Gilgamesh Quotes

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.

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.

The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion

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?

I like places like this," he announced. I like old places too," Josh said, "but what's to like about a place like this?" The king spread his arms wide. "What do you see?" Josh made a face. "Junk. Rusted tractor, broken plow, old bike." Ahh...but I see a tractor that was once used to till these fields. I see the plow it once pulled. I see a bicycle carefully placed out of harm's way under a table." Josh slowly turned again, looking at the items once more. And i see these things and I wonder at the life of the person who carefully stored the precious tractor and plow in the barn out of the weather, and placed their bike under a homemade table." Why do you wonder?" Josh asked. "Why is it even important?" Because someone has to remember," Gilgamesh snapped, suddenly irritated. "Some one has to remember the human who rode the bike and drove the tractor, the person who tilled the fields, who was born and lived and died, who loved and laughed and cried, the person who shivered in the cold and sweated in the sun." He walked around the barn again, touching each item, until his palm were red with rust." It is only when no one remembers, that you are truely lost. That is the true death.

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.

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.

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.

Gilgamesh said to him, to Utnapishtim the remote, "What can I do, Utnapishtim? Where can I go? A thief has stolen my flesh. Death lives in the house where my bed is, and wherever I set my feet, there Death is.

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...

Ancient moon priestesses were called virgins. ‘Virgin’ meant not married, not belong to a man - a woman who was ‘one-in-herself’. The very word derives from a Latin root meaning strength, force, skill; and was later applied to men: virle. Ishtar, Diana, Astarte, Isis were all all called virgin, which did not refer to sexual chasity, but sexual independence. And all great culture heroes of the past…, mythic or historic, were said to be born of virgin mothers: Marduk, Gilgamesh, Buddha, Osiris, Dionysus, Genghis Khan, Jesus - they were all affirmed as sons of the Great Mother, of the Original One, their worldly power deriving from her. When the Hebrews used the word, and in the original Aramaic, it meant ‘maiden’ or ‘young woman’, with no connotations to sexual chasity. But later Christian translators could not conceive of the ‘Virgin Mary’ as a woman of independent sexuality, needless to say; they distorted the meaning into sexually pure, chaste, never touched. When Joan of Arc, with her witch coven associations, was called La Pucelle - ‘the Maiden,’ ‘the Virgin’ - the word retained some of its original pagan sense of a strong and independent woman. The Moon Goddess was worshipped in orgiastic rites, being the divinity of matriarchal women free to take as many lovers as they choose. Women could ‘surrender’ themselves to the Goddess by making love to a stranger in her temple.

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.

When there’s no way out, you just follow the way in front of you.

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.

We can’t accept things as they are, so long as we think that things should be different. Tell us how not to believe what we think, and then maybe we’ll be able to hear.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Children in the future were going to insist my adventures were too outlandish—and therefore I wasn’t an actual historical person, but one that was obviously made up, like Gilgamesh or David Bowie.

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

Tarvek: "You call that 'throwing?'" Gilgamesh: "Hey, at least I got his hat!

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.

For being human holds a special grief Of privacy within the universe That yearns and waits to be retouched By someone who can take away The memory of death.

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.

Choose to live and choose to love; choose to rise above and give back what you yourself were given.

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.

How come you write the way you do?” an apprentice writer in my Johns Hopkins workshop once disingenuously asked Donald Barthelme, who was visiting. Without missing a beat, Don replied, “Because Samuel Beckett was already writing the way he does.” Asked another, smiling but serious, “How can we become better writers than we are?” “Well," DB advised, “for starters, read through the whole history of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics up through last semester. That might help.” “But Coach Barth has already advised us to read all of literature, from Gilgamesh up through last semester...” “That, too,” Donald affirmed, and twinkled that shrewd Amish-farmer-from-West-11th-Street twinkle of his. “You’re probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics and a few other things. The history of everything.

I wanted it so much. So much sometimes it felt like I couldn't breathe. Sometimes I would cry, not because I was sad, but because it hurt, physical pain from the intensity of wanting something so much. I'm a good student of philosophy, I know my Stoics, Cynics, their advice, that, when a desire is so intense it hurts you, the healthy path is to detach, unwant it, let it go. The healthy thing for the self. But there are a lot of reasons one can want to be an author: acclaim, wealth, self-respect, finding a community, the finite immortality of name in print, so many more. But I wanted it to add my voice to the Great Conversation, to reply to Diderot, Voltaire, Osamu Tezuka, and Alfred Bester, so people would read my books and think new things, and make new things from those thoughts, my little contribution to the path which flows from Gilgamesh and Homer to the stars. And that isn't just for me. It's for you. Which means it was the right choice to hang on to the desire, even when it hurt so much.

Ishtar was outraged. She climbed to the top of Uruk’s great wall, she writhed in grief and wailed, “Not only did Gilgamesh slander me-now the brute has killed his own punishment, the Bull of Heaven.

Look for the copper tablet-box, Undo its bronze lock, Open the door to its secret, Lift out the lapis lazuli tablet and read it, The story of that man, Gilgamesh, who went through all kinds of sufferings.

الواقعية تقود إلى التشاؤم في دول العالم الثالث.

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

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.

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.

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.

He flicked through the yellowed rough-cut pages and breathed its musty smell. It filled him with a strange excitement, as if he'd caught a whiff of ancient, buried cities.

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?

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.

Gilgamesh's sperm! That is the true treasure . . . YOU CAN CREATE THE WORLD'S MIGHTIEST ARMY BY USING HIS SPERM!

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?

The hard things break. The soft things bend. The stubborn ones batter themselves against all that is immovable. The flexible adapt to what is before them. Of course, we are all hard and soft, stubborn and flexible, and so we all break until we learn to bend and are battered until we accept what is before us. This brings to mind the Sumerian tale of Gilgamesh, the stubborn, hard king who sought to ask the Immortal One the secret of life. He was told that there would be stones on his path to guide him. But in his urgency and pride, Gilgamesh was annoyed to find his path blocked, and so smashed the very stones that would help him. In his blindness of heart, he broke everything he needed to discover his way. With the same confusion, we too break what we need, push away those we love, and isolate ourselves when we need to be held most. There have been many times in my life when I have been too proud to ask for help or too afraid to ask to be held, and in the frenzy of my own isolation, like Gilgamesh, I have smashed the window I was trying to open, have split the bench I was trying to hammer, and have made matters worse by bruising the one I meant to be tender with. The live bough bends. The dead twig snaps. We are humbled to soften from our griefs, or else, in brittle time, become the next thing grieved.

and Enkidu shows up like “Dude what the hell are you doing? WANNA BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER INSTEAD?” And Gilgamesh is like “YESSSS.” so they punch at each other until they get tired of gargling their own teeth and then decide to be BFFs. I am not a scientist, but this may be why women live longer than men.

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.

My pain is that my eyes and ears No longer see and hear the same As yours do. Your eyes have changed. You are crying. You never cried before. It’s not like you. Why am I to die, You to wander on alone? Is that the way it is with friends?

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.

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

Evil people can still keep promises. Many have done just that, girl, though they are usually not promises you ‘rational’ people wish them to keep.

للفراغ الداخلي ألم رهيب، كأن شيئاً ما يأكل قلبك أو داخلك بقسوة ويترك جسدك خالياً بلا روح، كأنه استبدال الألم لكل كيانك واستيطانه في أعماقك عوضاً عن ذاتك.

ليس الانطباع الأول عميقاً أبداً إلى درجة تسمح لنا بأن نحكم على ما سينتهي إليه الأمر في نهاية المطاف.

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

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

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.

That was the day I knew. It was as if Rolls met Royce, Black met Decker, Oliver met Stan, TinTin met Snowy, Marks met Spencer... he was to me what Patracolus was to Achilles, Hylas to Hercules, Enkidoe to Gilgamesh, Jonathan to David, Bosie to Oscar Wilde, Rimbaud to Verlaine. He was my Billy Budd, all the holy multitude of Thebes, Jasjoe mixed with Tadzio...

وحدهم الأطفال يحبّون من دون سبب سوى تبادل الحب مع من أحبهم، وهم وحدهم من يشعرون بمن يكن لهم المحبة بدون كلمات أو أزهار أو قصائد. لأنهم وحدهم من يعرف نقاء الحب الحقيقي الذي لا يبتغي شيئاً أبداً.

ثالوث الوعي يتألف من علم الفيزياء والفلك أولاً، والبيولوجيا ثانياً، وعلم الآثار والتاريخ ثالثاً، حيث تساهم هذه الثلاثة في كشف الكثير من الزيف الذي يحيط بهذا العالم ويكاد يغرقه فيه منذ آلاف السنين.

الانتظار، ذلك الملك الذي يحكم حياة الكثيرين منّا، وغالباً ما يخفي وراءه لا شيء. مجرد ستارة كثيفة وبليدة ومملة لا يمكن أن نفتحها بأنفسنا أبداً، لتفتح من تلقاء نفسها عندما يحين الوقت المناسب الذي لا يعلمه أحد.

He looked at the younger man Who had come into his consciousness. Youth is very Cruel to an old face, He said in a hushed voice. It looks into its lines for wisdom So touchingly But there is nothing there to find. Gilgamesh wanted to reach out to tell him He was wrong, sensing suddenly the hours One might spend alone in contemplating oldness As he himself had spent alone in his spoiled youth, Seeing nothing there but time.

It could go on for years and years, And has, for centuries, For being human holds a special grief Of privacy within the universe That yearns and waits to be retouched By someone who can take away The memory of death.

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?

We are not exactly sure what we are growing toward, but we compensate for this shortcoming by accelerating.

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

كنتُ كالطائر المذبوح وهو يرفرف بجناحيه مؤدياً رقصة الموت، كنتُ أخطو بقدمي على جراحاتي وآلامي كرقصة البجعة الأخيرة وهي تبكي حياتها في هدوء ملكي وتبتهج للقاء الإله أبولو.

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

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.

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.

He entered the city asked a blind man if he had ever heard the name Enkidu, and the old man shrugged and shook his head, then turned away, as if to say, ‘It is impossible to keep the names of friends whom we have lost

Shamash grant your wish. What your mouth has said, may your eyes see. May he open for you the barred path, unclose the road for your footsteps, unlock the mountain for your foot. May the night give you things that please you, and may Lugalbanda stand beside you and satisfy your wish. May you be granted your wish as a child is.

الفرص لا تتكرر أبداً، هي تأتي مرة واحدة فقط، كقطار يسير على سكّة مستقيمة أزلية، مستقيم في علم الرياضيات الحديثة بلا بداية ولا نهاية وحياتنا جزء منها والفرصة تمرّ مرة واحدة في الغالب، وقد لا تأتي ووحدهم المحظوظون تزورهم الفرص مراراً وتكراراً.

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.

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.

The creature touched me and suddenly feathers covered my arms, he bound them behind me and forced me down to the underworld, the house of darkness, the home of the dead, where all who enter never return to the sweet earth again. Those who dwell there squat in the darkness, dirt is their food, their drink is clay, they are dressed in feathered garments like birds, they never see light, and on door and bolt the dust lies thick. When I entered that house, I looked, and around me were piles of crowns, I saw proud kings who had ruled the land, who had set out roast meat before the gods and offered cool water and cakes for the dead.

His life had been punctuated by horrible awakenings, in and out of cold sleep as the ark ship conducted its centuries-long odyssey. Each time he had found himself in another time, another world, less fit for human habitation. That was what the nightmares were about: not the cold itself, which was only a trigger. Not even that he might not wake, though that had been a real possibility with the Gilgamesh’s failing life support. He feared waking once more into a world he didn’t understand, where everyone else had rushed ahead and left him behind.

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

I was its king once, a long time ago, when the great gods decided to send the Flood. Five gods decided, and they took an oath to keep the plan secret: Anu their father, the counselor Enlil, Ninurta the gods’ chamberlain, and Ennugi the sheriff. Ea also, the cleverest of the gods, had taken the oath, but I heard him whisper the secret to the reed fence around my house. ‘Reed fence, reed fence, listen to my words. King of Shuruppak, quickly, quickly tear down your house and build a great ship, leave your possessions, save your life. The ship must be square, so that its length equals its width. Build a roof over it, just as the Great Deep is covered by the earth. Then gather and take aboard the ship examples of every living creature.

The struggle between good and evil / is the primal disease of the mind,” wrote the sixth-century Zen master Seng-ts’an, who knew what he was talking about. It is all too easy to see ourselves as fighting on God’s side, to identify our ideology with what is best for the world and use it to justify crusades, pogroms, or preemptive attacks. Projecting evil onto the world makes me unassailably right—a position as dangerous in politics as in marriage.

This culture destroys landbases. That's what it does. When you think of Iraq, is the first thing that comes to mind cedar forests so thick that sunlight never touched the ground? One of the first written myths of this culture is about Gilgamesh deforesting the hills and valleys of Iraq to build a great city. The Arabian Peninsula used to be oak savannah. The Near East was heavily forested (we've all heard of the cedars of Lebanon). Greece was heavily forested. North Africa was heavily forested. We'll say it again: this culture destroys landbases. And it won't stop doing so because we ask nicely.

Why would I want to be the lover of a broken oven that fails in the cold, a flimsy door that the wind blows through, a palace that falls on its staunchest defenders, a mouse that gnaws through its thin reed shelter, tar that blackens the workman’s hands, a waterskin that is full of holes and leaks all over its bearer, a piece of limestone that crumbles and undermines a solid stone wall, a battering ram that knocks down the rampart of an allied city, a shoe that mangles its owner’s foot?

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.

لا تقل بأن الموت أصاب كل شيء. ها أنت هنا، تقرأ لتثبت بأنه لا تزال هناك براعم صالحة. من المستحيل أن ينتصر الموت على إرادة الحياة، نحن نهزم عندما نستسلم فقط! في وسط ذلك الرعب كانت هناك ملالا لتقول لهم بأنها ستقاتل من أجل أن تدرس وتعلم الأخريات من الفتيات المحبات للحياة. وسط الركام والأنقاض هناك بذور صالحة ستنبت من جديد في الوقت المناسب.

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.

Shamhat, I assign you a different fate, my mouth that cursed you will bless you now. May you be adored by nobles and princes, two miles away from you may your lover tremble with excitement, one mile away may he bite his lip in anticipation, may the warrior long to be naked beside you, may Ishtar give you generous lovers whose treasure chests brim with jewels and gold, may the mother of seven be abandoned for your sake.

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.

According to Plato, a hierarchy of being and a hierarchy of knowledge exist, knowledge of ideas rests at the top, while at the bottom lies knowledge of trickery, illusions, shadows dancing on cave walls. By the way, mathematical knowledge is not in the highest position; philosophical knowledge is. Mathematics can’t describe the whole truth—even if we were to describe the entire world in precise mathematical equations, we would not have full knowledge.

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!

Her words still filled his mind As they started their journey, Just as a mother’s voice is heard Sometimes in a man’s mind Long past childhood Calling his name, calling him from sleep Or from some pleasureful moment On a foreign street When every trace of origin seems left And one has almost passed into a land That promises a vision or the secret Of one’s life, when one feels almost god enough To be free of voices, her voice Calls out like a voice from childhood, Reminding him he once tossed in dreams.

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.

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

How long will the Gilgamesh Project – the quest for immortality – take to complete? A hundred years? Five hundred years? A thousand years? When we recall how little we knew about the human body in 1900, and how much knowledge we have gained in a single century, there is cause for optimism. Genetic engineers have recently managed to double the average life expectancy of Caenorhabditis elegans worms.12 Could they do the same for Homo sapiens? Nanotechnology experts are developing a bionic immune system composed of millions of nano-robots, who would inhabit our bodies, open blocked blood vessels, fight viruses and bacteria, eliminate cancerous cells and even reverse ageing processes.13 A few serious scholars suggest that by 2050, some humans will become a-mortal (not immortal, because they could still die of some accident, but a-mortal, meaning that in the absence of fatal trauma their lives could be extended indefinitely). Whether or not Project Gilgamesh succeeds, from a historical perspective it is fascinating to see that most late-modern religions and ideologies have already taken death and the afterlife out of the equation. Until the eighteenth century, religions considered death and its aftermath central to the meaning of life. Beginning in the eighteenth century, religions and ideologies such as liberalism, socialism and feminism lost all interest in the afterlife. What, exactly, happens to a Communist after he or she dies? What happens to a capitalist? What happens to a feminist? It is pointless to look for the answer in the writings of Marx, Adam Smith or Simone de Beauvoir. The only modern ideology that still awards death a central role is nationalism. In its more poetic and desperate moments, nationalism promises that whoever dies for the nation will for ever live in its collective memory. Yet this promise is so fuzzy that even most nationalists do not really know what to make of it. The