The Epic of Gilgamesh

Some stories never grow old. The Epic of Gilgamesh has stayed fresh for 4,000 years. There’s love, loss, epic battle, and a quest to learn how you are supposed to live, knowing you will someday die. All the elements, in short, of a gripping tale. Gilgamesh may be an ancient Mesopotamian king—part god, part man—but he acts and sounds like a disaffected modern. Humankind has undergone many profound transformations. The human condition, meanwhile, with all its attendant hopes and fears, stays constant.

I read this only for the sake of saying I did, but it's on par with Greek mythology for entertainment and has actual plot twists that surprise. Not bad for a story that went missing for more than two millenia until it was rediscovered in the 19th century. Gilgamesh has the strength of a god but the mortality of a man. This anguish leads him to unjustly lord it over his people until a friend almost equal to him in strength is sent to correct his ways. Adventures ensue, and Gilgamesh learns more bitter lessons about loss and death. There's some intriguing parallels to stories from the Bible and echoes of Homer. I took the epic as a whole to be the story of human grappling with mortality: we feel like gods in our youth, strive to make show more names for ourselves, then endure the humbling of our pride and the hollows of tragedy that weather us, leading to maturity and eventually an acceptance of death. show less

L'epopea di Gilgamesh si è rivelata molto diversa da come me l'immaginavo. Io, forse con troppa naif-ità mi aspettavo un'impresa eroica stile epica greca. Invece il nostro seppure semidio si comporta tutt'altro che da tale. È un anti-eroe, che fallisce e quando non lo fa è solo grazie all'appoggio suo fedele amico Enkidu. Gilgamesh è un semidio che è ossessionato dall'idea di morire dimenticato, e questo è il suo unico successo: ancora oggi parliamo e leggiamo di lui. La cosa più affascinante, che per me è rappresentativa dell'originalità di questo racconto, è la struttura anti-climax del tutto. Ogni volta che ci si aspetta una sopraffazione di Gilgamesh sulle avversità del fato, ecco invece che la narrazione vira verso show more conclusioni veramente inaspettate. L'esempio più eclatante è alla sua prima prova di forza contro il guardiano della foresta. Dopo pagine e pagine di un viaggio il nostro è di fronte alla bestia e... si addormenta. Ho riso per 5 minuti netti. Ma a ben pensarci... chi non lo farebbe, semidio o no, dopo giorni e giorni di viaggio?!
Altro aspetto assolutamente inaspettato per me è stato quello della cattiveria degli dei, della loro puerile isteria, in questo ricorda molto il Dio dell'antico testamento, che agisce più per ripicca che per altro, come agiscono per ripicca anche questi "Dei vicini". Anche da questo punto di vista il testo è assolutamente affascinante, l'impossibilità del genere umano di comprendere l'atteggiamento ermetico del divino.
Valutazione 4 show less

If you can read it in just a few hours, does it qualify as epic? If the introduction is longer than the actual text, is it still epic? With regards to The Epic of Gilgamesh, yes it is. Size doesn't matter here. One of the oldest stories extant concerns Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. His people finally get tired of him bedding all the young women and beating the crap out of all the men (apparently he was a cross between the Incredible Hulk and Bill Clinton). They beseech the gods to come up with a companion who can equal him in strength, so they can have a bit of a break. Enter Enkidu, and a beautiful friendship is born. They have a blast beating the hell out of each other, and have some great adventures. I think something else was going on show more too, since it kept mentioning Gilgamesh loving him like a woman. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But what really impressed me about him was that even though he was the biggest, baddest mo-fo on the planet, that didn't preclude him from realizing, “hey, I'm not going to be here forever. One of these days, I'm gonna die. That scares me.” That brought him down to earth, and made him someone I could relate to. And for me, that's what really made it epic. show less

This was my first experience of Gilgamesh, the ancient Sumerian epic that predates Homer's Odyssey by about 1500 years. What a brilliant, simple story; no wonder it has survived. I found Herbert Mason's verse narrative brief and easy to read, but deeply impactful.

Gilgamesh is a king of Uruk (historically, fifth in line after the Great Flood, which the poem mentions). He lives a self-absorbed life, driving his people harshly or neglecting them, using the women, building the walls, but mostly just being idle. He awakens from this life when he meets Enkidu, a man from the wild who has been tamed by a prostitute. Enkidu and Gilgamesh become friends in the most inseparable sense, equals in all.

When Gilgamash is possessed by a desire to show more destroy the brutish god Humbaba, Enkidu is seized with fear. He knows from his time in the forest of Humbaba's dark power, and pleads with his friend not to go. But Gilgamesh is resolved, and Enkidu accompanies him. Enkidu is killed, and Gilgamesh finally discovers what human sorrow is. Spent with grief, he embarks on a winding quest to bring his friend back to life. What will be the end?

I love the prayer of Ninsun, Gilgamesh's mother who was a minor goddess. She says to the god Shamash,

...Why did you give my son
A restless heart, and now you touch him
With this passion to destroy Humbaba,
And you send him on a journey to a battle
He may never understand, to a door
He cannot open. You inspire him to end
The evil of the world which you abhor
And yet he is a man for all his power
And cannot do your work. You must protect
My son from danger. (33)

It captures the futility of humanity in our quest for transcendence, our spiritual discontent which we cannot remedy. All our good deeds come to nothing, and the last appeal is always to the deity. Striking also to me was the monotheism of Utnapishtim, the wise man Gilgamesh seeks out to save his friend. Mason hints in the afterword that this expression of monotheism may cause some controversy among scholars... interesting.

Casual readers like me always wonder, when we pick up a work like this of which there are so many versions and translations, if we have chosen The Right One. If we have maximized our reading experience, if we have latched on to something of which those who know would approve. I have to let worries like this go and simply enjoy the book, whichever version it is, that has fallen to me. I don't know what other translations are like, but I found this one intensely human and accessible.

Strangely powerful, from across thousands of years Gilgamesh draws us into its story and remains with us. It is, of course, the universality of loss, the desperation of sorrow, and the long road home of acceptance that make Gilgamesh's journey ours. Recommended. show less

I find the epic of Gilgamesh intriguing for two reasons: because the themes it deals with are universal and timeless, and because it foreshadows important aspects of the Christian story which many want to believe is unique; it's not. There are direct translations of the epic from the cuneiform, and then there are renditions in poetic form that draw upon these translations. This book by David Ferry is one of the latter, as is the other version I own, and the first I read, by David Mitchell. I also have a translation by Andrew George and am going to seek out others.

I see two principal themes in the epic: first, dealing with the fact of mortality and what, if anything, will live on after our lives; secondly, the power and necessity of show more friendship. However, there is a very large number of themes or ideas either developed, or adumbrated, through out the story any one of which could be traced through the thousands of years to come in literature and other arts, such as: the effect of tyranny on a people (Gilgamesh in his early days); a fall from grace that was a state of nature (Enkidu); the mysterious and sometimes threatening power of sex that women hold (Enkidu's fall from nature by being seduced by the temple harlot for seven days of sex); defending the oppressed (Enkidu fighting Gilgamesh over his right to sleep with a bride on her first night); the humanity of even the great ones who also experience fear (Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the cedar forest to take on the monster Huwawa ; Gilgamesh in the mountain tunnel of darkness), doubt (Gilgamesh wants to go back at one point in the forest, but Enkidu strengthens his resolve), grief (Gilgamesh for Enkidu); the fleeting nature of fame ("The life of man is short/What he accomplishes is but the wind"); punishment or retribution for unjustified actions or reaching too far (Gilgamesh was right in hesitating to kill Huwawa who had done them no harm, but was urged on by Enkidu); the power of divine intervention (they would not have subdued Huwawa without the help of a god); sexual temptation (the goddess Ishtar trying to seduce Gilgamesh ); the power of a woman scorned (Ishtar's fury at being spurned with harsh terms); hubris and the downfall of tempting fate (Enkidu's death); life as fate preordained by the gods; fear of death (Enkidu on his death bed); the ultimate futility of trying to escape the fate of mortality (the loss of the fountain-of-youth plant that Gilgamesh had retrieved); the futility of railing against one's past because what's done is done (Enkidu on his death bed).

The supporting power of friendship is a strong theme. Enkidu's first reaction after his "fall" now that his "heart was beginning to know itself", was his longing "for a companion", hence his cry to the harlot to take him to Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh. The two fight, but then become fast, inseparable friends. They support and encourage each other; when one has doubts, the other is strong. Together they enter the terrifying cedar forest and take on Huwawa; together they kill the Bull of Heaven sent by Ishtar to kill Gilgamesh after he spurned her, as they cried together: "Two people, companions, they can prevail together". (So, Gilgamesh is the original buddy-story, a theme still much alive today!)

There is an early echo of Odysseus and Hercules's labours in Gilgamesh's voyage in search for Utnapishtim, the one mortal who has achieved immortality, having been blessed by the gods.

The pre-Christian echoes: a fall from grace and state of bliss in nature because of knowledge gained that precludes one from going back (Enkidu cannot return to the animals, they run away from him, after he has gained knowledge of human life through sex); a flood that wipes out all living things on earth except for Utnapishtim and his wife and a sample of every living creature that he was instructed, by a god, to bring on board the boat he was told to build, complete with measurements; the release of birds when the boat finally settles on a mountain as the waters recede; Gilgamesh himself is the child of a mortal coming together with a god; and a nice final touch: it is a snake that steals the fountain-of-youth plant that Gilgamesh is trying to take back to Uruk as kind of a consolation prize for not having obtained the immortality enjoyed by Utnapishtim.

The epic is very much something to enjoyed and pondered. show less

I love how relevant the themes remain to today's world. I love seeing the obvious influence this story had on the Bible and other ancient works (but not as ancient as Gilgamesh ). I love the gorgeous lines like "You will be left alone, unable to understand in a world where nothing lives anymore as you thought it did" (Enkidu telling Gilgamesh what will happen upon his death) and "The only nourishment he knew was grief, endless in its hidden source yet never ending hunger." Worth a reread for its beautiful simplicity.