...mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story. When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body. Shamash the glorious sun endowed him with beauty, Adad the god of the storm endowed him with courage, the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others, terrifying like a great wild bull. Two thirds they made him god and one third man. In Uruk he built walls, a great rampart, and the temple of blessed Eanna for the god of the firmament Anu, and for Ishtar the goddess of love. Look at it still today: the outer wall where the cornice runs, it shines with the brilliance of copper; and the inner wall, it has no equal. Touch the threshold, it is ancient. Approach Eanna the dwelling of Ishtar, our lady of love and war, the like of which no latter-day king, no man alive can equal. Climb upon the wall of Uruk; walk along it, I say; regard the foundation terrace and examine the. masonry: is it not burnt brick and good? The seven sages laid the foundations THE COMING OF ENKIDU GILGAMESH went abroad in the world, but he met with none who could withstand his arms till be came to Uruk. But the men of Uruk muttered in their houses, ‘Gilgamesh sounds the tocsin for his amusement, his arrogance has no bounds by day or night. No son is left with his father, for Gilgamesh takes them all, even the children; yet the...
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...The Epic of Gilgamesh is known to be the oldest recorded story in human history that is over 4000 years old. The story introduces “the first hero” ever known. A cruel Sumerian king who ruled the city of Uruk and did not care for his people but himself, he thought too highly of himself because he was half god, very strong, and had never found an equal. Although no one could defeat him, the people and gods were tired of his selfishness and decided to end his cruelty. They created a human named Enkidu who was as strong as him and both fought a fiercely battle where Gilgamesh had defeated Enkidu but realized that he had finally found an equal. The story follows Gilgamesh on a quest with Enkidu who becomes his friend. They both go out and fight different obstacles to save the world but before they can do that Enkidu dies in a battle leaving Gilgamesh with great sorrow, and seeks on a new quest to find eternal life for him and to bring his friend back to life. His selfishness to gain immortality leaves him with nothing but to realize that eternal life is not just given that easy. This old story continues to influence modern storytelling. There are different connections to this story like the Bible’s Old Testament and Greek mythology that still have a role in today’s society. The Bible’s Old Testament has many stories in common with the Epic of Gilgamesh. Since there are many followers of the Bible, it is very interesting to know how people would react to the similarities that both...
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...As Gilgamesh wandered through the desert alone. He realized that in his mad state of mind that he was no longer a king, but a man who lost his way. He longed to bring Enkidu back to life, which would end his bitterness and his new found fear of death. Gilgamesh became so fearful of death that he began a quest to discover eternal life, “he yearned to talk to Utnapishtim, the one who had survived the flood and death itself, the one who knew the secret.”(55). A life which he could bring back to his friend. As he travels to find eternal life, he passes the scorpion monster and his wife, travels through the valley, and reaches the sea where he comes across a cottage where Siduri lived. He pounded on the door. As she opened the door she was struck with fear because of Gilgamesh’s appearance. She questioned who he was and he explained that he was a king and that he had killed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. She took pity on him and let him lie down and rest. At this point Gilgamesh wants to know how to find Utnapishtim. He is told there is no way to get there. He then goes to find the waters of death, he meets the boat man Urshanabi, whom he tells the same story of his departed friend Enkidu. After a mishap he ends up at the waters of death to speak to Utnapishtim he share his story with him as well. Gilgamesh grows tired and is taken back to Utnapishtim’s place where he demands his wife to bake loaves of bread “bake loaves, he ordered, and put them at his head one for each day he sleeps...
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...cookie cutter images made from the same dough. There were necessary ingredients that had little to do with their values. Ancient heroes were, by definition mythical beings with mythical parents who go on some sort of mythical quest, typically to become a god or immortal, with divine interference, followed by a journey home. Gilgamesh fulfills all these requirements. He is described by the narrator as “two-thirds a god, one-third a man,” a proportion I’m not even going to begin to get into here, making him strong and mighty, which instantly made him heroic. He goes on multiple divine quests, from his battle with the Huwawa to his wanders after the death of Enkidu, and gods are peppered throughout it, from his mother Ninsun to the destructive Ishtar. He seeks Utnapishtim the Faraway, the only mortal to become truly immortal, to discover his secrets, fearing a death like Enkidu’s. He then returns, having learned and changed. Ancient heroes follow this mold because that’s what the people wanted to hear. They wanted to know the gods touched their lives in real and...
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...In several heroic novels, the hero goes through significant changes as the story progresses. This is also the case for the story, “The Epic of Gilgamesh”. At the beginning of the poem, people learn Gilgamesh’s personality and what his mission and principles are. He goes through life-changing experiences that make his perception of life change for the better. Throughout the telling of this story, this poem displays the character development of the self-motivated Gilgamesh. Throughout the book, the readers experience Gilgamesh’s character in many different ways – as a ruthless king disliked by the people of Urak, a fearful and mighty fighter, a drained, unhappy man, and finally a man who is satisfied with himself. The epic story starts when the people of Urak complain to the Gods that Gilgamesh is a hostile ruler. He forces warriors to fight whenever he wants for his enjoyment and entertainment. The reason he does this is to see who will win. He sleeps with nobles wives, he takes anything he wants from his people, and stomps on whoever tries to stop him. The people value him but dislike his sexual and physical hostility. Gilgamesh needed someone to balance him. So, to solve this, the Gods decide to make an equal for Gilgamesh to keep him under control. Enkidu has an immediate effect on Gilgamesh after they meet for the first time. The thing that affected him was that they fought the first time they met. Gilgamesh has never met a man that is almost his equal so it was a hard fight...
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...The ways of life of Gilgamesh and Abraham pose to the question many people constantly ask. What is the best way of life? Between the two, Abraham’s way of life is far less fulfilling than Gilgamesh’s lifestyle as there is little to no certainty in the pleasure that people of Abraham’s way of life are working towards. Gilgamesh’s “go home” lifestyle, as stated in David Noble’s article, Gilgamesh’s wisdom, is far superior to the lifestyle of Abraham in the way that the people of Uruk are able to better enjoy themselves in their current life. The people of Uruk are able to live the life they desire while Abraham and his people must live their lives in accordance to God. In Uruk, people are told to eat, drink and be merry, while the people of...
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...The return to your own lives In modern society, there are still many people don’t know how we best should live our lives. I think The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Matrix both have the similarity of people get learned from mistakes in their lives. At also, the difference of their life is Gilgamesh was afraid of death but in The Matrix, the main character was not afraid of death in his life. First of all, Gilgamesh was afraid of death and he was trying to find immortality. After his friend Enkidu was dead, he could not imagine what death is. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh said, “Despair is in my heart. What my brother is now, that shall I be when I am dead. Because I am afraid of death I will go as best I can to find Utnapishitim whom they call the Faraway, for he as entered the assembly of the gods.”(The Epic of Gilgamesh P97) So he started his journey and tried to find immortality. Unfortunately, Gilgamesh could not find the immortality in the end of his life. In contrast, the main character was not afraid of death in his life. There are two worlds in the main character’s life, one is The Matrix which is a computer program and another world is the real one which is controlled by artificial intelligence. When his friend Mopheus was captured by agents, he decided to come back to The Matrix to save his friend. When Trinity which is his comrade said to him if he is going back to that dangerous area, he probably is not going to come back to the real world again because those...
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...Gilgamesh the King of Flaws An unbalanced make up of two parts god and one part man, Gilgamesh suffers most from arrogance. He is the greatest of all men, and both his virtues and his flaws are massive. He is the uncompromising of warriors and the most determined of builders. Yet until Enkidu, his near equal, arrives to serve as a balance to Gilgamesh’s restless energies, he exhausts his subjects with continual battle, forced labor, and unselective exercises of power. Beautiful to see, Gilgamesh selfishly indulges his cravings, raping whatever woman he desires, whether she is the wife of a warrior or the daughter of a noble, or even a bride on her wedding night. One particular night when Enkidu, the wild beast of the steppes comes to find Gilgamesh, he is infuriated by the inconsiderate behavior and attacks Gilgamesh. The men fight and Gilgamesh realizes that Enkidu is a lot like him. Enkidu and Gilgamesh spoke after their fight, and Gilgamesh wants Enkidu to help him fight the beast of the Cedar forest Humbaba. Enkidu agrees after telling Gilgamesh about his experience within the same forest. My friend, I knew that country When I roamed with the wild beasts. The forest is sixty double leagues in every direction, Who can go into it? Humbaba’s cry is the roar of a deluge, His maw is fire, his breath is death. Why do you want to do this? The haunt of Humbaba is a hopeless quest. (Unknown) The two heroes stand before the forest’s gate, and they see that Humbaba’s footsteps...
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...INTRODUCTION THE OLDEST STORY IN THE WORLD In Iraq, when the dust blows, stopping men and tanks, it brings with it memories of an ancient world, much older than Islam or Christianity. Western civilization originated from that place between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where Hammurabi created his legal code and where Gilgamesh was written -- the oldest story in the world, a thousand years older than the Iliad or the Bible. Its hero was a historical king who reigned in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk in about 2750 BCE. In the epic, he has an intimate friend, Enkidu, a naked wild man who has been civilized through the erotic arts of a temple priestess. With him Gilgamesh battles monsters, and when Enkidu dies, he is inconsolable. He sets out on a desperate journey to find the one man who can tell him how to escape death. Part of the fascination of Gilgamesh is that, like any great work of literature, it has much to tell us about ourselves. In giving voice to grief and the fear of death, perhaps more powerfully than any book written after it, in portraying love and vulnerability and the quest for wisdom, it has become a personal testimony for millions of readers in dozens of languages. But it also has a particular relevance in today's world, with its polarized fundamentalisms, each side fervently believing in its own righteousness, each on a crusade, or jihad, against what it perceives as an evil enemy. The hero of this epic is an antihero, a superman (a superpower, one...
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...Enkidu: The Greater Hero of the Epic What makes a hero a hero? This is what I thought when I first encountered the “Epic of Gilgamesh” and found Enkidu far better than Gilgamesh. Strangely, his character outshone the main protagonist because of some reasons that may only be my own. He captured my attention because of his strong will and because of some things I can relate him with. Am I too vague or narrow to think such? Well this is an opinion worth valuing since it may steer away from the supposed preference of many to Gilgamesh' character. Apologies to fanatics or to those who oppose my arguments. I'd like to share what I think is right, and why it's right for me. INNOCENT ENKIDU “So the goddess conceived an image in her mind, and it was of the stuff of Anu of the firmament. She dipped her hands in water and pinched off clay, she let it fall in the wilderness, and noble Enkidu was created. There was virtue in him of the god of war, of Ninurta himself. His body was rough, he had long hair like a woman's; it waved like the hair of Nisaba, the goddess of corn. His body was covered with matted hair like Samugan's, the god of cattle. He was innocent of mankind; he knew nothing of the cultivated land.” (Assyrian International Books) Enkidu was first introduced in the epic of Gilgamesh as an innocent man, one with nature and though strong, he never used his strength to harm others. Son of a wild ass and gazelle, he is very primitive and eats with the animals. His encounter...
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...Sean Essary Mythic Truths Dr. Himes English 4003.3 09/30/14 Gilgamesh: The Return Gilgamesh sits stoically, with both feet tucked under him. He feels the dew from the fleece tickle against his muscular legs. All he has to do is remain awake for six days and seven nights and Utnapishtim will grant him eternal life. After witnessing the death of his beloved Enkidu he is afraid his own lifeforce will soon leave his body. He is determined not to suffer the same miserable fate as Enkidu. “I, Gilgamesh, the mighty ruler of Uruk,” he thought to himself; “Slayed Humbaba, in his forest and felled the great Bull of Heaven. Surely I will be able to complete this test.” It is not long before Gilgamesh begins to feel the weight of his eyelids as he strains with every fiber of his considerably muscular being to stay awake; however, he is weary from his long journey and cannot best his mortality—Gilgamesh succumbs to a deep slumber. In what seemed like only a moment, Gilgamesh is awakened by the smell of bread baking over burning embers. Utnapishtim explains to Gilgamesh that he has been asleep almost seven days. Each day Utnapishtim’s wife has baked a loaf of bread for everyday that Gilgamesh has been asleep. Gilgamesh begins to protest, but upon seeing the rotting bread lying on the ground, he becomes distraught at the realization that will not escape his mortality—it is his destiny to die. Not wanting Gilgamesh to leave empty handed, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh about a flower...
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...RR: Gilgamesh The epic poem Gilgamesh is about the king of Uruk, Gilgamesh. He was two-thirds god and one third human, and ruled as a tyrant. The gods created Enkidu, a wild man just as powerful as Gilgamesh, to keep him in check. A hunter finds him living with animals, and brings a temple prostitute to tame him. Enkidu sleeps with the woman and becomes part of the human world. Once Enkidu learns about Gilgamesh, he wants to challenge him. Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight, but Gilgamesh eventually wins. He and Enkidu become friends, and decide to go on an adventure. They go to a forest forbidden to mortals, and steal trees. They send the trees back to Uruk, and make a gate. The goddess of love, Ishtar, is overcome with lust for Gilgamesh, but he rejects her. Her father Anu sends the Bull of Heaven to punish him, but Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill it. After this, the gods decide that either Gilgamesh or Enkidu must be punished. The gods make Enkidu sick, and he dies. Gilgamesh grieves immensely for Enkidu, and goes to seek out Utnapishtim, who was granted eternal life, in order to try and learn how to avoid death. However, Utnapishtim test Gilgamesh and he fails. Utnapishtim sends Gilgamesh back to Uruk, where he learns to accept his mortality. The story of Gilgamesh relates to IGE in that it examines values, in this case the value of life. Gilgamesh is so materialistic that he wants as much of everything as he can get. The fact that he is part god pretty much guarantees...
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...The later "Standard" version dates from the 13th to the 10th centuries BC and bears the incipit Sha naqba īmuru ("He who Saw the Deep", in modern terms: "He who Sees the Unknown"). Approximately two thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered. Some of the best copies were discovered in the library ruins of the 7th-century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. The first half of the story discusses Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk. After an initial fight, Gilgamesh and Enkidu become close friends. Together, they journey to the Cedar Mountain and defeat Humbaba, its monstrous guardian. Later they kill the Bull of Heaven, which the goddess Ishtar sends to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances. As a punishment for these actions, the gods sentence Enkidu to death. In the second half of the epic, distress about Enkidu's death causes Gilgamesh to undertake a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life. He eventually learns that "Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands".[1][2] However, because of his great building projects,...
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...Adva Asraf English 391-0500- Pamplin January 14th, 2016 Essay #1 Epic heroism usually denotes to an individual of highest social class such as great kings or leaders. Epic heroes are outstanding fighters, sometimes carrying some divine powers. To show his heroic elements, the hero must confront some supernatural enemies, quests, war, or adversity. The Epic of Gilgamesh depicts most of these characteristics of epic heroism. The description about his birth to the journey and adventures in his life meets the characteristics of an epic hero. Although, at some points, Gilgamesh engages in acts of selfishness and arrogance, I believe he achieves the characteristics of an epic hero and portrays those characteristics throughout the epic. Gilgamesh is described as a son of a mortal man and a goddess, which makes him a one-third man and a two-thirds god. During his birth, Gilgamesh is marked out as a unique type of a person who has connections with both the mortal world and the divine world. The divine birth is very central and important to the various adventures and achievements to come into his life. “When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body…..Two-thirds they made him a god and one-third man (Mitchell, 13). Like most epic heroes, Gilgamesh embarks on heroic quests where he fights with the guardian Humbaba, which was a monster of the holy forest in order to achieve immortal status. Gilgamesh reveals his courageous nature by defying his advisers, including...
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..."Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything" (George Bernard Shaw). Gilgamesh is the king of Uruk in The Epic of Gilgamesh, from ancient Mesopotamia. He is the strongest and most handsome of all mortals at one third man and two thirds god. Gilgamesh starts out as a selfish ruler on a quest for eternal life, but eventually learns to seek quality of life over quantity. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh endures immoderation and selfishness, but eventually transforms into a strong leader. To begin, in the first events of the story, Gilgamesh abandons his wealth and power as a king to go on a quest for eternal life, which is not for good. He believes that he can become immortal even though he is highly incapable because of his selfishness and carelessness. This shows that Gilgamesh is immoderate at this point in time. He does not understand that he is unfit to be granted immortality. "Why, O Gish does thou run about? The life that thou seekest, thou wilt not find" (The Epic of Gilgamesh). This shows that Gilgamesh will not receive immortality. He is selfish for abandoning his vast wealth and power to go on a quest for eternal life. Towards the end, Gilgamesh finally faces reality and gives up on his quest for immortality, returning to his life as the strong leader of Uruk. Gilgamesh is tested by Utnapishtim, a god. He challenges Gilgamesh to stay awake for one whole week to prove his worthiness of immortality. As soon as...
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