Epic
The Sumerian Poems of Gilgamesh
Bilgamesh
Anonymous · -2100
Synopsis
Five independent Sumerian poems about Bilgamesh, king of Uruk. He stands up to Akka, king of Kish, who is besieging his city; he sets out with his servant Enkidu for the cedar mountain to face Huwawa; he rejects the advances of Inanna, who obtains the Bull of Heaven from the god An to kill him; he loses two objects in the underworld which Enkidu goes down to fetch; a final poem shows him facing his own death.
Context
These poems did not form a continuous epic but separate narratives, whose composition probably dates to the Third Dynasty of Ur, around 2100 BCE, perhaps within the circle of the court poets, at a time when kings called themselves brothers of Gilgamesh. They have reached us through partial copies from the scribal schools of the Old Babylonian period, around 1800-1700, at Nippur and Ur. Several episodes passed into the epic in Akkadian, and the twelfth tablet of the standard version translates the second part of the poem of Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld.
Who it is for
Five short, fragmentary poems, known from school copies; they are read in English after the epic, in Andrew George's translation.
Prizes and reception
The earliest known state of the Gilgamesh legend, whose standard version took up and transformed several episodes.