(See also the section on 'Divine Intervention').Ī question that arises with the analysis of Epics is the role of the Epic Hero. There is a significant important attributed to the role of the Divine and the role that Gods play in either the success or failures that both Enkidu and Gilgamesh experience. There is an image of evolution, where Enkidu is looking at entering civilization - and going through a transition of life in nature versus life in the city versus life with the Gods.

For instance, there is the meeting of the Primitive (Enkidu) with the Civilized (Gilgamesh). In the case of Gilgamesh, it is very interesting to the core elements that incorporate an epic. There is also an explicit theme that looks at the founding of a culture, either in the overall world, a city, or a civilization. Generally speaking, one of the key elements incorporates an interaction between Gods and mortals. The definition of epic by the Oxford Dictionary is 'a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation.' 3 The etymology of 'epic' comes from the Greek word 'epos', which means word or song. Examples of Epics include those narrated or written by Homer or Virgil or the stories in India, told through the Ramayana or Mahabarata. The classification of an epic is an interesting analysis. The Longman Anthology of World Literature. * A note on quotes throughout this page: Unless otherwise noted, the actual quotes used are cited from : Damrosch, David. Each of these texts provides a different emphasis, but the overall story remains the same throughout the versions. As an example, George fills out phrases with brackets, where the italics represent a guess while the regular font represents a phrase ascertained through context clues. Each of these editors has provided their own perspectives by either removing verses which were not necessary for the overall meaning, or by providing their own interpretation for the missing verse. There are three main translations that are currently used for the script, edited by David Damrosch, Benjamin Foster, and Andrew George. The missing pieces are usually filled in by various orators. Fragments from different places have ended up circulating around the world differently. There are roughly 2000 lines of an original 3000 lines poem. There is no recorded original that has survived. 20 years later, George Smith, a curator at the museum, began to study the eleven tablets that became the work known today. Thousands of tables were shipped back to the British Museum.

In 1850s, Iraqi archaeologist, Hormuzd Rassam, discovered the ruins of the great royal library of Ashurbanipal, King of the World and King of Assyria in the mid-seventh century. Discovery of the Textįollowing the defeat and destruction of major Mesopotamian cities by Persian invaders in 600-500 BCE, most of the poem disappeared. The writing style used to write the Akkadian language was Cuneiform. Around 1200 BCE, the epic was revised by a Babylonian priest named Sin-liqe-unninni, who compacted the story and added a preface. He was a great warrior who journeyed to a distance mountain where he killed a monster, brings home cedar tresses for this palace, and has his servant and friend Enkidu descent into the underworld.ĭuring the Old Babylonian period (2000-1600 BCE) poets in Babylon adapted the Sumerian poems into a connected epic, written in Akkadian. In the years after his death, there was cult which grew around his memory as he became honored as a judge of the underworld. By around 2000 BCE, there was a set of loosely connected songs that had been writeten in Sumerian about his life and legendary adventures. Gilgamesh was an early king of the city-state of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and lived sometime around 2750 BCE. 2 The central setting of the Epic is in the ancient city-state of Uruk in the land of Sumer. The Mesopotamians had no word corresponding to the phrase 'epic' and thus, ancient scholars of Mesopotamian literature refer to the epic as the 'Gilgamesh Series.' Eleven of the tablets form a continuous narrative poem, while the twelfth is a partial tranlsation of a Sumerian poem about Gilgamesh appended to the narrative, during the first millennium BCE. Portions of this epic have been found in Mesopotamia, Turkey, and in Palestine. It began to circulate in the ancient Near East as early as 1000 BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh, has been described as the first true work of world literature.

The epic of gilgamesh