Comparisons:Gilgamesh and Genesis

             The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis have many things in common. Both of them were written in antique period and are very well known. The Epic of Gilgamesh was evolved over the course of many centuries and it is about three thousand years old. Similarly, Genesis was written before the birth of Jesus Christ and it’s about two thousand and four hundred years old.
            A flood is the unifying similarity that both share; however, the reasons are different. In the Epic of Gilgamesh gods get angry at the human kind because they produce enormous amount of noise. Thus, gods send flood to destroy people. However, they let the mortal Utnapishtim to create an ark and save his family and animals. Utnapishtim says “I had all my kith and kin go up into the boat, all the beasts, and animals of the field” (A 92). In addition, he takes craftsman to save the existence of knowledge for next generations. In Genesis, God sends flood because people want to be equal to him. He decides to destroy them and says “the end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with outrage by them…I am now about to destroy them” (A 6). However, he lets Noah to construct an ark for saving his family and animals to populate the earth after the flood.
            The Epic of Gilgamesh describes polytheistic world; whereas, in Genesis, only one God is presented. Gods in the Epic of Gilgamesh are immortal and they have many things in common with mortal human beings, for example, characters and behaviors. They have similar emotion, such as, happiness, sadness, anger and sexual desire. Some of them also have the urge to make relationship with human being as goddess Ishtar “Come along, Gilgamesh, be you my husband” (A 75). In Genesis, the immortal God doesn’t have anything in common with people. In addition, he holds absolute power and he wants to regulate everything according to his rule. For instance, he says, “For in seven days’ time I will make it rain on the earth forty days and forty nights and I will wipe out from the face of earth and all existing things that I have made” (A 35).