Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
deities -- Gilgamesh -- iliad
A Comaprison Of The Deities In
the epic of gilgamesh and the iliad
In what is now the country of Iraq, part of the great "Fertile Crescent" between the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and where Hammurabi created his famous legal codes, ancient Babylon was the home of the epic story of Gilgamesh, written circa 1700 B.C.E and the oldest known story in the world which predates Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by a thousand years. The hero in The Epic of Gilgamesh was an historical king who reigned supreme in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk sometime around 2750 B.C.E. In this tale, the king of Uruk encounters a man named Enkidu who has been civilized by the art and magic of temple priestess. But when Enkidu dies, the king is overwrought with emotion and sadness and then sets out to on a long journey of discovery to find the only person in the known world who knows the secrets of life and death.
Of course, The Epic of Gilgamesh contains many references to various gods and goddesses, all of whom play major roles in the epic. Gilgamesh himself, described as a warrior and of gigantic proportions, is at first a tyrant, a human monster filled with great loathing and selfishness. He oppresses everyone in his orbit, both men and women, which prompts the people of Babylonia to pray to heaven. The main god Anu, the father of the Babylonian gods, hears their cries for help, but he does not assist them right away, a sign of his great ego and inability to lower himself to the status of a mere mortal. What he does instead is summon...
)
When Gilgamesh is sent on a long adventure to kill the monster known as Humbaba, he receives a great deal of motivation from Shamash, the god of the sun and the god of justice and the protector of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh's mother, the goddess Ninsun, makes a prayer to Shamash: "You have granted my son/Beauty and strength and courage -- why/Have you burdened him with a restless heart?" (Book III, pg. ). In this passage, Ninsun is portrayed as almost human in nature, for although she too is a god, she prays to another god for answers to her questions concerning Gilgamesh. Shamash, as the god of justice, is clearly in control and obviously must be summoned in order to bring about justice, even for the son of a god.
In Book IV of The Epic of Gilgamesh, another goddess, namely Ishtar, the goddess of love and the patron deity of Uruk, is not described with such honorable prestige as is Ninsun or Aruru, for she is utterly rejected by Gilgamesh and Enkidu, despite the fact that her temple is viewed as full of reverence and awe. Also, the fact that Ishtar was known as Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, in ancient Sumerian culture, makes this even more surprising, for in the mythic tales of…
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Epic of Gilgamesh." Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Sarah Lawall. Vol.1. 7th ed. Scranton, PA: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999.
"The Iliad." Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Sarah Lawall. Vol. 1. 7th ed. Scranton, PA: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999.
Whereas the perception and description of Gilgamesh changed from rash individualism to a more hesitant and socially conscious figure, the perception of Odysseus -- along with the other Greek heroes -- changed from the rather unflattering view that historical records took of him and became a more important individual with great heroic qualities. This reflects the differences both in the societies and the times and situations that produced both
Gilgamesh epic, 2000 B.C., is a work of three thousand lines, written on twelve tablets that was discovered amid the ruins of Nineveh and relates the adventures of the imperious Glgamesh and his friend Enkidu (Gilgamesh pp). The extraordinary essence of the poem lies not only in its antiquity but also in the quality of the writing and the comprehension of humanity (Jager pp). The Gilgamesh Epic, the first epic bequeathed
In the Old Testament, Eden appears as a lush tropical rainforest full of fruit and life. In other words, it is presented as an image of perfection. In the Old Testament, the character of Cain is said to have a mark on him. This mark signifies his breaking of the covenant with God by committing the first murder. In the story of Job, Job suffers by losing everything, from
Greek Mythology When the clay tablets that comprise the Akkadian / Old Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh were first pieced together and translated by scholars in the nineteenth century, some aspects of the ancient text seemed remarkably familiar. There was, for example, the account of a great flood, with only a pair of survivors, Utnapishtim and his wife: "How is it that one man has saved himself? / No breath of life
The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and the Bhagavad Gita are three of the most enduring ancient texts in the canon of global literature. All are heroic tales focusing on a strong male warrior protagonist, who endures a series of tests in order to achieve their goals and retain their status as leaders of their community. However, unlike Achilles, the hero of Homer’s Iliad, or Arjuna, hero of the Bhagavad
Dante's Inferno And The Heroic Quest Like Homer's "The Odyssey," and "The Iliad," Dante's "The Inferno" begins with a kind of god's eye view of the world. However, rather than the gods looking down and squabbling about the morality of humans they see, Dante begins with his hero's face-to-face encounter with the divine, or at least a representative of the divine, the pagan poet Virgil. Virgil will be the poet's first