Gilgamesh Epic, 2000 B.C., Is a Work

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 to history that antedates the Iliad and the Odyssey by more than a millennium, is of superb literary quality, and "the philosophical intricacy and the psychological depth" of this ancient work is truly remarkable and unequaled in quality and depth (Jager pp). Bernd Jager explains that unlike the gradual developments in other cultural endeavors such as pottery and weaving, "poetry seems to have sprung to life complete in all respects ... Even the oldest fragments of the Gilgamesh poem are lacking neither in subtlety of style nor in the grandeur of their vision" (Jager pp). Moreover, the work's descriptions of the human condition and extraordinary insights into the human soul have lost none of their power through the ages to transform the human heart (Jager pp). The epic is essentially an exploration of the "mysterious paths" that lead humans from "infancy to maturity," from "savagery to civilization," from "narcissism and self-preoccupation to participation in communal life, and from a fascination with the word that commands and materially changes the natural world to the poetic word that orients us towards our neighbors" (Jager pp).

Tzvi Abusch writes in the "The Journal of the American Oriental Society," that the epic combines both the "power and tragedy of the Iliad with the wanderings and marvels of the Odyssey," and although the work is basically an adventure, "it is no less a meditation on some fundamental issues of human existence" (Abusch pp). Moreover, the epic deals with the issues of an existential nature and discusses the "powerful human drive to achieve, the value of friendship, the experience of loss, and the inevitability of death" (Abusch pp).

The poem emphasizes that despite great achievements, humans are powerless against death, and even Gilgamesh, both man and god, must accept his own nature and learn to experience loss and death (Abusch pp).

The Epic of Gilgamesh tells of courageous deed, but does so only to highlight the pain that the deeds caused and the new problems that must be confronted (Abusch pp). As the hero struggles against the world, he is committed to his own personal absolutes as is Achilles, however, there is moral growth, he learns and he changes (Abusch pp). As with Odysseus, the growth is symbolized by wanderings that both reflect and elicit changes in the hero (Abusch pp). Moreover, the hero's wanderings are the mechanism and backdrop for change, yet it is the death of Enkidu that is the catalyst for change and makes the poem a tale of growth, "of discovery of human suffering, limitation, death, and finally human meaning" (Abusch pp). Without the hero's wanderings, there would be no possibility for development and moral growth (Abusch pp).

According to Louise Westling, behind the epic lies a long and powerful tradition focused on the feminine as the source of cosmic vitality (Westling pp). During the Neolithic period, a large body of symbolic practice was devoted to defining women's bodies as analogous to the fruit and grain-bearing earth (Westling pp). Westling says that central to the epic is the conflict between the hero's ambitions and the goddess Inanna, "Gilgamesh stands in violent opposition to the forces of natural vitality and the landscape which were identified with Inanna in the Sumerian courtship poems" (Westling pp). His identity as a hero is based on the desire to transcend death, destroy the forest and reject the goddess's power (Westling pp).

The poem was not found until the mid-1800's during an excavation at an archaeological site in what is now Iraq (Miller pp). Gilgamesh then entered the record books as the world's first known example of true literature (Miller pp). Today, the poem is perhaps seven-tenths complete and spread across twelve cuneiform tablets that are preserved in various conditions (Miller pp). The portion that describes the Flood is nearly entirely readable, while large chunks of other parts are either lost forever or remain buried in the sands of Iraq (Miller pp). The fragment, Rm956, was recently identified as the opening eight lines of the epic poem, "restores only one word previously unknown: "isdi" in the second hemistich of the first verse" (Castillo pp). The term may be applied to persons or refer to someone's social position or status (Castillo pp).