The Epic of Gilgamesh in Outline

Context

• The Epic of Gilgamesh is probably the world oldest written story, from the world’s first civilization, called Sumer, and with fragments of clay tablets that relate the story dating back to about 2500 BCE. The final version of the story appears to have been in existence by 612 BCE, where it was discovered in the library of Nineveh. (Apparently Act 5 was dropped into the story relatively late).
• The epic is (very) loosely based on a true story: Gilgamesh was a real king in the Sumerian city of Uruk, and he lived roughly a hundred years before his stories started to turn into legend. He probably had a tremendous impact on Sumer in his day, since a hundred years is, relatively speaking, a very short time for a person’s exploits to become mythologized.
• While it’s clear that most of the story here is untrue, it could very well be that Gilgamesh did set off to the forest of Lebanon (see Act 2); the cedars there were famous throughout the ancient Near East for building, and other accounts of Uruk from this time period describe its beautiful wooden walls, a rarity in that part of the world.
• While the field of psychology will not be invented for more than four millennia after Gilgamesh’s myth is first written down, it is rife with psychological insight. Gilgamesh fears death and being forgotten, and will go at extreme lengths to have humanity remember his name. Especially upon losing his friend, Gilgamesh and his grief drive him to go even further than this and to actually try to find a way to live forever.
• Gilgamesh is a threat to our culture’s definition of a hero. We typically claim that a hero is one who sacrifices selflessly for others, but Gilgamesh does almost nothing for others; he seeks only his own immortality. How do we explain a person like this as humanity’s first recorded hero?
• Gilgamesh’s story in its final form neatly subdivides its plot into six sections, which are here called acts. Each could theoretically function as a story in its own right, but each act builds tension toward the overall quest to defeat mortality.

Act 1: Gilgamesh & Enkidu

• Behold Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, one of the greatest men who ever lived. One third mortal and two thirds divine, he was the son of the great king Lugulbanda, and his ambition knew no end.
• Gilgamesh does not leave the sons of men alone, nor the daughters of the warriors. He sleeps with the daughters of the warriors on their wedding nights, and the people cry aloud to Anu.
• Anu bears the messages to the gods, and the Annunaki set themselves against Gilgamesh. To counter his great strength they create his match in Enkidu.
• Enkidu, a beast of a man, lives in the wild; no animals flee from him as they do other men. He drinks the water from the stream and announces he will come to Uruk to fight Gilgamesh.
• Learning this, hunters bring Gilgamesh the news that his match will come. Knowing he must tame the wild beast in Enkidu, he sends to him the prostitute Shamhat who lays with Enkidu six days and seven nights.
• When Enkidu comes out of his reverie with Shamhat, he finds the animals flee him as they do other men—he has been civilized. He has been diminished. Furious, he comes to Uruk to fight Gilgamesh to the death.
• The battle between these two shakes the city and threatens to overturn it. As Enkidu throws Gilgamesh to the ground, Gilgamesh looks away and Enkidu realizes the kingship was given to Gilgamesh. Lifting each other to their feet, the two make a pact to be the closest of friends.
• The gods have been foiled; Gilgamesh has bested them.

Act 2: The Giant in the Forest of Lebanon

• Gilgamesh is unhappy, afraid of death and anxious no one will remember him after he dies. He looks to Enkidu and declares his intention: he will travel to the cedars of Lebanon to battle Humbaba, the Giant Hugeness, and by defeating him make a name for himself that will last all of time.
• Enkidu protests and cautions this is unwise, but he will not separate from his friend. The duo leave Uruk and travel upriver, far away to where the giant Humbaba lived.
• Coming to the forest of Lebanon, they behold Humbaba among the cedars. He is a king of the forest, representative of the gods, sitting on a throne of trees with lions at his feet like cats. Gilgamesh begins his fight; Enkidu hangs back, still uncertain that Gilgamesh is doing right.
• The battle shakes the forest and splits Lebanon. Eventually Gilgamesh holds Humbaba at bay, ready to deliver the killing stroke. Humbaba cleverly sees that Enkidu has held back, and appeals to him that Enkidu might intercede with Gilgamesh to let Humbaba live.
• At this, Enkidu chooses his friend over the representative of the gods, and urgest Gilgamesh to strike. The king of Uruk slays Humbaba, and the gods are foiled again.

Act 3: Ishtar and the Bull of Heaven

• Watching all of this are of course the gods, and among them is Ishtar, the goddess of love, beauty, war, and fertility.
• As Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, he bathes and puts on his crown. Washing the wild away and clothing himself with civilization, Gilgamesh has become quite attractive.
• Ishtar is piqued by Gilgamesh, and descends to meet him. “Come to me, Gilgamesh, and be my lover!” she says to him, alluring him with offers of chariots and divine rule.
• Gilgamesh refuses her offer, and not politely: he reminds her of her previous husbands, some human and some divine, all of whom met unfortunate ends after marrying her. She will love him and then treat him like she has treated them, he says!
• Incensed, Ishtar will not stand to be turned down. Going to her father, the god of Anu, she proclaims Gilgamesh has shamed her. When Anu asks why she did not accost Gilgamesh herself, she goes into a rage. Unless Anu will give Ishtar the Bull of Heaven, a powerful supernatural beast and her brother, in order to have the Bull fight Gilgamesh, she will wreak havoc on earth, including raising the dead to eat the living.
• While Anu warns Ishtar that releasing the Bull of Heaven will bring no less than seven years’ drought to Uruk on account of the beast’s powerful strength, he gives his daughter the bull.
• Ishtar descends to Uruk with the Bull of Heaven and lets him loose in the city. His snorting alone stirs up chasms in the earth.
• Enkidu and Gilgamesh leap into action. Enkidu holds the animal and Gilgamesh slays it. Pulling the shoulder of the Bull from its carcass, he smacks Ishtar’s face with it in triumph, declaring, “If I could only get at you as that does!”
• It appears the gods are foiled again, with Gilgamesh overcoming them a third time

Act 4: The Death of Enkidu, and Gilgamesh’s Quest

• It would appear, however, that the gods’ loss to Gilgamesh was fleeting. In anger, they strike Enkidu with sickness, and Gilgamesh’s friend dies.
• Gilgamesh is overcome with grief. Completely at a loss, he refuses to bury Enkidu, until a worm falls from Enkidu’s nose.
• Forced at this point to confront his loss, he even forsakes Uruk for a short time, living among the animals as if he were one of them.
• When Gilgamesh returns, he is changed. He does not concern himself with deeds that will be remembered forever; now, he insists he will do what it takes to avoid death permanently himself.
• Leaving Uruk, he travels far and wide in search of Ut-Napishtim and his wife, who along of humanity have learned the secret of eternal life.
• Reaching the mountain where Shamash, the sun god, leaves each morning to travel across the sky, Gilgamesh finds the way guarded by Scorpion-men. They advise him to travel through the tunnel below the mountain, through which no one has ever passed. Alone of humans, Gilgamesh makes the journey.
• Emerging in a garden of spiky bushes, he makes his way to the sea, where he finds Siduri the “alewife” (bartender). Initially frightened, she locks the door to her establishment, until she realizes it is the Gilgamesh whose fame has traveled far and wide.
• Letting him into the bar, Siduri listens as Gilgamesh regales her with his story. He asks if she knows the way to Ut-Napishtim, and she answers he must cross the sea with the help of the boatman Ur-Shanabi.
• Gilgamesh enlists Ur-Shanabi’s aid and crosses the sea. Arriving in the land of Ut-Napishtim, he finds the old man and declares he will fight Ut-Napishtim if he must.

Act 5: Ut-Napishtim’s Story

• Hearing the challenge, the old man sits Gilgamesh down and tells Gilgamesh his story:
• Once upon a time, the Annunaki gods were upset at the noise made by humans; to silence them, they decided to flood the world. To ensure no human would find out and survive, the gods take an oath to talk about the upcoming flood to no human.
• The god Ea, who loved Ut-Napishtim, did not want to see him die, but he was bound by his oath. Coming to the house Ut-Napishtim lived in, he addressed the reed hut and the brick walls, telling them of the Annunaki gods’ plan to flood the world.
• Taking the cue, Ut-Napishtim builds a boat and boards it with his wife. As the deluge drows everyone around them, they manage to survive.
• As the waters die down, it becomes clear to the gods that Ut-Napishtim and his wife survived. They are ready to strike them down, when Ea interceded, begging the gods to allow these two humans to live. Assenting to Ea’s request, the gods took Ut-Napishtim and his wife to the faraway land where they now live along, and endowed them with unending life.
• Bringing Gilgamesh back to the present, Ut-Napishtim effectively says, “So you see, Gilgamesh, there is no way for you to live forever, for you do not have my story.”

Act 6: The Plant of Rejuvenation

• Hearing this news, Gilgamesh is not deterred, but he asks Ut-Napishtim what he must do to live forever. Reluctantly, the old man tells Gilgamesh a way.
• Following Ut-Napishtim’s instructions, Gilgamesh resolves to stay awake for six days and seven nights. However, he falls asleep the first night: “Sleep breathed over him like a fog.”
• Ut-Napishtim consults with his wife, and they bake a loaf of bread to set beside Gilgamesh. As he continued to sleep into the second day, they bake another loaf to set beside the first. By the time Gilgamesh awakes, there are seven loaves of bread by him.
• Gilgamesh declares he never fell asleep—perhaps his sleep was dreamless and he could not remember it—but Ut-Napishtim shows him the seven loaves. The last loaf is new, but each previous loaf is more and more moldy and rotted to show the passage of time.
• Realizing he had slept a week instead of staying awake the same amount of time, Gilgamesh is defeated. He will never learn to live forever.
• As Gilgamesh readies his boat to begin his return to Uruk, his head drooped in defeat, Ut-Napishtim’s wife urges her husband to tell Gilgamesh about the plant.
• At her insistance, Ut-Napishtim tells Gilgamesh of a plant growing at the bottom of the sea, just off this very coast, which as the power to keep a person young. This is more than just immortality—it is immortal youth!
• Using stones to weight his feet and a hollow pipe to breathe, Gilgamesh sinks to the bottom of the sea and, with the help of Ur-Shanabi, retrieves the plant of rejuvenation. Against all hope, he has won.
• Crossing the sea uneventfully, Gilgamesh makes camp in the woods by a watering hole on his way back to Uruk. Going into the water to bathe, that he might wash away the wild and clothe himself with civilization, Gilgamesh does not see a serpent slither by, eat the plant of rejuvenation, and cast off its skin as it passes, looking younger.
• Realizing what has happened, Gilgamesh… gives up. In Ur-Shanabi’s company, he completes his return to Uruk, where he is hailed as king and his adventures morph into legend.

To cite this reading, use the following format:

“The Epic of Gilgamesh in Outline.” Colorado Community College Online, 2023.