrong, asking Enkidu what happened to his wisdom, why he now lets his "heart talk profanity (VII.71)." But Enkidu provides Gilgamesh with his first great lesson in coming to terms with his human limitations with a simple, stoical resignation: "People go to their doom before their time (VII.89)."
Enkidu seems resentful not so much of dying as of dying without glory. If this poem is the story of the human quest for immortality, Enkidu feels that he has utterly failed; he is not dying in battle, where he can make his reputation, but rather in bed, of some mysterious illness. There is an interesting element of competition here, in which the rivalry between Gilgamesh and Enkidu--the rivalry explicit in the gods' creation of Enkidu as Gilgamesh's only equal--resurfaces. As much as Enkidu laments leaving his friend Gilgamesh, what he truly seems to regret is leaving Gilgamesh alone to continue to build up his reputation. Enkidu's curse of the hunter is telling. He resents the hunter for removing him from the wild, thus, initiating the chain of events that led to Enkidu's early death, a death that "let me be not as great as my friend (VII.95)."
This is not to say that the relationship between Enkidu and Gilgamesh is insincere. Gilgamesh's grief at Enkidu's death is deeply moving, and in his eulogy Gilgamesh rises to his greatest rhetorical heights. The funeral rites for Enkidu--and especially the gifts that Gilgamesh gives to Enkidu to take with him to the underworld--are detailed exhaustively. Gilgamesh seems bent on preserving what can be preserved of Enkidu's reputation, despite his companion's early death: he recounts Enkidu's interaction with every element of Uruk's society, and does not fail to give Enkidu his share of the credit for their heroic deeds. Notable, in particular, is that Gilgamesh's reaction to Enkidu's death is, in a sense, to turn himself into Enkidu. Gilgamesh vows to leave Uruk after Enkidu's funeral, to let his hair grow long and unkempt in mourning, to wear lion skins and "wander the wild (VIII.91)." He will become, to an extent, what Enkidu was before he came to Uruk. Part of the reason for this has to do with the extent of Gilgamesh's grief: he is moved to abandon civilization and wander alone. Part of it may have to do with the notion, prevalent in this poem, that the wilderness is the locus of immortality. Enkidu believes that he would not have died had he remained in the wilderness; this is why he blames the hunter and the prostitute for bringing him to civilization. The wilderness seems to be where innocence breeds immortality.

Tablets IX-X
Summary
After Enkidu's funeral, Gilgamesh is overcome by the dual emotions of grief for his friend and fear of death. He resolves to wander the world in search of Uta-napishti, the eternal man, who possesses the secret of immortality. At nights he prays to the moon, Sin, to keep him safe, and does battle with lions, killing them and fashioning their skins into clothing. His guardian, the sun god Shamash, is concerned for him and warns him of the futility of his search. But Gilgamesh reasons that he will have an eternity of death for rest; life is for living and searching.
Eventually Gilgamesh comes to the twin mountains of Mashu, which support the heavens. There he meets the deadly scorpion-men, who guard the gate through which the sun passes. They are impressed by Gilgamesh's godlike appearance and warn him against trying to pass through the path of the sun under the mountains. But Gilgamesh persists, and they allow him to enter the tunnel. For hours he walks in the darkness, racing against time to get out of the tunnel before the sun enters and burns him to death. Successful, he exits the tunnel into a beautiful garden, its fruit made of precious stones.
Gilgamesh has reached the seashore. This is the edge of the world, where the waters are deadly to human touch, but Gilgamesh must cross the ocean to find Uta-napishti. Here, in a tavern, lives Shiduri, a wise goddess. Taking Gilgamesh to be a thug, Shiduri bars the door of the tavern and speaks to him from the roof. He tells her who he is: Gilgamesh, the hero, who killed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. She cannot believe him: if he is who he claims to be, why is he wandering the world, miserable and disheveled? In response, he tells her about his friendship with Enkidu and how Enkidu's death has made him afraid of his own mortality. She gives him counsel: he cannot cross the ocean alone; instead he must find Ur-shanabi, the ferryman of Uta-napishti. Gilgamesh does this, but, rushing impetuously into a fight, kills the Stone Men, the sailors who man Ur-shanabi's boat. Ur-shanabi himself asks who Gilgamesh is, and, in return, Gilgamesh offers the same story he told Shiduri about Enkidu's death and Gilgamesh's own subsequent fear of death.
Since the Stone Men are dead, Gilgamesh cuts punting-poles and uses them to propel himself and Ur-shanabi across the ocean; when there are no more poles, they use their garments as a sail. Finally Gilgamesh reaches the other side and, using the now-familiar formula, explains his quest to Uta-napishti. Uta-napishti responds by reminding Gilgamesh of his good fortune: he is a king, not a fool, and ought not to act like a fool by abandoning his kingly duties and traveling the world. Uta-napishti segues from there into an extended speech about the inevitability of death, which is an eternal fact of life, ordained by the gods and unavoidable.
Commentary
The start of Tablet IX finds Gilgamesh wandering in the wild, bemoaning his own mortality. This moment of self-pity is remarkable because it segues seamlessly into several lines that Gilgamesh seems to narrate in the first person: "I came one night to a mountain pass (IX.8)." Indeed, there are a few episodes throughout the poem where Gilgamesh seems to be the narrator or where the narrator assumes Gilgamesh's perspective. The reader will recall, in this context, one of the accomplishments of Gilgamesh, enumerated in the paean that opens the poem: "He...set all his labors on a tablet of stone (I.10)." This may be understood figuratively: the "tablet of stone" may be a metaphor for the walls of Uruk, which Gilgamesh built and which serve as a monument to his achievements. But it also may be taken literally. Perhaps the claim being made here--the conceit that the poem's author is employing--is that Gilgamesh is autobiographical, the hero's own record of his journeys.
Whoever wrote or claimed to have written, Gilgamesh, it is clear that that person was intent on maximizing the amount of formalized repetition in the poem. In the account of Gilgamesh's race through the path of the sun, we have an outstanding example of this kind of repetition. Every double-hour Gilgamesh spends in the tunnel is accounted for in nearly identical terms in a kind of obsessively ritualistic retelling. It is as if the author is telling a rosary of hours. This episode in the tunnel is hardly the only instance of extensive, ceremonial repetition in the poem. There is, for instance, Gilgamesh's descriptions of his quest and of Enkidu, repetitions identical practically down to the last comma. There is the long litany of items Gilgamesh sends to the underworld with Enkidu, each accompanied by an identical prayer. This is a highly formal world, one senses, structured by repeated ceremonies, which, in turn, are built of repeated words and actions. It is a world where things move in cycles, looping back on themselves. Perhaps this repetition is a way of assuring people of the concrete reality of things, the certainty of things, in a world where the forces of fate could be arbitrary and capricious. It is also possible and even likely that all the formalized structures are in the service of an oral narrative tradition, which would thrive on the mnemonics of repetition.
Uta-napishti cuts through Gilgamesh's ritual of mournful introduction with the wisdom for which he is famed; his other name, after all, is Atra-Hasis, "Surpassing Wise." He tells the hero, albeit slightly indirectly, what no one has dared say save Humbaba. (And Humbaba did not fare well after telling Gilgamesh the truth.) The truth, to Uta-napishti, is that Gilgamesh is acting like a fool. Uta-napishti does not make this assertion quite openly. Instead, he speaks of how superior Gilgamesh is to the fool. And yet, for all his advantages, it is implicit, and not at all subtly put, that Gilgamesh has chosen to act like a fool. Notice that Uta-napishti's description of the fool, ostensibly so much inferior to Gilgamesh, begins to sound a great deal like Gilgamesh. The fool is cloaked in rags; so is Gilgamesh. The fool lacks advisors; Gilgamesh ignores wise counsel, including that from the god Shamash. Gilgamesh abandons his court and travels the world pursuing sorrow and an impossible dream. Uta-napishti believes that Gilgamesh is wasting his life and his happiness, and that he is taking his many kingly advantages for granted in forfeiting them for a life of wandering. Uta-napishti is concerned here with the proper way for a king to behave: he believes Gilgamesh must accept his privileges gracefully, listen to council, and provision the temples of the gods. If we accept the conceit that Gilgamesh himself wrote Gilgamesh, then the poem may be seen as a king's cautionary advice to his successors about the proper way to behave in office. It is a story, then, about responsibility and duty.
Tablet XI
Summary
After Uta-napishti expounds on the inevitability of death, Gilgamesh points out the obvious flaw in his argument: if death is inescapable, then how did Uta-napishti himself become immortal? Uta-napishti responds by telling Gilgamesh the story of the Deluge.
The gods decided, in counsel, to destroy all mankind. The god Ea, however, told Uta-napishti of their plans and proposed a way to survive the devastation. Uta-napishti was to build a huge boat and to take on board a specimen of every living thing. In order to explain his boat-building, Uta-napishti was to tell the other townspeople that he had been driven from Shuruppak by the god Enlil and was going to live with Ea. The gods, Uta-napishti would tell the credulous masses, were preparing to send the world a rain of plenty.
Uta-napishti did as he was told, building a vast boat according to Ea's specifications and loading aboard every wild creature and humans equipped with every skill. There came a dawn when the horizon brooded with black clouds, and gods--foremost among them Adad, the god of the storm--unleashed the Deluge upon the earth. For six days and seven nights, the Deluge devastated everything; even the gods were terrified at the ferocity of the downpour, and the mother goddess repented for acquiescing to the harm done her human children. On the seventh day the storm ended, and the boat ran aground. To determine whether the waters were receding, Uta-napishti dispatched first a dove, then a swallow, and finally a raven. The raven did not return, and Uta-napishti realized that the waters were indeed subsiding, and the raven had found a place to land. When Enlil realized that someone had escaped the Deluge, he became furious. Ea defended his own actions; it was wrong of Enlil to attempt the total annihilation of mankind. Enlil seems to see reason in this and spares Uta-napishti, making his wife and him immortal.
Such immortality, Uta-napishti concludes, is patently unattainable for Gilgamesh; who could convene a divine assembly for him? To prove that Gilgamesh is unsuited for immortality, Uta-napishti challenges him to do without sleep for a week. Almost immediately, Gilgamesh fails the challenge; instead, he falls asleep for an entire week. Each day, Uta-napishti's wife bakes a loaf of bread and leaves it next to Gilgamesh. When he awakes and sees how moldy the older loaves are, he realizes how long he has slept. Gilgamesh is crushed; now he sees the face of Death even in sleep.
Uta-napishti orders Gilgamesh bathed and clothed and tells Ur-shanabi to escort him back to Uruk. Gilgamesh, however, is reluctant to abandon his quest. So Uta-napishti tells him of a thorny plant that will rejuvenate the possessor. Immediately, Gilgamesh dives down into the Ocean Below--the freshwater ocean that the Babylonians believed existed under the seas--and emerges with the plant. On the way home, however, he is imprudent enough to forget the plant when he goes to bathe; it is stolen by a snake and causes the snake to shed its skin and be rejuvenated. Sadly, Gilgamesh did not mark the place where he dived for the plant, and he berates himself for his improvidence. All that is left for him is to return to Uruk. As they arrive, Gilgamesh turns to Ur-shanabi and urges him to inspect and admire the walls around the city, the walls built by Gilgamesh himself.
Commentary
Uta-napishti's tale of the Deluge should sound familiar: Gilgamesh's conception of the great flood shares a great deal with the later Biblical story of Noah. But whereas the Bible ascribes the Deluge to God's anger at human wickedness, Gilgamesh does not explain why the gods--Enlil foremost among them--chose to annihilate their creations. For the reasoning behind that, we must turn to other ancient Babylonian sources, cited by Andrew George in the introduction to his translation of Gilgamesh. These sources tell the story of antediluvian mankind's uncontrolled proliferation, which angered the god Enlil, who was kept from sleeping soundly by mankind's constant noisemaking. His final solution to this noise was the utter annihilation of all people. When the Deluge failed as a result of Ea's trickery, the gods determined to curb man's proliferation in another way: they limited the human lifespan, making man mortal.
So man was immortal before the Deluge. And through learning the secret of Uta-napishti's immortality, Gilgamesh begins to understand why it is that he cannot be immortal: the story of the Deluge is the story not just of Uta-napishti's eternal life but of the rest of mankind's necessary mortality. The Deluge is not just tangentially relevant to this story. It is the source of Gilgamesh's frustration, what separates him from the godlike immortality he craves.
Certainly, the Deluge and its aftermath were catastrophic for men individually, costing them their immortality, but they were also catastrophic for men as a group, for human civilization. The Deluge, ancient tradition holds, destroyed every trace of human society. Everything had to be rebuilt from the ground up. And herein lies one of the wonderful ironies of the poem. Gilgamesh's quest for immortality can be seen as a quest to recapture life as it was before the cataclysm that was the Deluge; this quest fails, in the sense that Gilgamesh does not achieve immortality. But it succeeds in a way that Gilgamesh himself did not anticipate. It is Gilgamesh, in the end, who restores civilization to its antediluvian sophistication. His success is not so much personal as cultural. His great triumphs were not his victories in battle but rather his contributions to Babylonian society. He was the one who "restores the cult-centers destroyed by the Deluge,/ and set in place for the people the rites of the cosmos (I.43-44)," so that Gilgamesh's visit to Uta-napishti was, in fact, wildly successful, leaving Gilgamesh with the wisdom necessary to become a good king and to reorder the ancient world.
Gilgamesh's wisdom lies, finally, in a proper appreciation of himself and his role in society and in the cosmos. He learns from Uta-napishti to appreciate his good fortune as a king, and he learns from him also the importance of listening to good counsel. For practically the first time, under Uta-napishti's roof, Gilgamesh shows restraint: my first instinct was to fight you, he admits, but I would prefer to hear your advice. Uta-napishti teaches Gilgamesh about the importance of accepting frustration and failure. And this, in turn, teaches him to more fully value his truly important achievements. When he returns to Uruk, he speaks to Ur-shanabi about the walls he has built and the city that has grown up under his reign. Gilgamesh's attainment of wisdom is symbolized by his descent to the Ocean Below, the domain of Ea. Ea is the wise god who advocates for man, who helped Uta-napishti escape the Deluge, and who sent the Seven Sages to civilize mankind.
The final irony of Gilgamesh, of course, is that Gilgamesh does achieve immortality. He leaves his mark writ large on the walls of Uruk. He is immortalized in the oldest surviving literary epic, which--according to a tradition within the poem itself--was written by Gilgamesh himself. The man credited with helping to rebuild civilization after the Deluge, Gilgamesh achieved eternal life as a cultural hero of the Babylonians. And, finally, he becomes, according to Babylonian myth, literally immortalized. After his death, Gilgamesh becomes a god, responsible for judging and ruling the underworld. He was, in a sense, forever reunited with Enkidu.
Study Questions
1. Even if Gilgamesh technically fulfills the criteria that would make it an epic (like Homer's Iliad or Milton's Paradise Lost), there is room to argue that, in fact, a poem like Gilgamesh is better classified otherwise: as myth, perhaps, or as wisdom literature. Make a case for Gilgamesh as a part of a literary tradition other than, or in addition to, the epic tradition.
2. Despite the emotional restraint with which Gilgamesh is written, it is evident that the relationship between Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu is tremendously complex and deeply felt. What are the attitudes that the two bring to the relationship? Do the two heroes differ in their attitudes toward each other?
3. Gilgamesh is a tremendously old text; we receive it through many different cultural filters, as well as through the always idiosyncratic filter of translation. The tradition of Babylonian literature is so different from our own that it is difficult for the non-expert to speak with any competence about the stylistic tropes in the text. Try for a moment, however, to think of Gilgamesh outside of historical context and cultural contingencies. Think of Gilgamesh merely as a poem. What can you say about the poem's use of the poet's devices of language? Make an argument with reference to specific textual examples.
4. Like Achilles, the tragic hero of The Iliad, Gilgamesh is the son of a goddess. It might be argued that just as Homer's epic tells the story of Achilles wrestling with his mortality, Gilgamesh is also concerned with the destiny of a man caught between divinity and humanity. What does Gilgamesh have to say about Gilgamesh's place in the cosmic hierarchy? About the relationship between men and gods?
5. Obviously, there are many parallels between the Gilgamesh narrative and certain stories familiar from the Hebrew Bible, chief among them the stories of the Deluge and the Flood. What are the important differences between the two retellings of this story? What do these differences let us know about the ancient Babylonian worldview?
6. It can be argued that Gilgamesh contains a set of allegories, stories with literal meanings but also with figurative significance for Babylonian attitudes toward life. Find an instance in the narrative of a story, or incident, that might have a secondary level of signification beyond the literal sense of the text and elaborate on the importance of that secondary significance in our understanding of the epic.
7. Gilgamesh grapples with the problem of fate throughout this poem. How does Gilgamesh conceive of fate? Is it similar to the Greek notion of fate or destiny? Is it irreversible? What are the attitudes of the major characters toward fate? Does Gilgamesh's eventual, posthumous deification represent a victory over fate or for fate?
8. What is the relationship in this novel between the ideas of the wild and the civilized? Pay attention to the relationships between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, Humbaba and Enkidu, Gilgamesh and his subjects, and the town of Uruk and the surrounding wilderness.
9. Is Gilgamesh a hero? This is a question asked both of you personally and of your sense of the poem. Does Gilgamesh, written long before the Greeks formalized the idea of heroism, even have a concept of the heroic? If so, then what are the traits that Gilgamesh associates with heroism? Do you think that they are the appropriate traits? Does Gilgamesh have them? What about Enkidu?
10. Gilgamesh begins as it ends, with a description of the mighty walls around Uruk; we have come full circle. In between, we are presumably supposed to have gained a sense of how Gilgamesh, the greatest king of Uruk, developed as a person. Most importantly, as the first few verses of the poem imply, we are supposed to have learned how Gilgamesh attained wisdom. But does Gilgamesh truly attain wisdom? How did the callow young tyrant become, as he is alleged to be, "wise in all matters" (I.2)? How is wisdom defined in Gilgamesh? What does Gilgamesh learn, and how does he learn it?