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podcast transcript
More than 4,000 years ago, in the cities of ancient Mesopotamia, people told the story of a powerful king who sought fame, sought friendship, faced devastating loss, and set out to find the secret to eternal life.
This story is one of the oldest in the world, and many of its metaphors are still part of storytelling today.
And the characters from this 4,000-year-old story have found their place in the Marvel Universe.
Learn more about the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s first written story, in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The Epic of Gilgamesh dates back to the Sumerian city-state of Uruk in modern-day Iraq. The oral version of this story almost certainly predates the first written copy by nearly 5,000 years.
Ancient Sumerian scribes used cuneiform, the first Near Eastern writing system, for accounting and agricultural records. Early Mesopotamian scribes used reeds harvested from the beds of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to carve symbols into wet clay.
Early writers recorded descriptions of the daily grain trade and the growth of flocks of sheep, but perhaps they did not anticipate that their scripts would later convey such powerful messages about life, death, and the meaning of life.
The origins of the Epic of Gilgamesh lie between the rise of record keeping and the emergence of epic storytelling.
Like other legendary ancient texts, the Epic of Gilgamesh has no author. The story began with a song believed to have been sung by a Sumerian storyteller named Gala. These oral traditions laid the foundation for generations of transformations and adaptations.
Like the bards of Greece or the griots of Africa, the Sumerian galas traveled from region to region, sharing their songs with people for a fee. The more interesting their songs became, the greater the demand for their talents. The gala often accompanied the lyrics by playing a three-stringed instrument called the gish-gu-di.
Gilgamesh was a popular song. In the Sumerian marketplace, called karum, you will find several galas celebrating Gilgamesh’s heroism. The story was most likely a communal one, told in competing variations by the skilled Galas who committed it to memory.
Most scholars credit a Babylonian poet named Sin-liqe-unninni (Seen-LAY-key-oon-NEEN-nee) with editing and compiling the final version of the story. Some Bronze Age writers then pressed a modern version of the epic into wet clay, a version that had been passed down for thousands of years. This has become the standard version of our story, but there is little doubt that it has drifted and changed over the millennia.
This standard story begins in flourishing Uruk, ruled by the demigod Gilgamesh. He had many human weaknesses. He was insecure, arrogant, and did not accept limitations. His energy and ambition made the Uruk people work hard. They worked tirelessly to maintain the city.
While his subjects could bear the workload, Gilgamesh’s sexual desires presented an entirely different challenge. In the epic, Gilgamesh takes any woman he wants, especially those on the verge of marriage.
The people of Uruk pray privately for Gilgamesh’s salvation and try to put an end to the practice, but his reign ultimately causes hostility among his people. According to the epic, their prayers were answered by the sky god Anu.
Anu commissioned Aruru, the creator of humans, to create Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s rival. Enkidu possessed all of Gilgamesh’s physical characteristics. He possessed a keen intellect to match his strength, stamina and speed.
When the hunter came across Enkidu, he was living like a beast among other animals. The people of Uruk sent the prostitute Shamat to civilize the beastly Enkidu. The plan succeeds. Enkidu decides to abandon his wild ways and challenge Gilgamesh.
The two demigods fought a legendary battle in Uruk for seven days. Once things calmed down, the relationship between the two changed dramatically as neither warrior could defeat the other.
The two decide that their true destiny lies in heroic collaboration. Their first target is Humbaba, a monster and god-appointed guardian of the cedar forests in nearby Lebanon.
Enkidu, with the help of the evil god, convinces Gilgamesh to behead Humbaba after an epic battle. When Humbaba is on the verge of defeat, he curses Enkidu.
The curse written in Akkadian, the language of ancient Babylonia, reads: May the two never grow old / May Enkidu have no one to bury him but his friend Gilgamešh!
Their situation worsens when Gilgamesh, who had always been very loving, rejects Ishtar, the goddess of love, and her advances.
Unused to rejection and enraged, Ishtar sends a massive beast, the Bull of Heaven, to destroy Gilgamesh and his city of Uruk. In a fierce battle, Gilgamesh and Enkidu rise to the challenge and defeat the monster.
At the end of the battle, Enkidu taunts her failure by throwing Ishtar’s precious ox leg at her. She demanded that Enkidu be killed for his insolence, and he did so.
With Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh’s journey takes on a new focus: his quest for immortality.
As Enkidu dies a painful and slow death, Gilgamesh mourns and never leaves his side. As Enkidu enters death, he reveals our perception of Mesopotamia’s attitude toward the afterlife.
The afterlife described by Enkidu is bleak and hopeless. Regardless of status, all people live in darkness and eat dirt and mud. Enkidu’s death devastated his friend.
Gilgamesh’s experience is described by historian Yuval Harari: Gilgamesh sat next to the corpse and observed it for several days until he saw a bug dripping from his friend’s nostrils. At that moment, Gilgamesh was overcome by a terrible fear and decided that he would never die. He will find a way to defeat death.
Gilgamesh begins a new quest to find a way to escape death. To do so, you must learn the secret of immortality.
Gilgamesh seeks out Utnapishtim, a mortal who has been granted immortality. During his travels, Gilgamesh meets Siduri, the wife of God. Siduri dissuades him, warning him that his quest is fraught with failure and disappointment, urging him to chart a new path and find what truly matters.
She gives him an important message. “Gilgamesh, where are you rushing to? You will never find the life you are looking for. When the gods created man, they gave him death, but they preserved life for themselves. Fill your belly, Gilgamesh, with good things. Dance and rejoice and feast day and night, day and night.”
Her encouraging words fall on deaf ears as she devotes herself to finding Utnapishtim, the man who saved the world from a global flood by building a boat.
One of the most studied and discussed components of the Epic of Gilgamesh is the flood story. This section connects ancient Mesopotamian stories with familiar stories from other cultural traditions.
Perhaps no part of the Bible is better known than the story of Noah, his ark, and the great flood. The stories of Noah and Utnapishtim are so similar that it is hard to believe that they do not have a common origin.
Chosen for Survival, the two build an ark and fill it with animal life to survive an extinction-level flood, but with the help of a bird, they are guided to safety and the ship ultimately lands on a mountain.
It may seem strange that the flood myths are so similar, but a closer look shows that this is not the case. Although Gilgamesh predates the Biblical flood story in Genesis, it shares a common cultural and literary history in the Near East.
Historians are also quick to point out that flood myths are common throughout the world. There are flood myths among the Norse, Mayans, Hindus, Greeks, and Native Americans.
Perhaps the main factor supporting the similarity is that the Hebrew writers of the Old Testament wrote the book while they were captives in Babylon, the home of Akkadian and Sumerian cultures.
Gilgamesh reaches his final destination with the help of the boatman Urshanabi, who guides him across the Sea of Death. This encounter shifts the narrative from Gilgamesh’s quest to his participation in the reality of immortality.
Gilgamesh finds Utnapishtim, who politely refuses to offer Gilgamesh immortality. He informs Gilgamesh that his gift of immortality was a special event and that not even his strength or cunning could obtain it for him.
Gilgamesh refuses to accept this and demands that Utnapishtim present a worthy challenge to win the highest prize. After failing the first test, which requires him to stay awake for six days and seven nights, Gilgamesh is horrified and begs to be given another chance to prove his worth.
Utnapishtim tries and fails to remind Gilgamesh that his failure is inevitable, but he relents and grants him another quest. Gilgamesh decides to sail to the deepest part of the sea to obtain a plant that will give him the gift of youth. It doesn’t grant him immortality, but at least he has more time since the gods forbid it.
Gilgamesh ties a stone to his ankle, sinks, gathers plants, and returns to his ship.
Gilgamesh stored the plants rather than eating them immediately. Gilgamesh is taking a bath before eating the plant, when a snake appears and steals the plant.
The snake reflects another Biblical story. In the Biblical version, the cunning serpent also appears and denies Adam and Eve immortality by tricking them into eating the forbidden fruit, ensuring their expulsion from Eden.
A discouraged Gilgamesh is comforted by Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim reminds him that the only thing that is permanent is impermanence and that he can never succeed.
He reminds him that his quest was in vain and actually brought him closer to death. Utnapishtim finally reaches Gilgamesh after his final failure by reminding him that he can obtain the immortality he seeks, but perhaps not where he is looking.
He can never defeat death, but he can ensure his own permanence by immediately returning to Uruk and ensuring that his legacy lives on through his leadership. The gods may have maintained eternal life on their own, but your actions may also earn you eternal fame.
In the end, what Gilgamesh learns is that what is truly remembered is a heart filled with kindness and joy for others. The hard-earned lessons of Gilgamesh’s arduous journey still form the basis of modern morality almost 5,000 years later.
The Epic of Gilgamesh was reintroduced to the world in the summer of 1849 by British archaeologist Austin Henry Layard while he was excavating the ruins of the famous Assyrian Library of Nineveh. He discovered the twelve stone tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the important discoveries of modern archeology.
Despite the slab’s damage, scholars reconstructed it and eventually placed it in the British Museum.
In 1872, George Smith, a regularly visiting and self-taught Assyriologist, was so obsessed with the clay tablets that he taught himself to read the cuneiform script using partial translations from previous attempts, and later announced that he had discovered a Mesopotamian flood story that was strikingly similar to the Noah story in Genesis.
Smith received a fellowship to return to Nineveh and search for additional tablets, and his quest was successful. He discovered other tablet fragments that filled in key parts of the flood story.
Oddly enough, George Smith was able to provide Giglamesh with what he was looking for. By preserving the legend, he provided Gilgamesh with immortality.
Thousands of years later, the Epic of Gilgamesh still reminds us that civilizations are built not just on walls and monuments, but also on stories.
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