A brief introduction to the Epic: its origin and significance to our lives. *** Image is of the famed eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the tale of the Flood is related. Now housed in the British Museum, it was found in the pillaged remains of the royal library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-631 BC) in his palace at Nineveh.

Preamble to the adventures, introducing Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and alluding to the goddess Ishtar whose presence is preeminent among all divinity in this tale, and in whose temple are kept the tablets which are to be read to tell this tale. *** Image is an Akkadian representation of Gilgamesh in his prime. Music excerpt is “Ur” from the album The Forest by David Byrne

The Adventure of Enkidu continues tablet I of the Epic and finishes on tablet II. It is supplemented by Bablyonian material where the Akkadian text is damaged. Gilgamesh is a young king of Uruk, arrogant, and overbearing. He so abuses his authority by the mistreatment of his people, even his own warriors and peers, even taking their brides in sexual intercourse, that he is feared and despised, even while admired. The people pray for a champion to deliver them, another strong man who can...

The text of this episode is much damaged in both the Akkadian and the Babylonian series; rather than indicating the frequent gaps and ambiguities, the text is reconstructed from the best sources, including the more ancient Sumerian. Much is conjectural, and is given some poetic license. The Sumerian, rather than the Akkadian, contains more details, and so the temper of the story reflects its more “archaic” tone. *** Image is a classic Sumerian representation of Gilgamesh wrestling a lion to...

The conclusion of the adventure, the confron-tation with Humbaba. *** The image is a Sumerian clay model of the face of Humbaba, said to be the image of coiled intestines.
 Music excerpt is 
“Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis” from the album, Vaughan Williams: Symphonic Works

This is the heavily damaged twelfth tablet in the Gilgamesh Epic found in the royal library of Ninevah. It’s content is disconcerting to scholars as the final chapter to the Epic, because so ranked it would seemingly resurrect Enkidu from the dead for a gratuitous and incoherent conclusion; an end to the Epic with Tablet 11, where Gilgamesh returns to Uruk after his wanderings, seems much more fitting and so nicely closes with an epilogic passage that poetically parallels the prologue in...

Lugalbanda, the ostensible father of Gilgamesh, whose statue stood in his bedroom, which he reverentially anointed with butter, and to which he addressed his private thoughts, appeared in important Sumerian legends that told how he had become King of Uruk and other exploits. These are tales in one sense historical, as he is named in the ancient Sumerian List of Kings. On the other hand, magical portions of narrative and the setting of them should make him a figure of myth, of primordial...

This is my favorite Sumerian artifact. A so-called “devotional statue,” it dates to 2600 B.C., representing what scholars believe is a married couple. This statue was found buried beneath the floor of a shrine at Nippur in Iraq and measures at little more than 4 inches high. The couple originally had feet, and the figures have eyes made of shell and lapis lazuli set in bitumen, a natural cement-like substance. *** Music excerpt is the song “Glad” by David Byrne from his album, Grown...

The image is the “Queen of the Night,” a relief of Old Babylonian Empire (1800-1750 BC); it is now housed in the British Museum. This large plaque is made of baked straw-tempered clay, modeled in high relief. The figure of the curvaceous naked woman was originally painted red. She wears the horned headdress characteristic of a Mesopotamian deity and holds a rod and ring of justice, symbols of her divinity. Her long multicolored wings hang downwards, indicating that she is a goddess of the...

A modern clay impression of a Neo-Assyrian cylinder seal, circa 7th century BCE. One of only five with this motif that have survived. Height: 3.9 cm. Diameter: 1.6 cm. Enkidu, on the left, wears a short kilt decorated with rosettes, hair and beard in curls, an axe in one hand, holding the tail of the Bull of Heaven in the other. The winged human-headed bull crouches down on its foreleg, in front Gilgamesh, wearing long fringed robe with rosettes, a double horned headdress, long curled hair...

The last three tablets-----number nine, ten and eleven----from the Royal Library of Nineveh comprise the conclusion of the Epic, beginning with the wanderings of Gilgamesh, his passage through the mountain Mashu, through which the sun passes making day and night. He arrives at last to the sea on the edge of the world where he meets Siduri, the Alewife, who keeps a tavern for travelers, and she directs him to the boatman who must take him to Ut-napishtim, the one man who not yet died. *** The...

In this conclusion of the Epic Gilgamesh has wandered from his home, his wife, his children, his people, has given up his kingdom and power, all that was a comfort and a pleasure, all that meant life to him, because of the death of his brother Enkidu. More than his loss, his inconsolable grief for that lose, it was the realization of his own death that distressed him. He seeks escape. He knows the legend of Ut-napishtim, whose name literally means, “he who lives long.” He seeks him out at...

Summing up the meaning; reconsidering the traditional interpretation.