Epic Of Gilgamesh Quotes

Strange things have been spoken, why does your heart speak strangely? The dream was marvellous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror.

Hold my hand in yours, and we will not fear what hands like ours can do.

As for man, his days are numbered, whatever he might do, it is but wind.

Gilgamesh was called a god and a man; Enkidu was an animal and a man. It is the story of their becoming human together.

Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.

What you seek you shall never find. For when the Gods made man, They kept immortality to themselves. Fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let Days be full of joy. Love the child who holds your hand. Let your wife delight in your embrace. For these alone are the concerns of man.

How can I keep silent? How can I stay quiet? My friend, whom I loved, has turned to clay, my friend Enkidu, whom I loved has turned to clay. Shall I not be like him, and also lie down, never to rise again, through all eternity?

He looked at the walls, Awed at the heights His people had achieved And for a moment -- just a moment -- All that lay behind him Passed from view.

The dream was marvellous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of his life is sorrow.

I will set up my name in the place where the names of famous men are written, and where no man’s name is written yet I will raise a monument to the gods.

How long does a building stand before it falls? How long does a contract last? How long will brothers share the inheritance before they quarrel? How long does hatred, for that matter, last? Time after time the river has risen and flooded. The insect leaves the cocoon to live but a minute. How long is the eye able to look at the sun? From the very beginning nothing at all has lasted.

There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay is their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns put away for ever...

Everything had life to me,’ he heard Enkidu murmur, ‘the sky, the storm, the earth, water, wandering, the moon and its three children, salt, even my hand had life. It’s gone. It’s gone.

The river rises, flows over its banks and carries us all away, like mayflies floating downstream: they stare at the sun, then all at once there is nothing.

Hold my hand in yours, and we will not fear what hands like ours can do.

Death is a mystery and must always remain such.

When all the illusions of personal immortality are stripped away, there is only the act to maintain the freedom to act.

DEAR DI­ARY You are greater than the Bible And the Con­fer­ence of the Birds And the Up­an­ishads All put to­geth­er You are more se­vere Than the Scrip­tures And Ham­mura­bi’s Code More dan­ger­ous than Luther’s pa­per Nailed to the Cathe­dral door You are sweet­er Than the Song of Songs Might­ier by far Than the Epic of Gil­gamesh And braver Than the Sagas of Ice­land I bow my head in grat­itude To the ones who give their lives To keep the se­cret The dai­ly se­cret Un­der lock and key Dear Di­ary I mean no dis­re­spect But you are more sub­lime Than any Sa­cred Text Some­times just a list Of my events Is holi­er than the Bill of Rights And more in­tense

You have known, O Gilgamesh, What interests me, To drink from the Well of Immortality. Which means to make the dead Rise from their graves And the prisoners from their cells The sinners from their sins. I think love's kiss kills our heart of flesh. It is the only way to eternal life, Which should be unbearable if lived Among the dying flowers And the shrieking farewells Of the overstretched arms of our spoiled hopes.

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy? Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question. O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre. P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre. O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction. P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy. Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that. (Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

What have you known of loss That makes you different from other men? - The Epic of Gilgamesh

Even the gods Cowered like dogs at what they had done.

Don't moralize at me! I have no love For images, old gods, prophetic words. I want to talk to Utnapishtim! Tell me how.

What is this sleep which holds you now? You are lost in the dark and cannot hear me.

Friendship is vowing toward immortality and does not know the passing away of beauty (Though take care!) because it aims for the spirit. Many years ago through loss I learned that love is wrung from our inmost heart until only the loved one is and we are not.

Enkidu, my brother, whom I loved so dearly, who accompanied me through every danger-- the fate of mankind has overwhelmed him. For six days I would not let him be buried, thinking, 'If my grief is violent enough, perhaps he will come back to life again.

From the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death.

Adam is expelled from Paradise as a punishment, whereas Enkidu is implored to leave it as a necessary step towards progress to a higher form of existence.

Can’t you see how fortunate you are? You have worn yourself out through ceaseless striving, you have filled your muscles with pain and anguish. And what have you achieved but to bring yourself one day nearer to the end of your days?

Said Gilgamesh to him, to Uta-napishti the Distant: 'O Uta-napishti, what should I do and where should I go? A thief has taken hold of my flesh! For there in my bed-chamber Death does abide, and wherever I turn, there too will be Death.

You are a human being now, not like them [the animals].

Six days and seven nights I mourned over him and would not allow him to be buried until a maggot fell out of his nose I was terrified by his appearance I began to fear death

How can I be silent, how can I rest, when Enkidu whom I love is dust, and I too shall die and be laid in the earth.

How shall I find the life for which I am searching? There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand for ever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time?

Gilgamesh, where are you roaming? You will never find the eternal life that you seek. When the gods created mankind, they also created death, and they held back eternal life for themselves alone. Humans are born, they live, then they die, this is the order that the gods have decreed. But until the end comes, enjoy your life, spend it in happiness, not despair. Savour your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.

Unix is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic: a living body of narrative that many people know by heart, and tell over and over again—making their own personal embellishments whenever it strikes their fancy. The bad embellishments are shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved, and, over time, incorporated into the story. […] Thus Unix has slowly accreted around a simple kernel and acquired a kind of complexity and asymmetry about it that is organic, like the roots of a tree, or the branchings of a coronary artery. Understanding it is more like anatomy than physics.

when I enter the Netherworld will rest be scarce? I shall lie there sleeping all down the years! ‘Let my eyes see the sun and be sated with light! The darkness is hidden, how much light is there left? Sii 15’ When may the dead see the rays of the sun?

As if some faces could be doorways in To life one has an image of But never sees. The vista was A strange and beautiful Release

Why, O Gish, does thou run about? The life that thou seekest, thou wilt not find.

Why should not my cheeks be starved and my face drawn? Despair is in my heart, and my face is the face of one who has made a long journey.

... because of my brother I stray through the wilderness. His fate lies heavy upon me. How can I be silent, how can I rest?

But my hand was too small to do the gathering. [Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 79]

And who can know when the last of his days will come? When the gods assemble, they decide your fate, they establish both life and death for you, but the time of death they do not reveal.

What we finally do, out of desperation ... is go on an impossible, or even forbidden, journey or pilgrimage, which from a rational point of view is futile: to find the one wise man, whomever or wherever he may be; and to find from him the secret of eternal life or the secret of adjusting to this life as best we can.

Then the gods of the abyss rose up; Nergal pulled out the dams of the nether waters, Ninurta the war-lord threw down the dykes, and the seven judges of hell, the Annunaki, raised their torches, lighting the land with their livid flame.

Yes: the gods took Enkidu’s life. But man’s life is short, at any moment it can be snapped, like a reed in a canebrake. The handsome young man, the lovely young woman—in their prime, death comes and drags them away. Though no one has seen death’s face or heard death’s voice, suddenly, savagely, death destroys us, all of us, old or young. And yet we build houses, make contracts, brothers divide their inheritance, conflicts occur—as though this human life lasted forever. The river rises, flows over its banks and carries us all away, like mayflies floating downstream: they stare at the sun, then all at once there is nothing.

Our genus, Homo, arose two and a half million years ago, and for more than ninety-nine percent of human existence, we all lived like Onwas, in small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers. Though the groups may have been tight-knit and communal, nearly everyone, anthropologists conjecture, spent significant parts of their lives surrounded by quiet, either alone or with a few others, foraging for edible plants and stalking prey in the wild. This is who we truly are. The agricultural revolution began twelve thousand years ago, in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, and the planet was swiftly reorganized into villages and cities and nations, and soon the average person spent virtually no time alone at all. To a thin but steady stream of people, this was unacceptable, so they escaped. Recorded history extends back five thousand years, and for as long as humans have been writing, we have been writing about hermits. It’s a primal fascination. Chinese texts etched on animal bones, as well as the clay tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem from Mesopotamia dating to around 2000 B.C., refer to shamans or wild men residing alone in the woods. People

What you seek, you shall never find. For when the Gods made man, They kept immortality for themselves. Fill your belly. Day and night make merry, Let Days be full of joy. Love the child that holds your hand. Let your wife delight in your embrace. For these alone are the concerns of man. —The Epic of Gilgamesh

In those days the world teemed, the people multiplied, the world bellowed like a wild bull, and the great god was aroused by the clamor. Enlil heard the clamor and he said to the gods in council, “The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel.” So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind.

Livstyven har fat om min krop. Døden sidder i mit soveværelse, og hvor jeg end vender mig hen, er døden

[Humbaba’s] sound is like a flood’s sound Slowly forming in the distance, Then enveloping all other sounds

He imagined the gazelles raising the dry dust Like soft brush floating on the crests of sand.

They fell like wolves At each other’s throats, Like bulls bellowing, And horses gasping for breath That have run all day.

Why do you look like on who has been travelling a long distance?

Then he veiled Enkidu’s face like a bride’s. Like an eagle Gilgamesh circled around him, he paced in front of him, back and forth, like a lioness whose cubs are trapped in a pit

Now let the gate of sorrow be closed behind me, and let it be sealed with tar and pitch.

As for man, his days are numbered, whatever he may do, it is but wind.

He who saw the Deep, the country’s foundation, [who knew the proper ways,] was wise in all matters!

He who comes is no man of mine, but on the right ……X 190 I am looking, but he is no [man of] mine …

Said Uta-napishti to her, to his wife: ‘See the fellow who so desired life! Sleep like a fog already breathes over him.

Was du suchst, wirst du nicht finden, Denn als die Götter den Menschen erschufen, Behielten sie die Unsterblichkeit für sich.

The image of the Serpent, because of its association with life, rejuvenation, fertility, and regeneration, was a symbol of immortality. The coiled Serpent with its tail in its mouth was a circle of infinitude indicating omnipotence and omniscience. The Serpent, depicted in several successive rings, represented cyclical evolution and reincarnation. In ancient philosophy or mythological systems, creation and wisdom were closely bound together, and the Serpent was a potent symbol of both. It is in this capacity that the Serpent appears in the Babylonian and Sumerian mythologies, which contain elements akin to the Genesis story. The Serpent has the power to bestow immortality but also has the power to cheat humankind. In many of the ancient Near Eastern stories—for instance, the Gilgamesh Epic and myth of Adapa—the Serpent holds out the promise of immortality but then cheats man at the last minute.

Although the disappearance of the true wildwood [in the British Isles] occurred in the Neolithic period, before humanity began to record its own history, creation myths in almost all cultures look fabulously back to a forested earth. In the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the quest-story which begins world literature, Gilgamesh sets out on his journey from Uruk to the Cedar Mountains, where he has been charged to slay the Huwawa, the guardian of the forest. The Roman empire also defined itself against the forests in which its capital city was first established, and out of which its founders, the wolf-suckled twins, emerged. It was the Roman Empire which would proceed to destroy the dense forests of the ancient world.

As for you, Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full, Always be happy, night and day. Make every day a delight, Night and day play and dance. Your clothes should be clean, Your head should be washed, You should bathe in water. Look proudly on the little one holding your hand, Let your mate always be blissful in your loins, This, then, is the work of mankind, He who is alive should be happy.

Ekmek ye Enkidu, yaşamın gereğidir bu, içki iç, halkın göreneğidir bu. Enkidu ekmek yedi doyuncaya dek, yedi çanak içki içti, içi açıldı, bağırdı keyfinden, gönlü sevinçle doldu, ışıdı yüz çizgileri.

The bane of mankind is thus come, I have told you, what (was fixed) when your navel-cord was cut is thus come, I have told you. The darkest day of mortal man has caught up with you, the solitary place of mortal man has caught up with you, NI v 20 the flood-wave that cannot be breasted has caught up with you, the battle that cannot be fled has caught up with you, the combat that cannot be matched has caught up with you, the fight that shows no pity has caught up with you!

Even the gods took fright at the Deluge, they left and went up to the heaven of Anu, lying like dogs curled up in the open. The goddess cried out like a woman in childbirth, Belet-ili wailed, whose voice is so sweet: "The olden times have turned to clay, because I spoke evil in the gods' assembly. How could I speak evil in the gods' assembly, and declare a war to destroy my people? "It is I who give birth, these people are mine! And now, like fish, they fill the ocean!

Whether or not the fame of Gilgamesh of Uruk had reached the Aegean – and the idea is attractive – there can be no doubt that it was as great as that of any other hero. In time his name became so much a household word that jokes and forgeries were fathered onto it, as in a popular fraud that survives on eighth-century B.C. tablets which perhaps themselves copy an older text. This is a letter supposed to be written by Gilgamesh to some other king, with commands that he should send improbable quantities of livestock and metals, along with gold and precious stones for an amulet for Enkidu, which would weigh no less that thirty pounds. The joke must have been well received, for it survives in four copies, all from Sultantepe.

Gilgamesh went abroad in the world, but he met with none who could withstand his arms till he came to Uruk. But the men of Uruk muttered in their houses, 'Gilgamesh sounds the tocsin for his amusement, his arrogance has no bounds by day or night.

One of the most famous finds from [Ashurbanipal's] library is The Epic of Gilgamesh ... Thought to have been written in Babylon around 1700 BC but based on Sumerian poems centuries older ..., it describes a young, arrogant ruler—inspired by a real king of Uruk from the third millennium BC―who gains wisdom thru a desperate, doomed search for immortality. ... Gilgamesh caused a sensation ... because it includes a version of the Biblical tale of Noah and the Flood, written centuries before ... Genesis.

What does the name of an author on the jacket matter? Let us move forward in thought to three thousand years from now. Who knows which books from our period will be saved, and who knows which authors’ names will be remembered? Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as for us the epic of Gilgamesh; other authors’ names will still be well known, but none of their works will survive, as was the case with Socrates; or perhaps all the surviving books will be attributed to a single, mysterious author, like Homer.

But man's life is short, at any moment it can be snapped, like a reed in a canebrake. The handsome young man, the lovely young woman- in their prime, death comes and drags them away. Though no one has seen death's face or heard death's voice, suddenly, savagely, death destroys us, all of us, old or young. And yet we build houses, make contracts, brothers divide their inheritance, conflicts occur- as though this human life lasted forever. The river rises, flows over its banks and carries us all away, like mayflies floating downstream: they stare at the sun, then all at once there is nothing.

Even … the wrestler can be caught in a throw-net! A bird of the sky, once fenced in by the net, does not escape one’s hand! A fish of the deep sees the … rushes no more, when the young fisherman casts his net, it is trapped within! No man, whoever he may be, can ascend … from the midst of the Netherworld,

Also may your way be plain, that you not stray from the true path              /A And while you complete your journey together to the Pine Forest              /A May the days be of greater length and the nights pass quickly              /A May you always have clothes to wear, and your pace never falter              /A After sunset, may you always find a place to camp for the night              /A And may you have protection from all predators of the twilight              /A And may Shamash preserve you on your way to the Pine Forest              /A[16] Whether it be a month or ten months, a year or even ten years.”              /A

Go up, Ur-Shanabi, pace out the walls of Uruk. Study the foundation terrace and examine the brickwork. Is not its masonry of kiln-fired brick? And did not seven masters lay its foundations? One square mile of city, one square mile of gardens, One square mile of clay pits, a half square mile of Ishtar's dwelling, Three and a half square miles is the measure of Uruk!

Гильгамеш! Куда ты стремишься? Жизни, что ищешь, не найдешь ты! Боги, когда создавали человека, — Смерть они определили человеку, – Жизнь в своих руках удержали. Ты же, Гильгамеш, насыщай желудок, Днем и ночью да будешь ты весел, Праздник справляй ежедневно, Днем и ночью играй и пляши ты! Светлы да будут твои одежды, Волосы чисты, водой омывайся, Гляди, как дитя твою руку держит, Своими объятьями радуй подругу — Только в этом дело человека!

Literature is as old as human language, and as new as tomorrow's sunrise. And literature is everywhere, not only in books, but in videos, television, radio, CDs, computers, newspapers, in all the media of communication where a story is told or an image created. It starts with words, and with speech. The first literature in any culture is oral. The classical Greek epics of Homer, the Asian narratives of Gilgamesh and the Bhagavad Gita, the earliest versions of the Bible and the Koran were all communicated orally, and passed on from generation to generation - with variations, additions, omissions and embellishments until they were set down in written form, in versions which have come down to us. In English, the first signs of oral literature tend to have three kinds of subject matter - religion, war, and the trials of daily life - all of which continue as themes of a great deal of writing.

Humans are born, they live, then they die, this is the order that the gods have decreed. But until the end comes, enjoy your life, spend it in happiness, not despair. Savor your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.

Humans are born, they live, then they die, this is the order that the gods have decreed. But until the end comes, enjoy your life, spend it in happiness, not despair. Savor your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wide pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.

Then was the launching full of difficulty; there was shifting of ballast above and below till two thirds was submerged. I loaded into her all that I had of gold and of living things, my family, my kin, the beast of the field both wild and tame, and all the craftsmen. I sent them on board, for the time that Shamash had ordained was already fulfilled when he said, “In the evening, when the rider of the storm sends down the destroying rain, enter the boat and batten her down.

The eternal life you are seeking you shall not find. When the gods created mankind, They established death for mankind, And withheld eternal life for themselves. As for you, Gilgamesh let your stomach be full, Always be happy, night and day. Make every day a delight, Night and day play and dance. Your clothes should be clean, Your head should be washed, You should bathe in water. Look proudly on the little one holding your hand, Let your mate be always blissful in your loins, This, then, is the work of mankind, He who is alive should be happy.

Gilgamesh, whither rovest thou? The Life thou pursuest thou shalt not find. When the gods created mankind, Death for mankind they set aside, Life in their own hands retaining. Thou, Gilgamesh, let full be thy belly, Make thou merry by day and by night. Of each day make thou a feast of rejoicing, Day and night dance thou and play! Let thy garments be sparkling fresh, Thy head be washed; bathe thou in water. Pay heed to the little one that holds on to thy hand, Let thy spouse delight in thy bosom! For this is the task of mankind! —X, iii Old Babylonian Version, tr. E. A. Speiser

This unusual situation is due to the fact that the tablet omits all outbreaks of the conventional literary structure – Anu opened his mouth to speak, saying to the lady Ishtar … followed by Ishtar opened her mouth to speak, saying to her father, Anu … Gilgamesh VI: 87–88; 92–93 – with which Babylonian narrative literature is, not to put too fine a point on it, slightly tiresomely littered. In fact, I cannot come up with another example of Babylonian mythological or epic literature that is devoid of this characteristic speech-linking device. Its repetitive nature at first sight looks like a remnant of oral literature, where things are repeated more than we would repeat them today, which the modern connoisseur of cuneiform literature just has to accept, or appreciate as atmospheric and authentic. On reflection, however, it is just the opposite. The characteristic dependence on this formula originates in the very transition from oral to written literature, for who is speaking at any one time will always be clear in a storyteller’s presentation, but the process of writing down what has previously been spoken aloud creates ambiguity for the reader unless each speaker is clearly identified.

He who saw the Deep, the country's foundation, [who] knew ... , was wise in all matters! [Gilgamesh, who] saw the Deep, the country's foundation, [who] knew ... , was wise in all matters! [He] ... everywhere ... and [learnt] of everything the sum of wisdom. He saw what was secret, discovered what was hidden, he brought back a tale of before the Deluge. He came a far road, was weary, found peace, and set all his labours on a tablet of stone. He built the rampart of Uruk-the-Sheepfold, of holy Eanna, the sacred storehouse. See its wall like a strand of wool, view its parapet that none could copy! Take the stairway of a bygone era, draw near to Eanna, seat of Ishtar the goddess, that no later king could ever copy!

When the gods smelled the sweet savour, they gathered like flies over the sacrifice. Then, at last, Ishtar also came, she lifted her necklace with the jewels of heaven that once Anu had made to please her. “O you gods here present, by the lapis lazuli round my neck I shall remember these days as I remember the jewels of my throat; these last days I shall not forget. Let all the gods gather round the sacrifice, except Enlil. He shall not approach this offering, for without reflection he brought the flood; he consigned my people to destruction.” ‘When Enlil had come, when he saw the boat, he was wrath and swelled with anger at the gods, the host of heaven, “Has any of these mortals escaped? Not one was to have survived the destruction.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy. Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

When walking with the strong or with the dead, Do not wear clothes of purple or of red.

Uruk town-so-full-of-shepherds. Divided into three parts: The town itself, the palm grove and the prairie.

The dream was marvelous, but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream, whatever the terror.

He who endured my hardships with me He has now gone to the fate that awaits mankind. Day and night, I have wept for him. I would not give him over for burial, For what if he had risen at my cries? Six days and seven nights I waited Until a worm crawled out his nose. Since he has gone There is no life left for me.

Dragonflies drift downstream on a river, Their faces staring at the sun, Then, suddenly, there is nothing.

Let us move forward in thought to three thousand years from now. Who knows which books from our period will be saved, and who knows which authors’ names will be remembered. Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as for us the epic of Gilgamesh; others author's names will still be known, but none of their works will survive, as was the case with Socrates; or perhaps, all the surviving books will be attributed to a single, mysterious author, like Homer.

In the Babylonian myth The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh becomes a hero by going into a forest, dark and frightening, and cutting some of it down, admitting light and thereby making it safe.

William Ryan and Walter Pitman, authors of Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History, had spent a half decade using core samples to try to prove that the Black Sea region had undergone a massive flood, which they believed to be the historical origin of the tale of Noah’s ark. The idea of a massive flood wasn’t unique to the Bible, they pointed out. The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in the 18th century B.C., also described a flood that wiped out nearly all living things. The Bible even suggested the location for the flood, stating that the ark ultimately rested on the slopes of Mount Ararat, in northern Turkey, less than 200 miles from the shores of the Black Sea.

David Damrosch’s fabulous masterpiece The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. Irving Finkel’s The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood offers illuminating and helpful insights. I have learned a lot from Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (translated by Stephanie Dalley) and The Epic of Gilgamesh (translated by Andrew George). The lovers of the poem hail from all around the globe and I count myself among them. Gilgamesh Among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic by Theodore Ziolkowski is a fascinating source on the continuing influence and allure of the world’s oldest work of literature.

When the heavenly gods created human beings, they kept everlasting life for themselves and gave us death. So, Gilgamesh, accept your fate. Each day, wash your head, bathe your body, and wear clothes that are sparkling fresh. Fill your stomach with tasty food. Play, sing, dance, and be happy both day and night. Delight in the pleasures that your wife brings you, and cherish the little child who holds your hand. Make every day of your life a feast of rejoicing! This is the task that the gods have set before all human beings. This is the life you should seek, for this is the best life a mortal can hope to achieve.

The description of Ziusudu has also great interest in furnishing us with a close parallel to the piety of Noah in the Hebrew Versions. For in the Gilgamesh Epic and in Berossus this feature of the story is completely absent. We are there given no reason why Ut-napishtim was selected by Ea, nor Xisuthros by Kronos. For all that those versions tell us, the favour of each deity might have been conferred arbitrarily, and not in recognition of, or in response to, any particular quality or action on the part of its recipient. The Sumerian Version now restores the original setting of the story and incidentally proves that, in this particular, the Hebrew Versions have not embroidered a simpler narrative for the purpose of edification, but have faithfully reproduced an original strand of the tradition.

earliest Sumerian and Akkadian texts with geographical information, only the Babylonian map of the world and another text, The Sargon Geography, describe the earth’s surface, and they both picture a central circular continent surrounded by cosmic waters, often referred to as “the circle of the earth.”[88] Other texts like the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, and Egyptian, and Sumerian works share in common with the Babylonian map the notion of mountains at the edge of the earth beyond which is the cosmic sea and the unknown,[89] and from which come “the circle of the four winds” that blow upon the four corners of the earth (a reference to compass points).[90]

After an exhaustive exposition of the epic of Gilgamesh, Jensen sets out to demonstrate 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 (125–58). He goes on for a thousand pages to depict parallels between Gilgamesh and Abraham, Isaac, Samson, David and various other biblical figures and arrives inevitably at Jesus, who turns out to be “nothing but an Israelite Gilgamesh....”1674

In this regard, professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Washington Dr. Brannon M. Wheeler states, “The Muslim exegetical image of Moses in the Quran is linked with ancient Sumerian stories of Gilgamesh...”1678 Wheeler further says: In Muslim exegesis on the episode of Moses at the well of Midian there are several allusions to elements from the Epic of Gilgamesh....