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Gilgamesh, the proud and restless king of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, the ancient city of Warka near today's Samawah in Iraq, oppresses his people until…
Catalogue details
Author
Morris Jastrow
Category
Psychology & Society
Language
English
Source
Project Gutenberg
About this book
Gilgamesh, the proud and restless king of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, the ancient city of Warka near today's Samawah in Iraq, oppresses his people until the gods create a rival for him, the wild man Enkidu, who lives among the animals. After a great wrestling match the two become inseparable friends and set out to kill Humbaba, the monstrous guardian of the Cedar Forest. This book presents two Old Babylonian tablets of the epic, nearly four thousand years old, now in Philadelphia and at Yale, which tell of Enkidu's taming, his meeting with Gilgamesh and the friends' preparations for their journey.
Context and significance
The Gilgamesh epic, written on clay tablets in Akkadian after earlier Sumerian poems, is the oldest great work of world literature; its later version, found in Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, opposite Mosul, includes a flood story strikingly like Noah's. Morris Jastrow and Albert T. Clay published these tablets in 1920 with the original text, a translation and notes, so this is a scholarly edition rather than a retelling. Compare Homer's Odyssey.