gilgamesh essays

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Ira Spar Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The myth known today as the Epic of Gilgamesh was considered in ancient times to be one of the great masterpieces of cuneiform literature . Copies of parts of the story have been found in Israel, Syria, and Turkey, and references to the hero are attested in Greek and Roman literature.

The tale revolves around a legendary hero named Gilgamesh (Bilgames in Sumerian), who was said to be the king of the Sumerian city of Uruk. His father is identified as Lugalbanda, king of Uruk , and his mother is the wise cow goddess Ninsun. No contemporary information is known about Gilgamesh, who, if he was in fact an historical person, would have lived around 2700 B.C. Nor is there any preserved early third-millennium version of the poem. During the twenty-first century B.C., Shulgi, ruler of the Sumerian city of Ur , was a patron of the literary arts. He sponsored a revival of older literature and established academies of scholars at his capital Ur and at the holy city of Nippur. Shulgi claimed Lugalbanda as his father and Gilgamesh as his brother.

Although little of the courtly literature of the Shulgi academies survives, and Sumerian ceased to be a spoken language soon after the end of his dynasty, Sumerian literature continued to be studied in the scribal schools of the following Old Babylonian period . Five Sumerian stories about Gilgamesh were copied in these schools. These tales, which were not part of an epic cycle, were originally oral narratives sung at the royal court of the Third Dynasty of Ur.

“Gilgamesh and Akka” describes the triumph of the hero over his overlord Akka, ruler of the city of Kish. “Gilgamesh and Huwawa” recounts the journey of the hero and his servant Enkidu to the cedar mountains, where they encounter and slay the giant Huwawa, the guardian of the forest. A third tale, “Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven,” deals with Gilgamesh’s rejection of the amorous advances made by Inanna, the Queen of Heaven. Seeking revenge, the goddess sends the Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh, but the hero, with the assistance of Enkidu, slays the monster. In “Gilgamesh and the Netherworld,” the hero loses two sport-related objects, which fall into the Netherworld. Enkidu descends into the depths to find them and, upon his return to life, describes the horrid fate that awaits the dead. In the final composition, “The Death of Gilgamesh,” the hero dreams that the gods are meeting to review his exploits and accomplishments. They decide that he, like all of humankind, shall not be granted eternal life.

In addition to the Sumerian compositions, young scribes studying in the Old Babylonian schools made copies of different oral stories about the hero Gilgamesh. One noteworthy tale was sung in Akkadian rather than in Sumerian. Called “Surpassing All Other Kings,” this poem combined some elements of the Sumerian narrative into a new Akkadian tale. Only fragments of this composition survive. By the end of the eighteenth century B.C., large areas of southern Mesopotamia, including Nippur, were abandoned; the scribal academies closed as the economy collapsed. A shift in political power and culture took place under the newly ascendant Babylonian dynasties centered north of Sumer. Hundreds of years later, toward the end of the second millennium B.C., literary works in Babylonian dominated scribal learning. Differing versions of classic compositions, including the Akkadian Gilgamesh story, proliferated, and translations and adaptations were made by poets in various lands to reflect local concerns.

Some time in the twelfth century B.C., Sin-leqi-unninni, a Babylonian scholar, recorded what was to become a classic version of the Gilgamesh tale. Not content to merely copy an old version of the tale, this scholar most likely assembled various versions of the story from both oral and written sources and updated them in light of the literary concerns of his day, which included questions about human mortality and the nature of wisdom. “Surpassing All Other Kings” now became a new composition called “He Who Saw the Deep.” In the poem, Sin-leqi-unninni recast Enkidu as Gilgamesh’s companion and brought to the fore concerns about unbridled heroism, the responsibilities of good governance, and the purpose of life. The new version of the epic explains that Gilgamesh, although he is king of Uruk, acts as an arrogant, impulsive, and irresponsible ruler. Only after a frustrating and vain attempt to find eternal life does he emerge from immaturity to realize that one’s achievements, rather than immortality, serve as an enduring legacy.

The poem begins by explaining that Gilgamesh, although he thought that he “was wise in all matters,” had to endure a journey of travail in order to find peace. Two-thirds human and one-third deity, the hero as king is unaware of his own strengths and weaknesses. He oppresses his own people. In response to complaints by the citizens of Uruk, the gods create Enkidu, a double, who becomes the hero’s friend and companion. Initially described as a wild animal-like creature, Enkidu (“Lord of the Pleasant Place”) has sex with a temple prostitute and is transformed into a civilized being. No longer animal-like, he now possesses wisdom “like a god,” a distinguishing characteristic of humans. After an initial confrontation, Gilgamesh and Enkidu become friends and decide to make a name for themselves by journeying to the Cedar Forest to fight against Humbaba, the giant whom the gods have placed as guardian of the sacred trees. The two kill the monster and take cedar back to Uruk as their prize. Back in Uruk, the goddess Ishtar, sexually aroused by Gilgamesh’s beauty, tries to seduce him. Repulsed, the headstrong goddess sends the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk and punish Gilgamesh. But Gilgamesh and Enkidu meet the challenge and Gilgamesh slays the bull. The gods retaliate by causing Enkidu to fall ill and die. Gilgamesh, devastated by the death of his friend, now realizes that he is part mortal and sets out on a fruitless journey to seek immortality.

On his travels in search of the secret of everlasting life, Gilgamesh meets a scorpion man and later a divine female tavern keeper who tries to dissuade him from continuing his search. But Gilgamesh is arrogant and determined. Upon learning that Uta-napishtim (“I Found Life”), a legendary hero who had obtained eternal life, dwelt on an island across the “Waters of Death,” Gilgamesh crosses the sea and is greeted by the immortal hero. Uta-napishtim explains to Gilgamesh that his quest is in vain, as humans were created to be mortal. But upon questioning, Uta-napishtim reveals that he was placed by the gods on this remote island after being informed that the world would be destroyed by a great flood . Building a boxlike ark in the shape of a cube, Uta-napishtim took on board his possessions, his riches, his family members, craftsmen, and creatures of the earth. After riding out the storm, he and his wife were granted immortality and settled on the island far from civilization. Devastated by this news and realizing that he, too, will someday expire, Gilgamesh returns to Uruk and examines its defensive wall. Finally, he comprehends that the everlasting fame he so vainly sought lay not in eternal life but in his accomplishments on behalf of both his people and his god.

Attempts to identify Gilgamesh in art are fraught with difficulty. Cylinder seals from the Akkadian period (ca. 2350–2150 B.C.) onward showing nude heroes with beards and curls grappling with lions and bovines cannot be identified with Gilgamesh. They are more likely to be associated with the god Lahmu (“The Hairy One”). A terracotta plaque in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, depicts a bearded hero grasping an ogre’s wrist while raising his right hand to attack him with a club. To his left, a beardless figure pins down the monster’s arm, pulls his hair, and is about to pierce his neck with a knife. This scene is often associated with the death of Humbaba. The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic clearly describes Enkidu as being almost identical to Gilgamesh, but no mention is made of the monster’s long hair, and although Gilgamesh is said to strike the monster with a dagger, he holds an axe rather than a club in his hand. The scene on the Berlin plaque may reflect the older Sumerian story wherein Enkidu is described as a companion rather than a double of the hero. In this older tale, Enkidu is the one who “severed [Huwawa’s] head at the neck.” Similar images appear on cylinder seals of the second and first millennium B.C.

Spar, Ira. “Gilgamesh.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gilg/hd_gilg.htm (April 2009)

Further Reading

Foster, Benjamin R., trans. and ed. The Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Norton, 2001.

George, Andrew, trans. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian . London: Allen Lane, 1999.

Additional Essays by Ira Spar

• Spar, Ira. “ Mesopotamian Creation Myths .” (April 2009)
• Spar, Ira. “ Flood Stories .” (April 2009)
• Spar, Ira. “ Mesopotamian Deities .” (April 2009)
• Spar, Ira. “ The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan .” (April 2009)
• Spar, Ira. “ The Origins of Writing .” (October 2004)

Related Essays

• Flood Stories
• The Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods (2004–1595 B.C.)
• Mesopotamian Creation Myths
• The Origins of Writing
• Ur: The Royal Graves
• The Akkadian Period (ca. 2350–2150 B.C.)
• The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan
• The Middle Babylonian / Kassite Period (ca. 1595–1155 B.C.) in Mesopotamia
• Ur: The Ziggurat
• Uruk: The First City
• West Asia: Ancient Legends, Modern Idioms

List of Rulers

• List of Rulers of Mesopotamia
• Mesopotamia, 1000 B.C.–1 A.D.
• Mesopotamia, 1–500 A.D.
• Mesopotamia, 2000–1000 B.C.
• Mesopotamia, 8000–2000 B.C.
• 2nd Millennium B.C.
• 3rd Millennium B.C.
• Akkadian Period
• Anatolia and the Caucasus
• Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Ancient Roman Literature / Poetry
• Anthropomorphism
• Babylonian Art
• Cylinder Seal
• Dagger / Knife
• Deity / Religious Figure
• Eastern Mediterranean
• Greek Literature / Poetry
• Immortality
• Literature / Poetry
• Mesopotamian Art
• Mythical Creature
• Religious Art
• Sumerian Art
• Uruk Period

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The Epic of Gilgamesh Essays

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Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic Hardcover – October 26, 2021

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Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay

Introduction.

All through history, stories, poems, and songs have common themes. This fact played a significant role in explaining some aspects of societal life. One of these is friendship. No one in the world does not need a friend; therefore, it is a necessary aspect of life.

The role of friendship in the Epic of Gilgamesh is vital. The epic was appearing in a period of nearly a thousand years from about 2500 to 1500 B.C. Gilgamesh, who is two-thirds god and one-third man, is the oppressive fifth king of Uruk while Enkidu is the ruler of the animals. This essay unfolds the theme of friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu that develops in the course of the story.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu: Friendship in the Epic

As the story begins, King Gilgamesh of Uruk is depicted to be in mature manhood and superior to all other men in both beauty and strength. No one could match up with him in the ancient Mesopotamian society. The unsatisfied cravings of his demigod nature could not find a suitable mate for him in love or war. Besides, his unsatisfied daemonic energy made the people of Uruk be dissatisfied with his reign.

Because he lacked love and friendship, Gilgamesh turned to excess and indulgence, and he celebrated his victories with too much debauched partying, which annoyed the individuals in the city as well as the gods in the temples. Because of his oppressive rule, the people asked for help from the gods since they feared that someday Gilgamesh would ask for a more significant part of his divine heritage, challenge the gods and even rock the pillars of heaven if he was not controlled.

Therefore, to counter the threat, the gods devised a plan of creating Enkidu, who was the Gilgamesh’s friend and his mirror image. They believed that the king would divert his dangerous energies toward that rival, thereby stop challenging heaven. The gods then made Enkidu from clay and left him in the wilderness to live and eat as the animals do.

In the wilderness, though he somehow established a friendship with the wild animals, his cravings for a mate were not adequately satisfied. Therefore, when a harlot from the city seduced him, he quickly agreed to leave and live in the great-civilized city of Uruk. When Enkidu goes there, he seems not to like Gilgamesh at first since the two engaged in a fight soon after they met.

However, Gilgamesh and Enkidu quickly started to like one another. How did they become friends? In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the theme of friendship appears when the two giants become very close and begin to rely on one another in conquering their enemies with ease. After that, the solidarity between the two of them helps in developing the plot of the story. All in all, it is a mixture of morality, pure adventure, and tragedy, as subsequent experiences are based on this newfound eternal comradeship.

The newly found comrades soon grow weak and become indolent with city life. Therefore, Gilgamesh suggests an exciting activity, which involves going to the forest to cut down trees to construct a memorable monument to the gods. However, since the terrifying demon called Humbaba is endowed with the responsibility of protecting the forest that is also prohibited to mortals, they have to kill him first.

At first, Enkidu disagrees with this proposal but gives in after persuasion from his friend. The importance of their friendship gave them the astounding courage and unwavering confidence to succeed in killing Humbaba. As the King of Uruk cleans himself, Ishtar offers to become his wife because his beauty was appealing to her; however, he turns her down with insults, recounting to her the dire fates that all her mortal lovers have met.

Ishtar, the goddess of love and beauty, is infuriated at the rejection and goes to heaven to request his father, Anu, to send the Bull of Heaven to terrorize the people of Uruk. However, Gilgamesh and his compatriot work together to defeat the bull sent by the gods from heaven.

For example, after the success of their missions, Enkidu dreamt that they had gone contrary to the wishes of the gods so much that one of them must be sacrificed for murdering Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. Thereafter, he quickly succumbed to a fatal disease after twelve days of suffering.

The loss of Enkidu brings remorse to Gilgamesh, and he realizes that death is inevitable. Because of the loss of the great friendship, he sets out on a journey to find Utnapishtim, the one man holding the secret of everlasting life. On the way, he encountered various obstacles, and on finally meeting Utnapishtam, he successively failed different tests that could have given him the secret of immortality. In the end, Gilgamesh, though being the King of Uruk, succumbed to the same fate that befell his friend.

What Do We Learn from Enkidu and Gilgamesh’s Friendship?

Although the type of friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu corresponds to contemporary friendship, it differs in some way from it. All through the ages, humans have treasured friendship since it determines our survival in this world.

In the current society, human relationship is essential for helping one another in times of difficulty, just as Gilgamesh and Enkidu assisted one another in conquering their enemies. Most people look for various traits in friends, mainly attributes that they may have in common. However, the current society takes friendship for granted. Many people see it as something that exists naturally.

How many yearn for their better halves, as did Gilgamesh and Enkidu for each other? Who can go in the world to search for a suitable mate in love? What does the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu tell us about friendship? The Mesopotamian society, as depicted by taming of Enkidu so that Gilgamesh could accept him, valued friendship such that they could go in search of it.

I do not think that two ordinary peasants in Mesopotamia were capable of forming the kind of bond that existed between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. For me, this is the most important thesis of the essay. Epic of Gilgamesh depicts its main hero as being a two-thirds god. Therefore, to make him have his equal, the gods created Enkidu to satisfy his cravings for a mate. That’s why Gilgamesh and Enkidu needed each other. This fact implies that the gods predestined their friendship, a thing that could not just happen among ordinary peasants in Mesopotamia.

Before the coming of Enkidu, Gilgamesh had a cold heart, and he never befriended anyone. However, the arrival of Enkidu changed all these as he placed a check on Gilgamesh’s powerful energies. On the other hand, Gilgamesh pulled him out of his egocentricity. This even matching of characteristics is only possible when someone is specially created for the other, but not otherwise as may be in ordinary men.

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• A New Audience for the World’s First Author

May 6, 2024 | Ho, Melanie | Ancient History , Essays , Poetry

Sophus Helle —

Authors in antiquity knew from prolonged experience the labor that is needed to carry a text through time. Books do not move across centuries on their own. They must be moved, and they are moved by the hard work of copyists and editors, printers and proselytizers, translators and versifiers, singers and booksellers, teachers and students, readers and listeners. No written material, not even the comparatively durable clay of the Sumerians, survives the passing of time entirely unaffected: if books are not attended to, they crumble and decay. It takes many hands, mouths, ears, and eyes to secure their survival.

The priestess Enheduana, the first known author in literary history—by which I mean the first person to whom a literary work was attributed and who can be identified in the historical record—knew this also. The best known poem attributed to her, The Exaltation of Inana , ends with a description of its own composition. After it was created by Enheduana, it was passed on to the singer who performed it on the following day, setting in motion a chain of transmission that moved from the singer to the scribes who copied out the poem, the archaeologists who excavated those copies, and the philologists who pieced the manuscripts together to reconstruct the text. When I came to translating the poem for my book, Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author , I was merely adding yet another link to this four-millennia-long chain.

Even that one link would not have been possible without a wide circle of gifted and generous collaborators, including the editors, publicists, colleagues, peer reviewers, friends, and family members who offered crucial feedback and support. And then there are the many reviewers, blurbers, booksellers, and podcasters who helped bring the book to its readers. Even this list is not exclusive, and again, it covers only a single episode in the long story of the poem’s journey across time and languages.

To publish a book is a lesson, not in the skills or inspiration needed to write, but in indebtedness, gratitude, and humility. Books are collaborative events; they travel, like rockstars, on a sea of happy hands.

Books live longest and, as it were, healthiest, when the labor of their transmission is organized and incentivized by institutions, such as libraries and monasteries. Institutions are uniquely well-suited to offer continuity over time, and no institution is more effective in carrying a book across time than the school. The books that survive the longest and spread the widest are those that are taught in schools.

Schools are the reason Enheduana’s poems survived for millennia. Around year 2000 BCE, the Sumerian language, in which the poems are written, died out as a native language, becoming instead a language of scholarship and religious rituals, much like Latin in Europe and Sanskrit in India. And so, it had to be taught in schools, and the copying of Sumerian poems—including those attributed to Enheduana—was a key part of the school curriculum in ancient Babylonian cities like Nippur and Ur. The Exaltation was among the most popular of the texts in this curriculum, and as a result, just over a hundred manuscripts of it have been found.

However, after the 18th century BCE, the school curriculum dropped Enheduana’s poems. It would take centuries for them to be excavated, edited, and brought to light once again: the first edition of the Exaltation appeared in 1968. Even then, Enheduana would languish in literary obscurity for five decades, being almost completely unknown outside of specialist circles. But now, after two years of explosive publicity—triggered in part by my book and in part by the exhibition “She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and the Women of Mesopotamia, ca. 3400–2000 BC” at the Morgan Library in New York—the poems are coming full circle, taking their place yet again in school curricula.

Starting next year, the Exaltation will be the first literary text read by students in Columbia University’s Core Curriculum. Other universities are likely to follow suit, since there is currently a high—and justified—pressure on educational institutions to include more female and non-Western voices in the curricula of literary history. But what would be the implications if Enheduana’s poems do indeed become an established part of university curricula? It is, of course, too early to answer this question with any serious confidence or detail, but I would like to offer four suggestions.

First, if Enheduana is indeed included in survey courses on literary history, she will most often be the first author in those course, as is the case with Columbia University. As such, her inclusion will—or rather, should—spark reflections on what force we ascribe to firstness. We should not allow this firstness to signal primitiveness, implicitly placing ancient texts in a telelogical narrative leading from crude beginnings to modern refinement: Enheduana’s hymns are as complex and self-aware as any postmodern poem. But we should not fetishize firstness, either, since it is in many ways a construct. There are literary works far older than Enheduana’s, such as the Instructions of Shuruppak that dates to at least three centuries before her birth; and there are even older texts that discuss authorship, such as the Kesh Temple Hymn (though here authorship is assigned to the gods rather than to a human being who can be identified in the historical record). Ideally, then, the placement of Enheduana at the head of the curriculum will spark reflections on what this place means or should mean.

Second, much of the appeal that Enheduana currently commands is the excitement of discovery. There is a thrill to reading her poems that is often expressed in the question, “How did I not know these poems before?” If the poems are institutionalized, that thrill may fade. It might fade slowly—the excitement of discovery still clings to the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh , which has been known for some 150 years—but it will inevitably lessen, leaving more complicated emotional responses in its wake. Readers may come to approach Enheduana more critically, as a figure of institutional power rather than an unfairly neglected outsider. Indeed, that is how Enheduana was perceived in her own time: she was the daughter of King Sargon, who subdued the previously independent Sumerian city states to create his kingdom, and the Exaltation describes a rebellion against her family’s rule. And yet, as a rare female and non-Western author on the curriculum of literary history, Enheduana is likely to retain an anti-canonical force even if she should come to be ensconced in the canon. That is what happened with the great Greek lyricist of desire Sappho, whose long queer heritage has meant that is she is still viewed as an oppositional figure, even as she is one of the most commonly taught authors of antiquity.

This leads me to my third point: teachers are likely to pair Enheduana with Sappho, which will bring out new features in both. The most striking similarity between them is that both their best-known poems—the Exaltation and the “Hymn to Aphrodite”—are prayers by a woman to a goddess, requesting help in a desperate situation and creating a complex dialogue between mortal and divine voices. And yet the tenor of the two texts is also strikingly different: the desperate situation is an anti-imperial revolt in Enheduana’s case and an ill-fated fling in Sappho’s. The other obvious pairings are even more complex. Enheduana could also be read alongside the Iliad and Gilgamesh ; these are more similar in content, since they all concern war and (as with Sappho) the interaction between gods and humans, but also far more dissimilar in form, since Enheduana’s enigmatic hymns contrast sharply with the more straightforwardly narrative style of the epics.

Fourth, as the preceding points illustrate, placing Enheduana’s poems on the curriculum is likely to broaden our shared sense of what these texts are about. I expressed this hope already in the first blog post I wrote about Enheduana, arguing that, as the poems find new readers, new readings of the texts will also come to light, including the critical and comparative perspectives I have hinted at here.

Just as I would want the teaching of these poems to open them up to new readings, so I would want these poems to open the way for students to other Sumerian texts.

Enheduana’s poems are works of wonder, but they are far from the only Sumerian pearls taught in the ancient Babylonian schools: texts like Inana’s Descent , Enki and Ninmah ,and the Uruk Cycles will, I hope, find their way to literary fame. Just as we should not worship the (largely constructed) firstness of Enheduana, we should not treat her as a unique exception either: her poems arose from—and can point us back to—the rich literary heritage of the Sumerian language.

Sophus Helle is a writer, translator, and cultural historian. In 2021, Helle translated Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic with Yale University Press. Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author, is accompanied by the website enheduana.org, which is designed to help students, teachers, and interested readers learn more about Enheduana’s world and work.

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