Gilgamesh, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

Of all the figures of Mesopotamian literature, the most fully drawn — and the only one whose name has reached, with anything like its ancient force, into our own time — is Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. Two parts god and one part man, he was reckoned the son of the goddess Ninsun and of Lugalbanda the deified hero of the previous generation; and the Sumerian King List gives him a reign of one hundred and twenty-six years, the fifth king of the First Dynasty of Uruk, somewhere in the third millennium BCE. Whether any historical king lay behind the legend is a question that cannot now be answered; but the Sumerians and their successors treated him as a real ancestor, and built upon his name the largest single literary monument of the ancient Near East.

His story, in the form best known to us — the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, twelve tablets long, attributed by tradition to the scribe Sin-leqi-unninni and recovered chiefly from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh — runs as follows. Gilgamesh, young and strong and oppressive of his city, was matched by the gods with an equal: the wild-man Enkidu, fashioned from clay and set upon the steppe to live among animals. The two met in a public wrestling-match, recognized in each other their proper companion, and went forth together upon adventures: they slew Humbaba, the monstrous guardian of the Cedar Forest; they refused the love of Ishtar and slew the Bull of Heaven she sent against them; they brought back trophies to Uruk.

But the gods, offended at these killings, decreed that one of the friends must die; and Enkidu sickened and died, and Gilgamesh — who had thought himself, perhaps, exempt from death — was undone by the loss. He could not bear to see Enkidu rotting in the grave; he threw down his royal robes; he wandered, dressed in skins, in the wilderness in search of immortality. Twelve leagues he traveled through the dark beneath the mountain Mashu; he crossed the Waters of Death; he came at last to the place where Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Flood, dwelt with his wife in everlasting life.

Utnapishtim told him the story of the Flood — the same story Mesopotamians had been telling for a thousand years before Gilgamesh's epic was composed — and offered him a test: stay awake for six days and seven nights. Gilgamesh, exhausted, fell asleep at once, and woke disgraced. Utnapishtim told him of a plant of immortality at the bottom of the sea; Gilgamesh dove for it and brought it up; but a serpent stole it from him while he bathed. So he returned to Uruk empty-handed, and looked upon his city's walls — built by his own hand — and accepted at last that he would die, and that what remained was the work that his hands had done.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest substantial work of literature surviving from any human civilization. Its earliest forms are five separate Sumerian poems (Gilgamesh and Akka, Gilgamesh and Huwawa, Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, the Death of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh and the Netherworld), composed by the early second millennium BCE. The Akkadian Old Babylonian version begins to integrate these into a single narrative; the Standard Babylonian version, attributed to Sin-leqi-unninni and probably finalized around 1200 BCE, gives the epic the shape under which it is now generally known. The poem was lost for two thousand years and rediscovered when George Smith of the British Museum, in November 1872, identified the flood narrative on Tablet XI; he is said to have run about the room undressing in his excitement at the discovery. The literary kinship between Tablet XI and the biblical Flood narrative of Genesis is now universally recognized; the question of dependence is, as with the Atrahasis Epic, generally resolved by scholars in favor of Mesopotamian priority. Gilgamesh's last reflections — that mortality cannot be conquered, but that good work outlasts the worker — are among the great consolations of ancient literature.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

Child ofLugalbandathe son of the goddess Ninsun and of Lugalbanda the deified hero
Companion ofEnkidurecognized in each other their proper companion, and went forth together upon adventures
SlewHumbabathey slew Humbaba, the monstrous guardian of the Cedar Forest
Rival ofInannathey refused the love of Ishtar and slew the Bull of Heaven she sent against them
Companion ofAtrahasisUtnapishtim, the survivor of the Flood, dwelt with his wife in everlasting life

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for Sumer. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 3400–3000 BCE: Uruk-period writing and monumental temple economies create the earliest recoverable administrative setting for named divine institutions.
c. 2900–2350 BCE: Early Dynastic city-states preserve local cults, hymns, royal inscriptions, and god lists; later copies often transmit older compositions.
c. 2334–2154 BCE: The Akkadian Empire expands bilingual and imperial patterns of divine identification without erasing local cult titles.
c. 2112–2004 BCE: Ur III administration and scribal schooling standardize many Sumerian literary and liturgical forms.
c. 2000–1600 BCE: Old Babylonian schools copy major myths, laments, hymns, debates, and heroic narratives in the form most often used by modern editors.
c. 1650–1200 BCE: Hittite and Hurrian archives at Hattusa transmit Anatolian myths, imported Syrian materials, and ritual compositions.
c. 1400–1190 BCE: The tablets of Ugarit preserve the Baal Cycle, Kirta, Aqhat, ritual lists, and a dense Late Bronze Age West Semitic pantheon.
c. 1000–612 BCE: Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires collect, revise, and politically reinterpret older learned traditions.