🦁Gilgamesh
Legendary King of Uruk in Sumer, the Hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh
One Legend Remembered for Life · Small Roles, Famous Names
The Epic of GilgameshThe Sumerian King ListThe Early Flood Legend
Who they are
Gilgamesh, according to the Sumerian "King List," really existed, ruling the Mesopotamian city-state of Uruk around 2700 BC, but the Epic of Gilgamesh handed down to later ages casts him as a demigod hero, two-thirds god and one-third man, telling how he became fast friends with the wild man Enkidu, together undergoing adventures and campaigns, and how, after Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh sank into a deep fear of death and set out on a long journey seeking the secret of immortality, meeting on the way Utnapishtim, who had survived the great flood and gained immortality, whose story of surviving the flood bears a striking resemblance to the later account of Noah’s Ark in the Hebrew Bible, scholars broadly holding that the two share the same older ancient Near Eastern soil of flood legend. This epic, composed more than four thousand years ago, is one of the earliest known works of long narrative literature in human literary history, and the tablet copy rediscovered by nineteenth-century archaeologists in the ruins of Ashurbanipal’s library let this ancient epic, silent for thousands of years, come back to light.
Primary sourcesThe cuneiform tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh (the Nineveh library copy being the most complete)The Sumerian King List
Key stories
The Friendship With Enkidu
The epic records that Gilgamesh was at first an arrogant and brutal tyrant, and the gods, to restrain him, created the wild man Enkidu to contend with him, but after a fierce struggle the two came to admire each other and become fast friends, thereafter together undergoing a series of adventures such as slaying the forest monster Humbaba and repelling the Bull of Heaven; when Enkidu at last died of illness for angering the gods, Gilgamesh was overcome with grief, and this deep friendship and the vast sorrow of losing a friend make up the most moving emotional core of the whole epic.
The Futile Journey to Seek Immortality
After Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh, deeply fearing he would in the end face the same fate, set out on a long journey to seek Utnapishtim, who had survived the great flood and been granted immortality by the gods, and through countless hardships at last found a plant that could restore youth, only to have it eaten by a snake while he bathed on the return journey (the snake thereby shedding its skin and being reborn, seen too as a mythological origin explaining "why the snake can shed its skin"); Gilgamesh at last grasped that a human being must die, and that only by building an imperishable achievement can one truly leave one’s name to later ages.
Version differences
Whether Gilgamesh had a real historical original (a king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk) is still debated, and the King List’s record of his reign of several hundred years, a plainly mythologized figure, shows that his historical reality and legendary embellishment were long inseparable; this site lists him as a figure of interwoven legend and reliable history.
Echoes today
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
The cross-cultural link of the flood narrativeThe great-flood episode recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh bears a striking resemblance to the Noah’s Ark narrative of the Hebrew Bible, a classic case in comparative religion and mythology of the study of the shared source of ancient Near Eastern flood legends.