THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH (ca. 1900-250 B.C.E.)

Statue of Gilgamesh

The work is one of the earliest pieces of world literature, and one of the greatest works from ancient Mesopotamia (Map of Mesopotamia). The real King Gilgamesh ruled around 2700 B.C.E. in the city-state of Uruk in Southern Mesopotamia. He is known for building Uruk’s monumental city walls (10 kilometers long and fitted with 900 towers), some portions of which are still visible today. We have no way of knowing how similar the real king is to the hero of the epic, but soon after King Gilgamesh died he was named judge of the underworld. The epic hero, Gilgamesh, on the other hand was semi-divine (“two-thirds divine, and one-third human). His mother, Ninsun was a goddess in the shape of a wild cow, and his father was a man named Lugalbanda.

The name “Gilgamesh” has two meanings: the offspring of a hero, and the old man is still a young man. The epic was written in cuneiform script, and had more than one author. The tales of the king in Uruk began about 600 years after his death, in another Mesopotamian city-sate named Ur. Kings of the third dynasty of Ur thought they were descended from the legendary King of Uruk.