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Definition
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by
Joshua J. Mark published on 13 October 2010 |
Gilgamesh is the semi-mythic King of Uruk best known from The Epic of Gilgamesh (c.2000-1400 BC) the great Sumerian poetic work which pre-dates Homer’s writing by 1500 years and, therefore, stands as the oldest piece of western literature. Gilgamesh’s father was the Priest-King Lugalbanda and his mother the goddess Ninsun (the Holy Mother and Great Queen) and, accordingly, Gilgamesh was a demi-god who was said to have lived an exceptionally long life (The Sumerian King List records his reign as 126 years) and to be possessed of super-human strength.
Known as 'Bilgames’ in the Sumerian, 'Gilgamos’ in Greek, and associated closely with the figure of Dumuzi from the Sumerian poem The Descent of Inanna, Gilgamesh is widely accepted as the historical 5th king of Uruk whose influence was so profound that myths of his divine status grew up around his deeds and finally culminated in the tales found in The Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Sumerian genesis tale The Huluppu Tree, in which the goddess Inanna plants a troublesome tree in her garden and appeals to her family for help with it, Gilgamesh appears as her loyal brother who comes to her aid. The historical king was eventually accorded completely divine status as a god. He was seen as the brother of Inanna, one of the most popular goddesses, if not the most popular, in all of Mesopotamia. Prayers found inscribed on clay tablets address Gilgamesh in the afterlife as a judge in the Underworld comparable in wisdom to the famous Greek judges of the Underworld, Rhadamanthus, Minos and Aeacus.
Historical evidence for Gilgamesh’s existence is found in inscriptions crediting him with the building of the great walls of Uruk (modern day Warka, Iraq) references to him by known historical figures of his time (26th century BCE) such as King Enmebaragesi of Kish and, most recently, by the claim of a German team of Archaeologists to have discovered the tomb of Gilgamesh in April of 2003. Archaeological excavations conducted through modern technology involving magnetization in and around the old riverbed of the Euphrates have revealed garden enclosures, specific bulidings and structures described in The Epic of Gilgamesh including the great king’s tomb. According to legend, Gilgmesh was buried at the bottom of the Euphrates when the waters parted upon his death.
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Bibliography
- N.K. Sandars. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Pnguin Books, NY, 1973.
- Gilgamesh
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Articles
Article
Inanna's Descent: A Sumerian Tale of Injustice
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Joshua J. Mark published on 23 February 2011 |
The Sumerian poem, The Descent of Inanna (c. 1900-1600 BCE) chronicles the great goddess and Queen of Heaven Inanna’s journey from heaven, to earth, to the underworld to visit her recently widowed sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Dead. The poem begins famously with the lines, From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below... [continue reading]
Article
The Epic of Gilgamesh in Prose (Standard Akkadian Version)
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Jan van der Crabben published on 13 October 2010 |
The standard version was discovered by Austen Henry Layard in the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh in 1849. It was written in standard Babylonian, a dialect of Akkadian that was only used for literary purposes. This version was compiled by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC out of older legends.The standard version and earlier old Babylonian... [continue reading]
Article
The Eternal Life of Gilgamesh
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Joshua J. Mark published on 13 October 2010 |
The Epic of Gilgamesh was originally a Sumerian poem, later translated into Akkadian, and first written down some 700 – 1000 years after the reign of the historical king in the cuneiform script. The poem was known originally as Sha-naqba-imru (He Who Saw The Deep) or, alternately, Shutur-eli-sham (Surpassing All Other Kings). The fullest surviving version... [continue reading]
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Humbahaha wrote on 15 April 2011 at 03:19:
A useful summary, but the Epic of Gilgamesh does not date back as far as 2000 BCE, as far as we know. Moreover the epic itself is not a Sumerian work, although it is loosely based on a series of earlier, independent Sumerian poems. The earliest extant fragments of the Gilgamesh epic date to the old babylonian period - around 1700 - 1800 BCE.