Gilgamesh- Mesopotamian DemigodDemigod"King of Uruk"

He Who Saw the Deep

The Sumerian King List names Gilgamesh as the fifth king of the First Dynasty of Uruk, ruling around 2700–2600 BCE, "whose father was a phantom, lord of Kulaba." The Standard Babylonian version of his epic, compiled by the scholar-priest Sin-leqi-unninni around 1200 BCE from older Sumerian sources, opens with an invitation: "He who saw the Deep, the country's foundation, who knew the proper ways, was wise in all matters!" The "Deep" is the Apsu, the cosmic waters. Gilgamesh had journeyed to the ends of the earth and returned with secrets hidden from ordinary mortals.

Two-thirds god and one-third human, he was the son of the goddess Ninsun and the deified king Lugalbanda. Stronger than any mortal. More beautiful than any man. And subject to the same death that claims all living things.

The Tyrant and the Wild Man

The epic begins not with heroism but with tyranny. Gilgamesh oppressed his people. His strength was so great that no one could oppose him, his energy so vast that he exhausted his subjects. He took what he wanted: the labor of men, the virginity of brides. The people cried out to the gods for relief.

The gods responded by creating Enkidu, a wild man raised by animals who drank at watering holes with gazelles and freed trapped creatures from hunters' snares, until a temple priestess named Shamhat seduced him over six days and seven nights. When Enkidu rose from her embrace, the wild beasts no longer recognized him as one of their own. Shamhat clothed him, fed him bread and beer, the foods of civilization, and brought him to Uruk to confront the king.

When the two met and fought in the streets, they shattered doorposts and shook walls. Gilgamesh threw Enkidu, but rather than humiliating his opponent, his fury suddenly subsided. They embraced. Gilgamesh had gained what he had always lacked: a true equal, a friend.

The Journey to the Cedar Forest

Gilgamesh's first great quest was to journey to the Cedar Forest and slay its guardian, the terrifying Humbaba, a monster whose face was like coiled intestines, whose roar was the storm flood, whose breath was death. This expedition was not forced upon him by fate or commanded by the gods. It was his own choice, driven by desire for eternal fame. "I would enter that forest," he declared. "I would set up my name." Only fame could survive death; only great deeds could give his existence meaning.

Enkidu was afraid. He knew the Cedar Forest from his wild days and warned Gilgamesh of Humbaba's power. But he accompanied his friend nonetheless, a decision that would ultimately cost him his life. Together they journeyed to the forest, encouraged by five prophetic dreams Gilgamesh received along the way. They confronted Humbaba with help from the sun god Shamash, who sent thirteen winds to immobilize the monster. Humbaba pleaded for his life, but Enkidu urged Gilgamesh to kill him before Enlil learned of their trespass. They cut off Humbaba's head and returned to Uruk in triumph, bearing massive cedar logs for the city's temples.

The Rejection of Ishtar

Upon his return, Gilgamesh caught the eye of Ishtar, the goddess of love and war. She proposed marriage, offering him wealth, power, and the adoration of kings. But Gilgamesh rejected her with a catalog of her previous lovers' fates: Dumuzi, condemned to yearly mourning; a shepherd turned into a wolf by his own dogs. "And me? You would love me just as you loved them!"

Furious at the insult, Ishtar demanded the Bull of Heaven from her father Anu to destroy Gilgamesh. The Bull ravaged Uruk, its snorts opening pits that swallowed hundreds of men. But Gilgamesh and Enkidu fought together. Enkidu seized the Bull by its tail while Gilgamesh drove his sword between its horns. Then Enkidu tore off the Bull's hindquarter and threw it in Ishtar's face.

The Death of Enkidu

This defiance brought divine retribution. The gods decreed that one of the heroes must die, and they chose Enkidu. He sickened, lingering twelve days as fever consumed him. In his final days, Enkidu dreamed of the underworld: a house of dust where kings and priests sat crownless in darkness, where the dead wore feathers like birds and ate clay and drank muddy water.

On his deathbed, Enkidu cursed those who had brought him from the wild to civilization: the hunter who first found him, Shamhat who seduced him. Then Shamash reminded him of the friendship they had made possible, and Enkidu blessed them instead. He died in Gilgamesh's arms.

Gilgamesh's grief was devastating. He refused to accept that Enkidu was truly dead, keeping the body until a worm fell from its nostril. He tore his hair, stripped off his finery, and dressed in animal skins like the wild man Enkidu had once been. A new terror seized him: "Shall I die too? Am I not like Enkidu? Grief has entered my heart. I am afraid of death."

The Quest for Immortality

Gilgamesh abandoned kingship and civilization to seek the one being who had escaped death: Utnapishtim, survivor of the Great Flood, who had been granted immortality by the gods. His journey took him to the edge of the world, through mountains where no one had ever traveled, past the scorpion-beings who guarded the sun's path, through twelve leagues of absolute darkness.

At the edge of the cosmic ocean, he met Siduri, a divine barmaid who offered him counsel: "Gilgamesh, where are you roaming? You will never find the life you seek. When the gods created mankind, they appointed death for mankind, and kept eternal life in their own hands. So Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full, day and night enjoy yourself, make merry each day, dance and play night and day! Look at the child who holds your hand, let your wife enjoy herself in your lap! This is what mankind has been allotted."

Utnapishtim's Wisdom

Gilgamesh refused this counsel and continued to Utnapishtim, who told him the story of the Flood: how Ea had warned him, how he had built the boat, how the gods had granted him immortality afterward. But immortality was not transferable. "No one sees the face of death. No one hears the voice of death. Yet savage death does cut off mankind."

Utnapishtim challenged Gilgamesh to stay awake for six days and seven nights, a test to prove himself worthy of immortality. Gilgamesh immediately fell asleep. He had failed. But Utnapishtim's wife, taking pity on him, persuaded her husband to reveal a secret: a plant growing at the bottom of the sea that could restore youth.

Gilgamesh dove to the ocean floor, retrieved the plant, and began his journey home, planning to test it first on an old man in Uruk before using it himself. But while he bathed in a cool pool, a serpent smelled the plant's fragrance and stole it, immediately shedding its skin in renewal. Gilgamesh wept. So close to his goal, defeated by a snake.

The Return to Uruk

Gilgamesh returned to Uruk and invited the ferryman Urshanabi to admire its walls: "Go up on the wall of Uruk, Urshanabi, and walk around. Examine the foundation, look at the brickwork. Is not the core of the brickwork of baked brick? Did not the Seven Sages lay out its foundations?" These were the walls Gilgamesh had built. They would endure. The epic closes with the same words it opened with: a description of those walls.

After death, Gilgamesh was deified and became a judge of the Anunnaki in the underworld. The Sumerian poem "The Death of Gilgamesh" describes his funeral with offerings from the gods and his installation as underworld judge, presiding over the realm he had so desperately sought to escape.