Epic of Gilgamesh
Based on Wikipedia: Epic of Gilgamesh
The Oldest Story Ever Told
Four thousand years ago, someone carved a story into clay tablets. That story survives today. It tells of a king who was two-thirds god and one-third man, his wild companion raised among animals, and their desperate quest to escape death itself.
This is the Epic of Gilgamesh, and it is almost certainly the oldest piece of literature you will ever encounter.
To put this in perspective: when the Epic of Gilgamesh was already ancient, the Trojan War had not yet happened. Homer would not compose the Iliad and the Odyssey for another thousand years. The Hebrew scriptures were centuries away from being written down. Rome was not even a village. And yet here we have a complete narrative arc—friendship, adventure, loss, and the search for meaning—preserved in cuneiform script on baked clay.
A Story Assembled Across Millennia
The epic did not spring into existence fully formed. It grew.
The earliest fragments date to around 2100 BCE, during the Third Dynasty of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia—the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now Iraq. These were Sumerian poems, written in one of humanity's first written languages, telling separate stories about a legendary king named Gilgamesh who ruled the city of Uruk.
Think of these early poems as standalone episodes. They were not yet connected into a single narrative. Over the following centuries, scribes began weaving them together into something more ambitious.
By around 1800 BCE, we have what scholars call the "Old Babylonian" version. This is the first true epic—a unified story with a beginning, middle, and end. Its title comes from its opening words: "Surpassing All Other Kings." Unfortunately, only fragments of this version survive.
The version most people read today came later, compiled sometime between 1300 and 1000 BCE by a scholar-priest named Sin-leqi-unninni. This "Standard Babylonian" version opens with different words: "He Who Saw the Deep"—a reference to the profound wisdom Gilgamesh brings back from his journeys. This version spans twelve clay tablets, and we have recovered roughly two-thirds of the text.
Some of the best-preserved copies were found in the library of Ashurbanipal, an Assyrian king who ruled in the seventh century BCE. Ashurbanipal was a collector. He wanted copies of every important text in his realm, and he got them—including multiple copies of the Gilgamesh epic.
The Discovery That Shook Victorian England
The story of how we recovered this ancient epic is itself remarkable.
In the early 1850s, British archaeologists were excavating the ruins of Nineveh, once the capital of the Assyrian Empire. In the rubble of Ashurbanipal's palace library, they found approximately fifteen thousand fragments of clay tablets covered in cuneiform—the wedge-shaped script used throughout ancient Mesopotamia.
These fragments were shipped back to the British Museum, where they sat for nearly two decades. No one could read them.
Then the museum hired George Smith, a self-taught Assyriologist who had learned cuneiform in his spare time while working as an engraver. Smith began piecing together the tablets like a vast three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, matching broken edges and deciphering the ancient script.
In 1872, Smith made an announcement that electrified Victorian society.
He had found a flood story. A massive, world-destroying flood, survived by one man and his family who built a boat and saved the animals. The parallels to the biblical story of Noah were unmistakable—except this version was older. Much older.
The implications were explosive. Here was independent confirmation of the flood narrative, but from a pagan source that predated the Hebrew scriptures. Religious scholars, historians, and the general public were fascinated and troubled in equal measure.
Smith published his translations in 1875 and 1876, titling the work "The Chaldaean Account of Genesis." Initially, he could not pronounce the hero's name—the cuneiform logographs were ambiguous—so he called him "Izdubar." Only later did scholars work out the correct pronunciation: Gilgamesh.
The Tyrant King of Uruk
The epic opens with Gilgamesh already on the throne of Uruk, one of the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia. He is magnificent: stronger, more beautiful, and more capable than any ordinary human. This makes sense, given his divine parentage—his mother is the goddess Ninsun, and he is described as two-thirds god and one-third man.
But Gilgamesh is a terrible king.
The text is damaged in places, but the accusations are clear enough. He forces the young men of Uruk into exhausting labors—perhaps construction projects, perhaps endless athletic competitions. Worse, he claims the right to sleep with brides on their wedding nights before their husbands can.
The people of Uruk cry out to the gods for relief. Their king is too strong, too restless, too much. Someone needs to match him, to absorb his destructive energy, to give him a worthy opponent.
The gods respond by creating Enkidu.
The Wild Man
Enkidu is not born in the usual way. The gods shape him from clay and set him down in the wilderness. He is covered in shaggy hair. He runs with the gazelles. He drinks at watering holes alongside wild animals. He knows nothing of civilization—no cooked food, no beer, no cities, no laws.
A trapper encounters Enkidu at a watering hole and is terrified. This wild man has been freeing animals from his traps, ruining his livelihood. The trapper goes to his father for advice, and together they devise a plan.
They will send Shamhat, a temple prostitute, to seduce Enkidu and tame him.
This is not presented as degrading in the ancient text. Temple prostitutes held sacred roles in Mesopotamian religion, serving the goddess Ishtar. Shamhat's task is civilizing, even holy: she will transform Enkidu from an animal into a man.
She succeeds dramatically. After six days and seven nights of lovemaking (some scholars argue it was actually two weeks), Enkidu tries to return to his animal companions. They flee from him in terror. Something fundamental has changed. He can no longer run as fast. He no longer belongs to the wild.
Enkidu is devastated by this loss. But Shamhat consoles him with a striking phrase: "Do not grieve. You now have knowledge, like the gods."
The echo of Genesis is hard to miss. Knowledge comes with exile from paradise. Civilization is gained at the cost of innocence.
Becoming Human
Shamhat takes Enkidu to a shepherd's camp, where his education continues. He must learn everything that defines human life.
First, his appearance. The shepherds cut his wild hair and anoint him with oil. He puts on clothes for the first time.
Then, the basics of human consumption. Enkidu has never eaten bread—he has been grazing on grass like the animals he lived among. He has never tasted beer, that essential Mesopotamian beverage. At first he does not understand what to do with either. But he learns to eat bread and drink beer, and the text tells us he drinks seven jugs of it. His heart becomes glad. He sings.
Enkidu becomes the night watchman for the shepherds, protecting their flocks from lions and wolves. He has found a place in human society. But he is restless. When a passing stranger mentions the injustices committed by Gilgamesh in Uruk, Enkidu is outraged.
He travels to the city to confront the king.
The Fight and the Friendship
The confrontation happens at a wedding. Gilgamesh is approaching the bridal chamber to exercise his royal prerogative when Enkidu physically blocks his path.
They fight.
The struggle is titanic. They grapple through the streets of Uruk, shattering doorposts and shaking walls. The city trembles around them. For the first time in his life, Gilgamesh has met someone who can match his strength.
In the end, Gilgamesh wins—but barely. And something unexpected happens. Rather than destroying his opponent, Gilgamesh embraces him. Enkidu acknowledges Gilgamesh's superiority, but the acknowledgment creates no bitterness. Instead, they become inseparable friends.
This is the emotional core of the epic. Everything that follows—the adventures, the tragedy, the quest for immortality—flows from this friendship. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are not just companions. They complete each other. The king who had too much energy now has a channel for it. The wild man who lost his animal family has found a brother.
The Cedar Forest
Almost immediately, Gilgamesh proposes an adventure. He wants to travel to the legendary Cedar Forest, kill its monstrous guardian Humbaba, and cut down the sacred cedar trees. This will bring him eternal fame. His name will be remembered forever.
The council of elders tries to dissuade him. Enkidu, who apparently knows something of Humbaba, warns that the monster's roar is a flood, his breath is fire, and his jaws are death. The goddess Ninsun, Gilgamesh's mother, is worried enough to formally adopt Enkidu as her son, giving him divine protection.
None of this matters. Gilgamesh is determined.
The journey takes many days. At each camp along the way, Gilgamesh performs a dream ritual, and the dreams he receives are terrifying: falling mountains, thunderstorms, wild bulls, a fire-breathing bird. Enkidu interprets each dream as a good omen, perhaps because the alternative is too frightening to contemplate.
When they finally reach the Cedar Forest, they hear Humbaba bellowing in the distance. Both heroes are afraid. They must encourage each other to continue.
The Battle with Humbaba
Humbaba is no ordinary monster. He was appointed by the god Enlil himself to guard the cedar forest. He has seven layers of terrifying radiance. When he speaks, he mocks Enkidu as a traitor—a creature who has abandoned his wild origins to serve a human king.
The battle shakes the mountains. The sky turns black. Just when it seems the heroes might lose, the sun god Shamash intervenes, sending thirteen winds to bind Humbaba and render him helpless.
Humbaba, now captured, begs for his life. He offers to serve Gilgamesh, to cut down the cedar trees himself, to be the king's slave. Gilgamesh, surprisingly, is moved by this plea. He considers mercy.
Enkidu argues against it. If they let Humbaba live, he will surely take revenge. More importantly, Gilgamesh set out to establish his eternal reputation. That requires killing the monster, not befriending it.
Gilgamesh is persuaded. He strikes off Humbaba's head. He and Enkidu cut down the great cedars, including a massive tree that Enkidu plans to make into a door for the temple of Enlil. They build a raft and float home down the Euphrates, carrying the timber and (possibly) Humbaba's head as a trophy.
The Goddess Scorned
When Gilgamesh returns to Uruk in triumph, he catches the eye of Ishtar, the goddess of love and war. She proposes marriage. She offers him a chariot of gold and lapis lazuli, a palace where kings will bow down before him, goats that bear triplets and donkeys that outrun mules.
Gilgamesh refuses. Brutally.
He catalogs her previous lovers and what happened to each of them. Tammuz, her youth's companion—she condemned him to weep forever. The speckled shepherd bird—she broke its wing. The lion—she dug pits for him. The horse—she drove him with whip and spur. The shepherd—she turned him into a wolf, so his own dogs attacked him. Her father's gardener—she turned him into a spider.
"And how would you treat me?" Gilgamesh asks.
Ishtar is furious. She goes to her father Anu, king of the gods, and demands revenge. She wants him to send the Bull of Heaven to destroy Gilgamesh. When Anu hesitates, she threatens to break down the gates of the underworld and release the dead to devour the living—"the dead will outnumber the living."
Anu relents. He gives her the Bull of Heaven.
The Bull of Heaven
The Bull of Heaven is a cosmic catastrophe in animal form. When it snorts, the earth cracks open and hundreds of young men fall into the chasm. With each breath, it kills.
Enkidu seizes it by the horns. Gilgamesh plunges his sword into its neck. Together, they kill the divine beast.
But they do not stop there. When Ishtar appears on the walls of Uruk to curse them, Enkidu tears off the Bull of Heaven's hindquarter and hurls it at her face. "If I could catch you," he shouts, "I would do the same to you!"
The city celebrates. Gilgamesh displays the massive horns, which hold seventy-two pounds of lapis lazuli each. The craftsmen marvel at them. The king washes his hair and puts on his finest robes.
But the gods are watching. And they are not pleased.
The Sentence of Death
The gods hold a council. Gilgamesh and Enkidu have killed Humbaba, the guardian of the sacred cedars. They have killed the Bull of Heaven. They have insulted Ishtar, one of the most powerful goddesses. Someone must pay.
Enlil declares that Enkidu must die.
Shamash objects—he helped them kill Humbaba; how can they now condemn one of them? But Enlil is unmoved. The sentence stands.
That night, Enkidu has a dream. He sees the underworld: the House of Dust, where the dead wear feathers like birds, where they sit in darkness, and where dust is their food and clay their bread. He sees the kings and priests and prophets who have gone before, all reduced to the same miserable condition.
Enkidu falls ill. For twelve days, he weakens. He curses the trapper who first found him, and Shamhat who civilized him. If not for them, he would still be running free with the animals, innocent and immortal.
But Shamash speaks to him from heaven. Would you really trade everything? The fine food you have eaten, the fine clothes you have worn, the friendship of Gilgamesh? Is your brother not mourning for you even now?
Enkidu relents. He blesses Shamhat. And then he dies.
The Grief of Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh's grief is absolute.
He refuses to believe Enkidu is dead. He sits by the body for six days and seven nights, waiting for some sign of life. Only when a worm falls from Enkidu's nostril does he finally accept the truth.
He tears out his hair. He tears off his royal robes. He wanders into the wilderness wearing animal skins, looking like the wild man Enkidu once was.
But this is not just grief. It is terror. For the first time in his life, Gilgamesh understands that he too will die. He has always known this intellectually—he is one-third mortal, after all. But watching his friend decay has made death real to him in a way it never was before.
"Shall I not die like Enkidu?" he cries. "Sorrow has entered my heart. I am afraid of death."
He decides to do something about it. He will find Utnapishtim, the one human being who was granted eternal life, and learn his secret.
The Journey to Utnapishtim
Utnapishtim lives beyond the edge of the world. To reach him, Gilgamesh must pass through the mountains where the sun sets each night—a journey no mortal has ever made.
He encounters scorpion-people, terrifying guardians whose aura is death. They recognize him as partly divine and let him pass. He enters the mountain tunnel where the sun travels during the night, walking twelve leagues in total darkness before emerging into a garden of jeweled trees—carnelian fruit, lapis lazuli leaves, a dazzling vision that he barely notices because he is so focused on his goal.
He meets Siduri, a divine tavern-keeper who lives by the sea at the edge of the world. She tries to dissuade him. "Gilgamesh, where are you wandering? The life you seek you will never find. When the gods created mankind, they appointed death for mankind and kept life in their own keeping."
She tells him to enjoy the life he has: eat good food, wear fine clothes, dance, play with his children, cherish his wife. These are the proper concerns of humanity.
Gilgamesh is not interested. He wants to cross the waters of death to reach Utnapishtim.
Siduri directs him to Urshanabi, the ferryman. After a complicated journey involving the mysterious "Stone Things" (commentators still debate what these were), Gilgamesh finally reaches the far shore and stands before the immortal man.
The Flood Survivor
Utnapishtim is not what Gilgamesh expected. He looks like an ordinary old man. He does not tower. He does not glow. He simply sits.
"Why are you so strange?" Gilgamesh asks. "You look just like me. I expected you to be ready to fight, but you just lie there on your back."
Utnapishtim explains that his immortality was a unique gift, granted for a specific reason that will never recur. Long ago, the gods decided to destroy humanity with a flood. But the god Ea warned Utnapishtim in secret, telling him to build a boat and fill it with "the seed of all living things."
Utnapishtim built the boat. The flood came. For six days and seven nights, the storm raged so fiercely that even the gods were frightened. When the waters finally receded, Utnapishtim's boat came to rest on a mountain. He sent out a dove, which returned. He sent out a swallow, which returned. Finally he sent out a raven, which did not return—it had found dry land.
When Utnapishtim emerged and made offerings to the gods, they gathered around the smoke "like flies." The goddess Ishtar swore by her lapis lazuli necklace never to forget these days. And Enlil, who had decreed the flood, was eventually persuaded to grant Utnapishtim and his wife eternal life as compensation for what they had endured.
But this was a one-time event. There will be no second flood. No one will call an assembly of gods to grant Gilgamesh immortality.
The Cruel Test
Utnapishtim offers Gilgamesh a chance to prove he deserves eternal life. "You want to live forever? Then simply stay awake for six days and seven nights."
It should be easy. Gilgamesh has just crossed the waters of death. He has walked through twelve leagues of darkness. Surely he can stay awake for a week.
He cannot. Sleep falls on him immediately, "like a fog." He sleeps for six days straight.
Utnapishtim's wife bakes a loaf of bread each day and sets it beside him as proof. When Gilgamesh wakes, he sees the seven loaves in various states of decay—the first dried out and moldy, the last still fresh from the oven.
The lesson is brutal. If you cannot even defeat sleep, how can you hope to defeat death?
The Plant of Rejuvenation
As Gilgamesh prepares to leave in despair, Utnapishtim's wife takes pity on him. She persuades her husband to give the king something for his trouble.
Utnapishtim reveals a secret: there is a plant at the bottom of the sea that can restore youth. It will not grant immortality, but it will reverse aging. Its name is "The Old Man Becomes Young."
Gilgamesh ties stones to his feet and sinks to the ocean floor. The plant pricks his hands like thorns, but he seizes it and cuts the stones free, rising back to the surface.
He tells Urshanabi the ferryman that he will take this plant back to Uruk. He will test it first on an old man, and if it works, he will eat it himself and regain his youth.
On the journey home, Gilgamesh stops to bathe in a cool pool. A snake smells the plant's fragrance, slithers up, and eats it. Immediately, the snake sheds its skin and is renewed.
Gilgamesh sits down and weeps. All that effort. All that suffering. And in the end, a snake gets the prize.
The Return to Uruk
Gilgamesh returns to Uruk empty-handed. No immortality. No youth. Just the walls of his city rising in the distance.
And here the epic does something remarkable. It circles back to its opening lines.
Gilgamesh turns to Urshanabi and says: "Look at these walls. Look at this brickwork. Is not the core made of fired brick? Did not the Seven Sages themselves lay the foundations?"
He describes the city's dimensions: one square mile of city, one square mile of orchards, one square mile of clay pits, plus the temple of Ishtar. Three square miles and a temple.
These are almost exactly the words that open the epic. The story ends where it began, with Gilgamesh contemplating his city.
But something has changed. At the beginning, the walls of Uruk were presented as evidence of Gilgamesh's greatness—look what this hero built. Now, after everything, they represent something different. They are the immortality Gilgamesh actually achieved. Not eternal life, but enduring work. Not escaping death, but leaving something behind that outlasts it.
The Twelfth Tablet
The Standard Babylonian version includes a twelfth tablet that most scholars consider a later addition. It does not fit the narrative arc of the first eleven tablets. Where the main epic ends with hard-won acceptance, this appendix returns to questions of death and the underworld.
In this tablet, Enkidu—somehow alive again, or perhaps this story takes place earlier—descends to the underworld to retrieve some objects that Gilgamesh has lost. He breaks several rules about how to behave there and is trapped. Eventually his ghost is permitted to rise and speak with Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh asks him what the underworld is like. Enkidu's answers are grim. The dead who have many sons fare best; those with few sons are miserable; those with no sons are worst of all. The stillborn child plays at a golden table, while the man who died in battle has his head cradled in his parents' laps.
It is a strange ending—or perhaps a strange appendix—that undercuts some of the resolution of the main narrative. Many modern translations simply omit it.
Why It Still Matters
The Epic of Gilgamesh asks the questions that every human being eventually faces. What is friendship worth? What do we do with the knowledge that we will die? How should we live if we cannot live forever?
The answers the epic offers are not comforting in any simple way. The gods created death, and they kept life for themselves. You will not find immortality. You will not even stay awake for a week.
But you can build walls. You can have friends. You can do work that outlasts you. You can tell stories, and if you tell them well enough, people will still be telling them four thousand years later.
The influence of Gilgamesh on later literature is immense and only partially understood. The flood story clearly shares a source with the biblical narrative of Noah, though scholars debate whether one borrowed from the other or both drew from an older common tradition. The heroic friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu echoes in Achilles and Patroclus, in David and Jonathan. The journey to the underworld appears in countless later epics, from the Odyssey to the Aeneid to Dante's Inferno.
But influence aside, the epic endures because it speaks to something permanent in human experience. We still seek immortality—in our work, our children, our fame, our religions. We still grieve our friends. We still ask why we must die when we so desperately want to live.
The clay tablets crumble, but the questions remain.