When was the Epic of Gilgamesh discovered?
Epic of Gilgamesh
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" was discovered by Austen Henry Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and W. K. Loftus in 1853. The central character of Gilgamesh was initially reintroduced to the world as ""Izdubar"", before the cuneiform logographs in his name could be pronounced accurately. The first modern translation was published in the early 1870s by George Smith. Smith then made further discoveries of texts on his later expeditions, which culminated in his final translation which is given in his book "The Chaldaean Account of Genesis" (1880).
Gilgamesh
In the years following World War II, Gilgamesh, formerly an obscure figure known only by a few scholars, gradually became increasingly popular with modern audiences. The "Epic of Gilgamesh"'s existential themes made it particularly appealing to German authors in the years following the war. In his 1947 existentialist novel "Die Stadt hinter dem Strom", the German novelist Hermann Kasack adapted elements of the epic into a metaphor for the aftermath of the destruction of World War II in Germany, portraying the bombed-out city of Hamburg as resembling the frightening Underworld seen by Enkidu in his dream. In Hans Henny Jahnn's "magnum opus" "River without Shores" (1949-1950), the middle section of the trilogy centers around a composer whose twenty-year-long homoerotic relationship with a friend mirrors that of Gilgamesh with Enkidu and whose masterpiece turns out to be a symphony about Gilgamesh.
Noah in Islam
The Noah story of the Pentateuch is almost identical to a flood story contained in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, composed about 2500 BC. The few variations including the number of days of the deluge, the order of the birds, and the name of the mountain on which the ark rests. The flood story in Genesis 6–8 matches the Gilgamesh flood myth so closely that University of London professor Andrew R. George believes "few doubt that [it] derives from a Mesopotamian account." What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives.
Quest
An early quest story tells the tale of Gilgamesh, who seeks a secret to eternal life after the death of Enkidu, including the search for an emerald.
Gilgamesh
Most classical historians agree that the "Epic of Gilgamesh" exerted substantial influence on both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", two epic poems written in ancient Greek during the eighth century BC. The story of Gilgamesh's birth is described in a second-century AD anecdote from "On the Nature of Animals" by the Greek writer Aelian. Aelian relates that Gilgamesh's grandfather kept his mother under guard to prevent her from becoming pregnant, because he had been told by an oracle that his grandson would overthrow him. She became pregnant and the guards threw the child off a tower, but an eagle rescued him mid-fall and delivered him safely to an orchard, where he was raised by the gardener. The "Epic of Gilgamesh" was rediscovered in the Library of Ashurbanipal in 1849. After being translated in the early 1870s, it caused widespread controversy due to similarities between portions of it and the Hebrew Bible. Gilgamesh remained mostly obscure until the mid-twentieth century, but, since the late twentieth-century, he has become an increasingly prominent figure in modern culture.
Noah
Gilgamesh’s historical reign is believed to have been approximately 2700 BC, shortly before the earliest known written stories. The discovery of artifacts associated with Aga and Enmebaragesi of Kish, two other kings named in the stories, has lent credibility to the historical existence of Gilgamesh.
Enûma Eliš
On examination it became clear that the Assyrian myths were drawn from or similar to the Babylonian ones; additionally Sir Henry Rawlinson had noted similarities between Biblical accounts of creation and the geography of Babylonia - he suggested that biblical creation stories might have their origin in that area - a link was found on a tablet labeled K 63 at the British Museum's collection by Smith, as well as similar text on other tablets - Smith then began searching the collection for textual similarities between the two mythoses, and found several references to a deluge myth with an 'Izdubar' (literal translation of cuneiform for Gilgamesh). Smith's publication of his work led to an expedition to Assyria funded by the Daily Telegraph - there he found further tablets describing the deluge as well as fragmentary accounts of creation, a text on a war between good and evil 'gods', and a Fall of man myth. A second expedition by Smith brought back further creation legend fragments. By 1875 he had returned and began publishing accounts of these discoveries in the Daily Telegraph from 4 March 1875.
Giš
The cuneiform giš sign, (also common for is, iṣ, and iz), is a common, multi-use sign, in the "Epic of Gilgamesh", the Amarna letters, and other cuneiform texts. It also has a major usage as a sumerogram, GIŠ, (capital letter (majuscule)) for English language ""wood"", and is used as a determinative at the beginning of words, for items made of wood. The 12 Chapters (Tablets) of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" lists 16 named items beginning with ""GIŠ"".
Shaduppum
The site was excavated by Iraqi archaeologist Taha Baqir of the Department of Antiquities and Heritage from 1945 to 1963, discovering about 2000 tablets. Stories about Creation, the flood, The epic of gilgamesh, and other were inscribed on some of the tablets In 1997 and 1998, the site was worked by a team from Baghdad University and the German Archaeological Institute led by Peter Miglus and Laith Hussein. Many other illegally excavated tablets have found their way into various institutions.
Hormuzd Rassam
Layard left archeology to begin a political career. Rassam continued field work (1852–54) at Nimrud and Nineveh, where he made a number of important and independent discoveries. These included the clay tablets that would later be deciphered by George Smith as the "Epic of Gilgamesh", the world's oldest written narrative poem. The tablets' description of a flood myth written 1000 years prior to the earliest record of the Biblical story of Noah, caused much debate at the time about the Biblical narrative of ancient history.
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh was a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, a major hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology, and the protagonist of the "Epic of Gilgamesh", an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late second millennium BC. He probably ruled sometime between 2800 and 2500 BC and was posthumously deified. He became a major figure in Sumerian legends during the Third Dynasty of Ur ( 2112 – 2004 BC). Tales of Gilgamesh's legendary exploits are narrated in five surviving Sumerian poems. The earliest of these is probably "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld", in which Gilgamesh comes to the aid of the goddess Inanna and drives away the creatures infesting her "huluppu" tree. She gives him two unknown objects called a "mikku" and a "pikku", which he loses. After Enkidu's death, his shade tells Gilgamesh about the bleak conditions in the Underworld. The poem "Gilgamesh and Agga" describes Gilgamesh's revolt against his overlord King Agga. Other Sumerian poems relate Gilgamesh's defeat of the ogre Huwawa and the Bull of Heaven and a fifth, poorly preserved one apparently describes his death and funeral.
Aš (cuneiform)
The [[cuneiform]] Aš sign, is found in both the 14th century BC [[Amarna letters]] and the [[Epic of Gilgamesh]]. In the Epic, it has the following meanings, besides "aš":
Iš (cuneiform)
For the "Epic of Gilgamesh", the following usage is found in Tablets I-XII: "iš"-(134 times); "mel"-(1); "mil"-(8); IŠ-(18 times).
Bicameralism (psychology)
Jaynes noted that the most complete version of the Gilgamesh epic dates to post-bicameral times (7th century BCE), dismisses these instances of introspection as the result of rewriting and expansion by later conscious scribes, and points to differences between the more recent version of "Gilgamesh" and surviving fragments of earlier versions: ""The most interesting comparison is in Tablet X."" His answer, however, does not deal with the generally accepted dating of the "Standard Version" of the Gilgamesh epic to the later 2nd millennium BCE, nor does it account for the introspection that so often taken as characteristic of the "Standard Version" being thoroughly rooted in the Old Babylonian and Sumerian versions, especially so as our understanding of the Old Babylonian poem improves.
Epic of Gilgamesh
The first direct Arabic translation from the original tablets was made in the 1960s by the Iraqi archaeologist Taha Baqir.
Translation
Traditions of translating material among the languages of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Assyria (Syriac language), Anatolia, and Israel (Hebrew language) go back several millennia. There exist partial translations of the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh" (c. 2000 BCE) into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE.
Gilgamesh (manga)
The tomb of Gilgamesh in Uruk from the story 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' is discovered by a young genius-scientist named Terumichi Madoka, who is drawn to the energy called Dynamis, a word meaning 'power', resonating from the site. He reports his findings, and all of the world's best scientists gather there. When an unknown life form called Tear materializes in Delphys (a pit that seems to have no dimensions and that surrounds the tomb of Gilgamesh) and begins to contaminate embryos that surround it, the scientists stop all of the experiments. Dr. Madoka goes down to Delphys, breaches all of the guards around it and comes into direct contact with Tear, causing an immense explosion that blocks out the sky with a mirror-like layer. This is considered an act of terrorism, as after the explosion, computers and wireless communications stop working, and the planet falls into war and famine. The human population is nearly wiped out. This occurs on October 10, so the incident is called "Twin X" (after the Roman numeral symbol for the number 10).
Poetry
Poetry has a very long history, dating back to prehistorical times with the creation of hunting poetry in Africa, and panegyric and elegiac court poetry was developed extensively throughout the history of the empires of the Nile, Niger and Volta river valleys . Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa can be found among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE, while the Epic of Sundiata is one of the most well-known examples of griot court poetry. The earliest Western Asian epic poetry, the "Epic of Gilgamesh", was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese "Shijing", or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit "Vedas", Zoroastrian "Gathas", and the Homeric epics, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey". Ancient Greek attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's "Poetics", focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively informative, prosaic forms of writing.
Willi Baumeister
Another example of his search for the “foundations of art” is Baumeister’s transposition of the Gilgamesh Epic, one of the oldest surviving literary works. Therefore, Baumeister used his personal pictorial and sign language in his illustration of the narrative (beg. 1943), which resulted in an astonishingly unified cycle, which with his pictorial language came strikingly close to depicting the literary and linguistic effects(impression) of the epic. He also produced illustrations to texts from the Bible—Saul, Esther, Salome—as well as to William Shakespeare’s "The Tempest".
Tab (cuneiform)
The cuneiform sign tap, or tab, (also ṭab and TAB), is a common use sign in the Amarna letters and the "Epic of Gilgamesh." It is used syllabically for "tab", "tap", "ṭap", or "TAB", ("TAB" as parts of personal names, places, or common words, etc.), and alphabetically for "t" (or "ṭ"), or "a". (All the 4 vowels, "a, e, i, o" are interchangeable.)
For the "Epic of Gilgamesh", the following usage is found in Tablets I-XII: "tab"-(12 times); "tap"-(25); "ṭap"-(2); and "TAB", (6 times).
Flood myth
In the 19th century, Assyriologist George Smith translated the Babylonian account of a great flood. Further discoveries produced several versions of the Mesopotamian flood myth, with the account closest to that in Genesis found in a 700 BC Babylonian copy of the "Epic of Gilgamesh". In this work, the hero Gilgamesh meets the immortal man Utnapishtim, and the latter describes how the god Ea instructed him to build a huge vessel in anticipation of a deity-created flood that would destroy the world. The vessel would save Utnapishtim, his family, his friends, and the animals.
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Martinů)
The text comprises a sectional portrait of the original "Epic of Gilgamesh" in three parts.
Meš
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, (Tablets I-XII) the "meš" sign is used as follows: as "meš", 8 times, as "MEŠ", 253 times.
Gilgamesh
Theodore Ziolkowski, a scholar of modern literature, states, that "unlike most other figures from myth, literature, and history, Gilgamesh has established himself as an autonomous entity or simply a name, often independent of the epic context in which he originally became known. (As analogous examples one might think, for instance, of the Minotaur or Frankenstein's monster.)" The "Epic of Gilgamesh" has been translated into many major world languages and has become a staple of American world literature classes. Many contemporary authors and novelists have drawn inspiration from it, including an American avant-garde theater collective called "The Gilgamesh Group" and Joan London in her novel "Gilgamesh" (2001). "The Great American Novel" (1973) by Philip Roth features a character named "Gil Gamesh", who is the star pitcher of a fictional 1930s baseball team called the "Patriot League". Believing that he can never lose, Gil Gamesh throws a violent temper tantrum when an umpire goes against him and he is subsequently banished from baseball. He flees to the Soviet Union, where he is trained as a spy against the United States. Gil Gamesh reappears late in the novel as one of Joseph Stalin's spies and gives what American literary historian David Damrosch calls "an eerily casual description of his interrogation training in Soviet Russia." In 2000, a modern statue of Gilgamesh by the Assyrian sculptor Lewis Batros was unveiled at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Belt wrestling
Gilgamesh engages in a form of belt wrestling with Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh written around 2000 BC about a king of Sumer who lived around 2800 to 2600 BC. One of the oldest recorded illustrations of wrestling is a bronze statuette, dated to around 2600 BC, found in 1938 at Khafaji, near Baghdad and now stored in the National Museum of Iraq. In the 11th Century the scholar and philosopher Avicenna, spoke of this type of wrestling.
Gilgamesh
The Akkadian text of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" was first discovered in 1849 AD by the English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Layard was seeking evidence to confirm the historicity of the events described in the Christian Old Testament, which, at the time, was believed to contain the oldest texts in the world. Instead, his excavations and those of others after him revealed the existence of much older Mesopotamian texts and showed that many of the stories in the Old Testament may actually be derived from earlier myths told throughout the ancient Near East. The first translation of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" was produced in the early 1870s by George Smith, a scholar at the British Museum, who published the Flood story from Tablet XI in 1880 under the title "The Chaldean Account of Genesis". Gilgamesh's name was originally misread as "Izdubar".
Gilgamesh (Brucci opera)
Gilgameš (Serbian Cyrillic: Гилгамеш) is an opera in three acts by Rudolf Brucci. The libretto by Arsenije Arsa Milošević is based on the Mesopotamian "Epic of Gilgamesh". It premiered on November 2, 1986 at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad.
Epic of Gilgamesh
The story introduces Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. Gilgamesh, two-thirds god and one-third man, is oppressing his people, who cry out to the gods for help. For the young women of Uruk this oppression takes the form of a "droit du seigneur", or "lord's right", to sleep with brides on their wedding night. For the young men (the tablet is damaged at this point) it is conjectured that Gilgamesh exhausts them through games, tests of strength, or perhaps forced labour on building projects. The gods respond to the people's pleas by creating an equal to Gilgamesh who will be able to stop his oppression. This is the primitive man, Enkidu, who is covered in hair and lives in the wild with the animals. He is spotted by a trapper, whose livelihood is being ruined because Enkidu is uprooting his traps. The trapper tells the sun-god Shamash about the man, and it is arranged for Enkidu to be seduced by Shamhat, a temple prostitute, his first step towards being tamed. After six days and seven nights (or two weeks, according to more recent scholarship) of lovemaking and teaching Enkidu about the ways of civilization, she takes Enkidu to a shepherd's camp to learn how to be civilized. Gilgamesh, meanwhile, has been having dreams about the imminent arrival of a beloved new companion and asks his mother, Ninsun, to help interpret these dreams.
Adana
The history of the Tepebağ tumulus in the middle of Adana dates to the Neolithic Period, 6000 B.C., and the time of the first human settlements. It is considered to be the oldest city of the Çukurova region. A place called "Adana" is mentioned by name in a Sumerian epic, the Epic of Gilgamesh, but the geography of this work is too imprecise to identify its location.
Epic of Gilgamesh
There are five extant Gilgamesh stories in the form of older poems in Sumerian. These probably circulated independently, rather than being in the form of a unified epic. Some of the names of the main characters in these poems differ slightly from later Akkadian names; for example, "Bilgamesh" is written instead of "Gilgamesh", and there are some differences in the underlying stories such as the fact that Enkidu is Gilgamesh's servant in the Sumerian version:
Gilgamesh
In later Babylonian times, these stories began to be woven into a connected narrative. The standard Akkadian "Epic of Gilgamesh" was composed by a scribe named Sîn-lēqi-unninni, probably during the Middle Babylonian Period ( 1600 – 1155 BC), based on much older source material. In the epic, Gilgamesh is a demigod of superhuman strength who befriends the wildman Enkidu. Together, they go on adventures, defeating Humbaba (the East Semitic name for Huwawa) and the Bull of Heaven, who, in the epic, is sent to attack them by Ishtar (the East Semitic equivalent of Inanna) after Gilgamesh rejects her offer for him to become her consort. After Enkidu dies of a disease sent as punishment from the gods, Gilgamesh becomes afraid of his own death, and visits the sage Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Great Flood, hoping to find immortality. Gilgamesh repeatedly fails the trials set before him and returns home to Uruk, realizing that immortality is beyond his reach.
Cyclops
It is estimated that Homer's "Odyssey" was composed sometime in the 50-year period from 725 to 675 BC, and it is thought that it shows the influence of earlier oral poetic traditions of different peoples. In the "Odyssey" the episodes that are placed on the Black Sea, which would include the cyclops story, appear to incorporate parts of the Gilgamesh tradition, as well as the Caucasian myths of a one-eyed monster. There are striking parallels between Homer's story and the Caucasian stories of Urzmaeg, where the hero outwits a one-eyed giant, and blinds him with a torch. It is thought that the Caucasian myths probably came to the Greeks through the epic Anatolian song tradition.
Epic of Gilgamesh
The discovery of artifacts () associated with Enmebaragesi of Kish, mentioned in the legends as the father of one of Gilgamesh's adversaries, has lent credibility to the historical existence of Gilgamesh.
Early history of fantasy
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" was written over generations following the supposed reign of King Gilgamesh, and is seen as a mythologized version of his life. This figure is sometimes an influence and, more rarely, a figure in modern fantasy. Some scholars believe The "Epic of Gilgamesh" is a source used by the authors of the "Bible", specifically the story of "Noah" and the flood. The magic part of fantasy is partly due to the Mesopotamian world: the use of "magical words" that have the power to command the spirits; to resort to a magical circle to defend the wizard against the spirits invoked; the use of mysterious symbols or seals to invoke spirits; the use of amulets that represent the image of the demon to exorcise it.
Gilgamesh flood myth
Although the 18th century BC copy of the Atrahasis (Atra-Hasis) epic post-dates the early Gilgamesh epic, we do not know whether the Old-Akkadian Gilgamesh tablets included the flood story, because of the fragmentary nature of surviving tablets. Some scholars argue that they did not. Tigay, for example, maintains that three major additions to the Gilgamesh epic, namely the prologue, the flood story (tablet XI), and tablet XII, were added by an editor or editors, possibly by Sin-leqi-unninni, to whom the entire epic was later attributed. According to this view, the flood story in tablet XI was based on a late version of the Atrahasis story.
Armas Salonen
Salonen received his PhD in 1950. From 1949 to 1978 he held the position of associate professor of Assyrian and Semitic Philology at the University of Helsinki. His research interests focused on the material culture and everyday life of Mesopotamia, such as its watercraft, vehicles and doors; a large part of his work consists of thematic glossaries of specialized terminology. He published the first Finnish translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh in 1943. He was also interested in the history of Persia and ancient Egypt, and had a command of Arabic. In 1957, together with Jussi Aro, he published the first Finnish translation of the Quran.
Nancy Sandars
Sandars translated the "Epic of Gilgamesh" from cuneiform to English in the 1950s and this was published by Penguin Books in 1960. Her prose translation proved very popular and sold over one million copies.
Gilgamesh
Although stories about Gilgamesh were wildly popular throughout ancient Mesopotamia, authentic representations of him in ancient art are extremely rare. Popular works often identify depictions of a hero with long hair, containing four or six curls, as representations of Gilgamesh, but this identification is known to be incorrect. A few genuine ancient Mesopotamian representations of Gilgamesh do exist, however. These representations are mostly found on clay plaques and cylinder seals. Generally, it is only possible to identify a figure shown in art as Gilgamesh if the artistic work in question clearly depicts a scene from the "Epic of Gilgamesh" itself. One set of representations of Gilgamesh is found in scenes of two heroes fighting a demonic giant, certainly Humbaba. Another set is found in scenes showing a similar pair of heroes confronting a giant, winged bull, certainly the Bull of Heaven.
Epic of Gilgamesh (disambiguation)
Epic of Gilgamesh may also refer to:
Noah
The Noah story of the Pentateuch is almost identical to a flood story contained in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, composed about 2000 BC. In the Gilgamesh version, the Mesopotamian gods are enraged by the noise that man has raised from the earth. To quiet them they decide to send a great flood to silence mankind. Various correlations between the stories of Noah and Gilgamesh (the flood, the construction of the ark, the salvation of animals, and the release of birds following the flood) have led to this story being seen as the inspiration for the story of Noah. The few variations include the number of days of the deluge, the order of the birds, and the name of the mountain on which the ark rests. The flood story in Genesis 6–8 matches the Gilgamesh flood myth so closely that "few doubt that [it] derives from a Mesopotamian account." What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives.
Gilgamesh
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" exerted substantial influence on the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", two epic poems written in ancient Greek during the eighth century BC. According to Barry B. Powell, an American classical scholar, early Greeks were probably exposed to Mesopotamian oral traditions through their extensive connections to the civilizations of the ancient Near East and this exposure resulted in the similarities that are seen between the "Epic of Gilgamesh" and the Homeric epics. Walter Burkert, a German classicist, observes that the scene in Tablet VI of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" in which Gilgamesh rejects Ishtar's advances and she complains before her mother Antu, but is mildly rebuked by her father Anu, is directly paralleled in Book V of the "Iliad". In this scene, Aphrodite, the later Greek adaptation of Ishtar, is wounded by the hero Diomedes and flees to Mount Olympus, where she cries to her mother Dione and is mildly rebuked by her father Zeus.
Epic of Gilgamesh
Matthias Henze suggests that Nebuchadnezzar's madness in the biblical Book of Daniel draws on the "Epic of Gilgamesh". He claims that the author uses elements from the description of Enkidu to paint a sarcastic and mocking portrait of the king of Babylon.
Serpents in the Bible
In one of the oldest stories ever written, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh loses the power of immortality, stolen by a snake. The serpent was a widespread figure in the mythology of the Ancient Near East. Ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a serpent eating its own tail that represents the perpetual cyclic renewal of life, the eternal return, and the cycle of life, death and rebirth, leading to immortality.
Ri (cuneiform)
[[File:B142ellst.png|437px|left|thumb|Cuneiform sign for ri, re, dal, tal, ṭal, and as [[sumerogram]] RI, (sign uses from the "[[Epic of Gilgamesh]]").]]
[[File:Amarna letter mp3h8878.jpg|thumb|right|315px|[[Amarna letter EA 365]]-("Reverse"), [[Biridiya]] to Pharaoh, ""Furnishing [[Corvée]] Workers"", with usage of cuneiform re in the spelling of "erēsu", "to cultivate" ([[te (cuneiform)|te]]-[[ir (cuneiform)|er]]-ri-šu-[[na (cuneiform)|na]]), 3rd character, 6th line from top (line 365:20). (high resolution, expandible photo)]]
The [[cuneiform]] Ri sign, or Re, is found in both the 14th-century BC [[Amarna letters]] and the "[[Epic of Gilgamesh]]"; it is in the top 25 most used cuneiform signs (Buccellati, 1979) for "ri", or "re", but has other syllabic or alphabetic uses, as well as the [[sumerogram]] usage for "RI" ("Epic of Gilgamesh").
History of education
Perhaps the earliest formal school was developed in Egypt's Middle Kingdom under the direction of Kheti, treasurer to Mentuhotep II .
In what became Mesopotamia, the early logographic system of cuneiform script took many years to master. Thus only a limited number of individuals were hired as scribes to be trained in its reading and writing. Only royal offspring and sons of the rich and professionals such as scribes, physicians, and temple administrators, were schooled. Most boys were taught their father's trade or were apprenticed to learn a trade. Girls stayed at home with their mothers to learn housekeeping and cooking, and to look after the younger children. Later, when a syllabic script became more widespread, more of the Mesopotamian population became literate. Later still in Babylonian times there were libraries in most towns and temples; an old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." There arose a whole social class of scribes, mostly employed in agriculture, but some as personal secretaries or lawyers. Women as well as men learned to read and write, and for the Semitic Babylonians, this involved knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and a complicated and extensive syllabary. Vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. Massive archives of texts were recovered from the archaeological contexts of Old Babylonian scribal schools, through which literacy was disseminated. The Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from Ancient Mesopotamia is among the earliest known works of literary fiction. The earliest Sumerian versions of the epic date from as early as the Third Dynasty of Ur (2150-2000 BC) (Dalley 1989: 41-42).
Gilgamesh the King
Gilgamesh the King is a 1984 historical novel by American writer Robert Silverberg, presenting the "Epic of Gilgamesh" as a novel. In the afterword the author wrote "at all times I have attempted to interpret the fanciful and fantastic events of these poems in a realistic way, that is, to tell the story of Gilgamesh as though he were writing his own memoirs, and to that end I have introduced many interpretations of my own devising which for better or for worse are in no way to be ascribed to the scholars".
Mesopotamian divination
The Sumerian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2100 ) has the mother of Gilgamesh interpreting a dream of Gilgamesh (a portent of the advent of Enkidu).
Gilgamesh in popular culture
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" has directly inspired many manifestations of literature, art, music, and popular culture, as identified by Theodore Ziolkowski in the book "Gilgamesh Among Us: Modern Encounters With the Ancient Epic" (2011). It was only during and after the First World War that the first reliable translations of the epic appeared that reached a wide audience, and it was only after the Second World War that the epic of Gilgamesh began to make itself felt more broadly in a variety of genres.
Alfred Jeremias
In 1891 he published the first German translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh. From 1890 until his death he was pastor of the Lutheran congregation in Leipzig, and from 1922 he was also professor at Leipzig University. He received honorary degrees in 1905 from Leipzig and in 1914 from the University of Groningen.
History of sport
Various representations of wrestlers have been found on stone slabs recovered from the Sumerian civilization. One showing three pairs of wrestlers was generally dated to around 3000 BCE. A cast Bronze figurine, (perhaps the base of a vase) has been found at Khafaji in Iraq that shows two figures in a wrestling hold that dates to around 2600 BCE. The statue is one of the earliest depictions of sport and is housed in the National Museum of Iraq. The origins of boxing have also been traced to ancient Sumer. The Epic of Gilgamesh gives one of the first historical records of sport with Gilgamesh engaging in a form of belt wrestling with Enkidu. The cuneiform tablets recording the tale date to around 2000 BCE; however, the historical Gilgamesh is supposed to have lived around 2800 to 2600 BCE. The Sumerian king Shulgi also boasts of his prowess in sport in Self-praise of Shulgi A, B and C. Fishing hooks not unlike those made today have been found during excavations at Ur, showing evidence of angling in Sumer at around 2600 BCE.
Epic of Gilgamesh
The most definitive modern translation is a two-volume critical work by Andrew George, published by Oxford University Press in 2003. A book review by the Cambridge scholar, Eleanor Robson, claims that George's is the most significant critical work on Gilgamesh in the last 70 years. George discusses the state of the surviving material, and provides a tablet-by-tablet exegesis, with a dual language side-by-side translation. In 2004, Stephen Mitchell supplied a controversial version that takes many liberties with the text and includes modernized allusions and commentary relating to the Iraq War of 2003.
Gilgamesh (Kodallı opera)
Simultaneously with Kodallı, Ahmed Adnan Saygun was also working around 1964 on a Gilgamesh project, which he completed as his Op.65 "Gılgameş".
Epic of Gilgamesh
Several scholars suggest direct borrowing of Siduri's advice by the author of Ecclesiastes.
Enûma Eliš
Clay tablets containing inscriptions relating to analogues of biblical stories were discovered by A.H. Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and George Smith in the ruins of the Palace and Library of Ashur-bani-pal (668-626 BC) during excavations at the mound of Kuyunjik, Nineveh (near Mosul) between 1848 and 1876. Smith worked through Rassam's find of ~20,000 fragments from 1852, and identified references to the kings Shalmaneser II, Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and other rulers mentioned in the Bible - furthermore he discovered versions of a Babylonian deluge myth (see Gilgamesh flood myth), as well as creation myths.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, or This Unnameable Little Broom
In the Epic Enkidu is a Wildman created by the gods to distract Gilgamesh from his questionable activities. Enkidu is spotted uprooting traps, ruining a trapper’s trade. Enkidu is then seduced by Shamhat, a temple prostitute, the first step in civilizing him. The Brothers version shows Enkidu first being seduced by Shamhat, leading him into a trap that Gilgamesh has set for him.
Epic of Gilgamesh
This summary is based on Andrew George's translation.
Gilgamesh
In his 1904 book "Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients", the German Assyriologist Alfred Jeremias equated Gilgamesh with the king Nimrod from the Book of Genesis and argued that Gilgamesh's strength must come from his hair, like the hero Samson in the Book of Judges, and that he must have performed Twelve Labors like the hero Heracles in Greek mythology. In his 1906 book "Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur", the Orientalist Peter Jensen declared that the "Epic of Gilgamesh" was the source behind nearly all the stories in the Old Testament, arguing that Moses is "the Gilgamesh of Exodus who saves the children of Israel from precisely the same situation faced by the inhabitants of Erech at the beginning of the Babylonian epic." He then proceeded to argue that Abraham, Isaac, Samson, David, and various other biblical figures are all nothing more than exact copies of Gilgamesh. Finally, he declared that even Jesus is "nothing but an Israelite Gilgamesh. Nothing but an adjunct to Abraham, Moses, and countless other figures in the saga." This ideology became known as Panbabylonianism and was almost immediately rejected by mainstream scholars. The most stalwart critics of Panbabylonianism were those associated with the emerging "Religionsgeschichtliche Schule". Hermann Gunkel dismissed most of Jensen's purported parallels between Gilgamesh and biblical figures as mere baseless sensationalism. He concluded that Jensen and other Assyriologists like him had failed to understand the complexities of Old Testament scholarship and had confused scholars with "conspicuous mistakes and remarkable aberrations".
Découvertes Gallimard
From the transport of the Luxor Obelisk on the Place de la Concorde to the fabulous discovery of Tutankhamun's treasures, Jean Vercoutter recounts the history of rediscovery of ancient Egypt in this small volume— (lit. "In Search of Forgotten Egypt"; English edition: "The Search for Ancient Egypt")—which inaugurated the collection "Découvertes Gallimard" in 1986. It is part of the series; in other words, the book explaining the whole history of Egyptology—its birth and growth, with all the important figures in this history—of the "search for forgotten Egypt", the study of archaeological sites, artefacts and documents discovered in Egypt in the 18 and 19 centuries. It's almost like a "graphic novel", replete with colour plates. There are seven chapters:
Gilgamesh
Eventually, according to Kramer, "Gilgamesh became the hero par excellence of the ancient world—an adventurous, brave, but tragic figure symbolizing man's vain but endless drive for fame, glory, and immortality". By the Old Babylonian Period ( 1830 – 1531 BC), stories of Gilgamesh's legendary exploits had been woven into one or several long epics. The "Epic of Gilgamesh", the most complete account of Gilgamesh's adventures, was composed in Akkadian during the Middle Babylonian Period ( 1600 — 1155 BC) by a scribe named Sîn-lēqi-unninni. The most complete surviving version of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" is recorded on a set of twelve clay tablets dating to the seventh century BC, found in the Library of Ashurbanipal in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. The epic survives only in a fragmentary form, with many pieces of it missing or damaged. Some scholars and translators choose to supplement the missing parts of the epic with material from the earlier Sumerian poems or from other versions of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" found at other sites throughout the Near East.
Commentary (philology)
Cuneiform commentaries are important because they provide information about Mesopotamian languages and culture that are not available elsewhere in the cuneiform record. To give but one example, the pronunciation of the cryptically written name of Gilgamesh, the hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh, was discovered in a cuneiform commentary on a medical text. However, the significance of cuneiform commentaries extends beyond the light they shed on specific details of Mesopotamian civilization. They open a window onto what the concerns of the Mesopotamian literate elite were when they read some of the most widely studied texts in the Mesopotamian intellectual tradition, a perspective that is important for “seeing things their way.” Finally, cuneiform commentaries are also the earliest examples of textual interpretation. It has been repeatedly argued that they influenced rabbinical exegesis. See Akkadian Commentaries and Early Hebrew Exegesis
Mayfly
Another literary reference to mayflies is seen in "The Epic of Gilgamesh", one of the earliest surviving great works of literature. The briefness of Gilgamesh's life is compared to that of the adult mayfly.
Religious text
One of the oldest known religious texts is the Kesh Temple Hymn of Ancient Sumer, a set of inscribed clay tablets which scholars typically date around 2600 BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumer, although only considered by some scholars as a religious text, has origins as early as 2150-2000 BCE, and stands as one of the earliest literary works that includes various mythological figures and themes of interaction with the divine. The Rig Veda of ancient Hinduism is estimated to have been composed between 1700–1100 BCE, which not only denotes it as one of the oldest known religious texts, but also one of the oldest written religious text which is still actively used in religious practice to this day, though no actual evidence of this text exists prior to the 13th century AD.
Enmebaragesi
Enmebaragesi (cuneiform: , fl. c. 2500 BC) was a king of Kish, according to the Sumerian king list. The list states that he subdued Elam, reigned 900 years, and was captured single-handedly by Dumuzid "the fisherman" of Kuara, predecessor of Gilgamesh.
Enmerkar
In these last two tablets, the character of Lugalbanda is introduced as one of Enmerkar's war chiefs. According to the Sumerian king list, it was this Lugalbanda "the shepherd" who eventually succeeded Enmerkar to the throne of Uruk. Lugalbanda is also named as the father of Gilgamesh, a later king of Uruk, in both Sumerian and Akkadian versions of the "Epic of Gilgamesh".
In a legend related by Aelian (ca. AD 200), the king of Babylon, "Euechoros" or "Seuechoros" (also appearing in many variants as "Sevekhoros", earlier "Sacchoras", etc.), is said to be the grandfather of Gilgamos, who later becomes king of Babylon (i.e., Gilgamesh of Uruk). Several recent scholars have suggested that this "Seuechoros" or "Euechoros" is moreover to be identified with Enmerkar of Uruk, as well as the "Euechous" named by Berossus as being the first king of Chaldea and Assyria. This last name "Euechous" (also appearing as "Evechius", and in many other variants) has long been identified with Nimrod.
Sumer
A prime example of cuneiform writing would be a lengthy poem that was discovered in the ruins of Uruk. "The Epic of Gilgamesh" was written in the standard Sumerian cuneiform. It tells of a king from the early Dynastic II period named Gilgamesh or "Bilgamesh" in Sumerian. The story is based around the fictional adventures of Gilgamesh and his companion, Enkidu. It was laid out on several clay tablets and is claimed to be the earliest example of a fictional, written piece of literature discovered so far.
Gilgamesh
During this period, a large number of myths and legends developed surrounding Gilgamesh. Five independent Sumerian poems narrating various exploits of Gilgamesh have survived to the present. Gilgamesh's first appearance in literature is probably in the Sumerian poem "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld". The narrative begins with a "huluppu" tree—perhaps, according to the Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer, a willow, growing on the banks of the river Euphrates. The goddess Inanna moves the tree to her garden in Uruk with the intention to carve it into a throne once it is fully grown. The tree grows and matures, but the serpent "who knows no charm," the "Anzû"-bird, and "Lilitu", the Sumerian forerunner to the Lilith of Jewish folklore, all take up residence within the tree, causing Inanna to cry with sorrow. Gilgamesh, who in this story is portrayed as Inanna's brother, comes along and slays the serpent, causing the "Anzû"-bird and Lilitu to flee. Gilgamesh's companions chop down the tree and carve its wood into a bed and a throne, which they give to Inanna. Inanna responds by fashioning a "pikku" and a "mikku" (probably a drum and drumsticks respectively, although the exact identifications are uncertain), which she gives to Gilgamesh as a reward for his heroism. Gilgamesh loses the "pikku" and "mikku" and asks who will retrieve them. Enkidu descends to the Underworld to find them, but disobeys the strict laws of the Underworld and is therefore required to remain there forever. The remaining portion of the poem is a dialogue in which Gilgamesh asks the shade of Enkidu questions about the Underworld.
Gilgamesh: A New English Version
Gilgamesh: A New English Version is a book about Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell. It was published in New York by The Free Press in 2004, , and is held in over 2700 WorldCat libraries. It was reviewed by Jasper Grifrin in "The New York Review of Books" 53, no. 4, (2006): 25, by "The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide"; 12, no. 2, (2005): 38-39, and the "Hudson Review", Summer, 2005, vol. 58, no. 2, p. 329-334.
Book of Nahum
Nineveh was destroyed apparently by fire around 625 BC, and the Assyrian empire came to an end, an event which changed the face of Asia.
Archaeological digs have uncovered the splendor of Nineveh in its zenith under Sennacherib (705–681 BC), Esarhaddon (681–669 BC), and Ashurbanipal (669–633 BC). Massive walls were eight miles in circumference. It had a water aqueduct, palaces and a library with 20,000 clay tablets, including accounts of a creation in Enuma Elish and a flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Stephan Grundy
This was followed in 1999 by "Gilgamesh," a modern adaptation of the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh" that attempts to address directly the homosexual nature of the original text largely ignored by modern scholars. This was less well received than the two earlier novels.
Alexander Heidel
Heidel's book on the Gilgamesh flood myth is a comparison of the Mesopotamian epic with the biblical account of Noah's Ark and the biblical deluge. The University of Chicago Press published the first edition in 1946 and the second edition in 1949. The book remains in print.
Epic of Gilgamesh
Distinct sources exist from over a 2000-year timeframe. The earliest Sumerian poems are now generally considered to be distinct stories, rather than parts of a single epic. They date from as early as the Third Dynasty of Ur (). The Old Babylonian tablets (), are the earliest surviving tablets for a single "Epic of Gilgamesh" narrative. The older Old Babylonian tablets and later Akkadian version are important sources for modern translations, with the earlier texts mainly used to fill in gaps (lacunae) in the later texts. Although several revised versions based on new discoveries have been published, the epic remains incomplete. Analysis of the Old Babylonian text has been used to reconstruct possible earlier forms of the "Epic of Gilgamesh". The most recent Akkadian version (), also referred to as the standard version, consisting of twelve tablets, was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni and was found in the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.
Poetry
The oldest surviving epic poem, the "Epic of Gilgamesh", comes from the 3rd millenniumBCE in Sumer (in Mesopotamia, now Iraq), and was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, on papyrus. A tablet dating to c.2000BCE describes an annual rite in which the king symbolically married and mated with the goddess Inanna to ensure fertility and prosperity; it is considered the world's oldest love poem. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is "The Story of Sinuhe" (c. 1800 BCE).
Other ancient epic poetry includes the Greek epics, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"; the Avestan books, the "Gathic Avesta" and the "Yasna"; the Roman national epic, Virgil's "Aeneid"; and the Indian epics, the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabharata". Epic poetry, including the "Odyssey", the "Gathas", and the Indian "Vedas", appears to have been composed in poetic form as an aid to memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies.
Gilgamesh flood myth
The Gilgamesh flood myth is a flood myth in the "Epic of Gilgamesh". Many scholars believe that the flood myth was added to Tablet XI in the "standard version" of the Gilgamesh Epic by an editor who used the flood story from the Epic of Atrahasis. A short reference to the flood myth is also present in the much older Sumerian Gilgamesh poems, from which the later Babylonian versions drew much of their inspiration and subject matter.
Jules-Justin Sauveplane
Jules-Justin Sauveplane studied at the École des langues orientales and the École pratique des Hautes Études. A specialist of Biblical studies and of the ancient East, he published one of the first French translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh ("Une épopée babylonienne", 1893), in the "Revue des Religions". He later supported his thesis on this topic ("Sur l'épopée babylonienne de Gilgamès"), under the direction of Joseph Halévy, in front of a jury including Gaston Maspero and Jules Oppert on 2 July 1894.
History of literature
Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a qualifying role as literature's first stirrings.
Very early examples include "Epic of Gilgamesh", in its Sumerian version predating 2000 BC, and the "Egyptian Book of the Dead" written down in the "Papyrus of Ani" in approximately 1250 BC but probably dates from about the 18th century BC.
Ancient Egyptian literature was not included in early studies of the history of literature because the writings of Ancient Egypt were not translated into European languages until the 19th century when the Rosetta stone was deciphered.
Gilgamesh
In the epic, Gilgamesh is introduced as "two thirds divine and one third mortal". At the beginning of the poem, Gilgamesh is described as a brutal, oppressive ruler. This is usually interpreted to mean either that he compels all his subjects to engage in forced labor or that he sexually oppresses all his subjects. As punishment for Gilgamesh's cruelty, the god Anu creates the wildman Enkidu. After being tamed by a prostitute named Shamhat, Enkidu travels to Uruk to confront Gilgamesh. In the second tablet, the two men wrestle and, although Gilgamesh wins the match in the end, he is so impressed by his opponent's strength and tenacity that they become close friends. In the earlier Sumerian texts, Enkidu is Gilgamesh's servant, but, in the "Epic of Gilgamesh", they are companions of equal standing.
Gilgamesh the immortal
From that point, he became an errant. The comic book depicts his many adventures at ancient civilizations or historical events, or the meeting of historical people like Jesus or Napoleon. He also met fictional creatures, such as vampires or Atlanteans, and other characters created by the authors. The overall theme is his displeasure of human mortality, his rejection of warfare and, in later stories, his own desire for death.
George Smith (Assyriologist)
This work is better known today as the eleventh tablet of the "Epic of Gilgamesh", one of the oldest known works of literature. The following January, Edwin Arnold, the editor of "The Daily Telegraph", arranged for Smith to go to Nineveh at the expense of that newspaper and carry out excavations with a view to finding the missing fragments of the Flood story. This journey resulted not only in the discovery of some missing tablets, but also of fragments that recorded the succession and duration of the Babylonian dynasties.
Epic of Gilgamesh
Partially overlapping the felling of the trees from the Ishchali tablet.
Jonah
Joseph Campbell suggests that the story of Jonah parallels a scene from the "Epic of Gilgamesh", in which Gilgamesh obtains a plant from the bottom of the sea. In the Book of Jonah, a worm (in Hebrew "tola'ath", "maggot") bites the shade-giving plant's root causing it to wither; whereas in the "Epic of Gilgamesh", Gilgamesh ties stones to his feet and plucks his plant from the floor of the sea. Once he returns to the shore, the rejuvenating plant is eaten by a serpent.
Aga of Kish
Aga is mentioned in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" as having besieged Uruk. He appears also in the earlier Sumerian text of "Bilgames and Akka", where he is referred to as Akka.
The Gilgamesh epic, the Sumerian king list, and the "Tummal Chronicle" all call him the son of En-me-barage-si, a king who has been verified through archaeological inscription, leading to theories that Gilgamesh was also historical.
Gilgamesh flood myth
Gilgamesh’s supposed historical reign is believed to have been approximately 2700 BCE, shortly before the earliest known written stories. The discovery of artifacts associated with Aga and Enmebaragesi of Kish, two other kings named in the stories, has lent credibility to the historical existence of Gilgamesh.
Flute
The earliest written reference to a flute is from a Sumerian-language cuneiform tablet dated to c. 2600–2700 BCE.
Flutes are also mentioned in a recently translated tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem whose development spanned the period of approximately 2100–600 BCE. Additionally, a set of cuneiform tablets knows as the ""musical texts"" provide precise tuning instructions for seven scale of a stringed instrument (assumed to be a Babylonian lyre). One of those scales is named embūbum, which is an Akkadian word for ""flute"".
The Epic of Gilgamesh, or This Unnameable Little Broom
The Epic of Gilgamesh, or This Unnameable Little Broom (aka Little Songs of the Chief Officer of Hunar Louse) is a 1985 stop motion short film by The Brothers Quay. The film is loosely based on the first tablet of "Epic of Gilgamesh". Boasting the longest title in the Quays' entire output, this 1985 film is generally known as "This Unnameable Little Broom". The short began life as a proposed hour-long program Channel 4 exploring aspects of the ancient Babylonian "Epic of Gilgamesh", one of the oldest known surviving works of literature, which would combine puppet animation, dance sequences, and live-action documentary elements. However, Channel Four were unsure about the project, and only agreed to fund a short animated sequence as a pilot - which is all that was ultimately made.
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Martinů)
Gilgameš (English: The Epic of Gilgamesh) is an oratorio by Bohuslav Martinů composed 1954–1955 near Nice in France and premiered in 1958 in Basel, Switzerland, with a title and text in German, as "Das Gilgamesch-Epos".
Inanna
Ishtar's first major appearance in modern literature was in "Ishtar and Izdubar", a book-length poem written in 1884 by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton, an American lawyer and businessman, loosely based on the recently-translated "Epic of Gilgamesh". "Ishtar and Izdubar" expanded the original roughly 3,000 lines of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" to roughly 6,000 lines of rhyming couplets grouped into forty-eight cantos. Hamilton significantly altered most of the characters and introduced entirely new episodes not found in the original epic. Significantly influenced by Edward FitzGerald's "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" and Edwin Arnold's "The Light of Asia", Hamilton's characters dress more like nineteenth-century Turks than ancient Babylonians. In the poem, Izdubar (the earlier misreading for the name "Gilgamesh") falls in love with Ishtar, but, then, "with hot and balmy breath, and trembling form aglow," she attempts to seduce him, leading Izdubar to reject her advances. Several "columns" of the book are devoted to an account of Ishtar's descent into the Underworld. At the conclusion of the book, Izdubar, now a god, is reconciled with Ishtar in Heaven. In 1887, the composer Vincent d'Indy wrote "Symphony Ishtar, variations symphonique, Op. 42", a symphony inspired by the Assyrian monuments in the British Museum.
Epic of Gilgamesh
The main point seems to be that when Enlil granted eternal life it was a unique gift. As if to demonstrate this point, Utnapishtim challenges Gilgamesh to stay awake for six days and seven nights. Gilgamesh falls asleep, and Utnapishtim instructs his wife to bake a loaf of bread on each of the days he is asleep, so that he cannot deny his failure to keep awake. Gilgamesh, who is seeking to overcome death, cannot even conquer sleep. After instructing Urshanabi the ferryman to wash Gilgamesh, and clothe him in royal robes, they depart for Uruk.
Epic of Gilgamesh
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" has inspired many works of literature, art, and music, as Theodore Ziolkowski points out in his book "Gilgamesh Among Us: Modern Encounters With the Ancient Epic" (2011). It was only after World War I that the "Gilgamesh" epic reached a modern audience, and only after World War II that it was featured in a variety of genres.
Noach (parsha)
of the Epic of Gilgamesh, composed in Mesopotamia in the 14th to 11th centuries BCE, presents a parallel flood story to that in Parashah Noach. Professor Gary Rendsburg of Rutgers University notes these similarities and differences:
Exegesis
Cuneiform commentaries are important because they provide information about Mesopotamian languages and culture that are not available elsewhere in the cuneiform record. To give but one example, the pronunciation of the cryptically written name of Gilgamesh, the hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh, was discovered in a cuneiform commentary on a medical text. However, the significance of cuneiform commentaries extends beyond the light they shed on specific details of Mesopotamian civilization. They open a window onto what the concerns of the Mesopotamian literate elite were when they read some of the most widely studied texts in the Mesopotamian intellectual tradition, a perspective that is important for “seeing things their way.” Finally, cuneiform commentaries are also the earliest examples of textual interpretation. It has been repeatedly argued that they influenced rabbinical exegesis. See Akkadian Commentaries and Early Hebrew Exegesis
Neo-Assyrian Empire
Several of the most ancient works of Mesopotamian literature are best preserved in Neo-Assyrian copies. Thus, there are 7th-century copies of both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enûma Eliš from Ashurbanipal's library in Nineveh, as well as Neo-Assyrian versions of the Atra-Hasis.
Sîn-lēqi-unninni
Sîn-lēqi-unninni ( ) was a "mašmaššu" who lived in Mesopotamia in the period between 1300 BC and 1000 BC. In literary circles, however, he is remembered for having compiled the best-preserved version of the "Epic of Gilgamesh". His name is listed in the text itself, which was unorthodox for works written in cuneiform. His version is known by its "incipit," or first line "Sha naqba īmuru" ("He who saw the deep" or "The one who saw the Abyss"). The extent to which his version is different from earlier texts is unknown; George argues that Sîn-lēqi-unninni "gave [The "Epic of Gilgamesh"] its final, fixed form".
George Smith (Assyriologist)
George Smith (26 March 1840 - 19 August 1876), was a pioneering English Assyriologist who first discovered and translated the "Epic of Gilgamesh", one of the oldest-known written works of literature.
Uruk
In myth and literature, Uruk was famous as the capital city of Gilgamesh, hero of the "Epic of Gilgamesh". It is also believed Uruk is the biblical Erech (Genesis 10:10), the second city founded by Nimrod in Shinar.
Gilgamesh (Saygun opera)
Gılgameş (Op. 65) is an opera in three acts and twelve scenes composed by Ahmed Adnan Saygun to a Turkish-language libretto by . The opera, based on the "Epic of Gilgamesh" was composed from 1964 to 1983, but premiered in an early version in 1970. The work had its origins in an opera of the same name by Nevit Kodallı with a libretto by which was premiered in Ankara in 1964, but Saygun and his librettist were commissioned to rewrite both music and libretto.
Epic of Gilgamesh
This tablet is mainly an Akkadian translation of an earlier Sumerian poem, Gilgamesh and the Netherworld (also known as "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld" and variants), although it has been suggested that it is derived from an unknown version of that story. The contents of this last tablet are inconsistent with previous ones: Enkidu is still alive, despite having died earlier in the epic. Because of this, its lack of integration with the other tablets, and the fact that it is almost a copy of an earlier version, it has been referred to as an 'inorganic appendage' to the epic. Alternatively, it has been suggested that "its purpose, though crudely handled, is to explain to Gilgamesh (and the reader) the various fates of the dead in the Afterlife" and in "an awkward attempt to bring closure", it both connects the Gilgamesh of the epic with the Gilgamesh who is the King of the Netherworld, and is "a dramatic capstone whereby the twelve-tablet epic ends on one and the same theme, that of "seeing" (= understanding, discovery, etc.), with which it began."
Gilgamesh (Kodallı opera)
Gılgamış is a 1964 Turkish-language opera by Nevit Kodallı.
Gilgamesh the immortal
"Gilgamesh" was initially created in 1969 by Lucho Olivera as a single story, but its good reception turned it into a regular publication. Olivera worked initially at both the drawings and the scripts, but he later left his scriptwriting duties to Sergio Mulko, who was working by then under the pseudonym "Leo Gioser". Mulko wrote with a higher emphasis on the psychology and motivations of the character.
Theophilus Pinches
During his tenure at the Egyptian and Assyrian Department, British Museum, he gave assistance to scholars including Abraham Sachs and taught at London University. It was largely due to his "painstaking work" during his time as assistant keeper at the British Museum between 1895 and 1900, that many pieces acquired by the museum were joined together again. He also translated some Babylonian tablets which related to the Battle of the Vale of Siddim and was one of the editors of "The Babylonian and Oriental Record" from 1886. In 1890, Pinches discovered and published the correct reading of the name of Gilgamesh, instead of Izdubar.
Gilgamesh (Nørgård)
Gilgamesh is a 1972 opera by Per Nørgård. The opera received the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1974.
Erra (god)
The poem must have been central to Babylonian culture: at least thirty-six copies have been recovered from five first-millennium sites—Assur, Babylon, Nineveh, Sultantepe and Ur—more, even, as the assyriologist and historian of religions Luigi Giovanni Cagni points out, than have been recovered of the "Epic of Gilgamesh".