Gilgamesh statue at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Gilgamesh, king of the city of Uruk during the third millennium BC. Gilgamesh sets out on a quest for immortality. In his quest, he finds compassion, friendship, courage, love, and peace.
Gilgamesh (in Akkadian): He is a legendary historical king of the Sumerian state of Uruk, an important hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology, and the main character in the Epic of Gilgamesh (the first epic poem in history, written in Akkadian during the late second millennium BC). He probably ruled for a period of time between 2800 and 2500 BC and deified after his death. Gilgamesh became an important figure in Sumerian mythology during the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112 - 2004 BC). Tales of Gilgamesh's heroic exploits are told in five surviving Sumerian poems. The poem “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Underworld” is the earliest of these poems, in which Gilgamesh helps the goddess Inanna and drives away the creatures that disturb her milkweed tree. Inanna gives him two unknown items called mikku and biku, but Gilgamesh loses them. After Enkidu's death, his ghost tells Gilgamesh about the dismal conditions in the underworld. The poem “Gilgamesh and Agha” describes Gilgamesh’s revolt against his overlord, King Agha. Other Sumerian poems recount Gilgamesh's defeat of the monster Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, and a fifth, much distorted poem, describes Gilgamesh's death and funeral.
In the 19th century, Sir Austen Henry Layard found clay tablets narrating the Epic of Gilgamesh in the 8th-century BC library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. This epic is one of the oldest written stories, and is the basis of many legends and tales.
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