The New Kingdom of Atlantis (Land of Wisdom)
Ministry of Culture, Arts and Antiquities
Protection and valorization of cultural and artistic heritage
Plastic artist Ruba Ajeeb
The epic that flew into the horizons
Gilgamesh
The oldest literary text from Mesopotamia was written on clay tablets with cuneiform script dating back to the Sumerian era between 2700 to 2000 BC. It is the oldest written copy and was later translated into the Akkadian language before the discovery of the Arabic language, and the complete copy of it dates back to the Babylonian era around 1200 BC, and it is not certain that it was written in the form of poems, and the possibility that it was a story that includes poems and not a poetic epic.
But it is still to this day the most famous literary work that does not, in its distant revelation, simulate a specific land, place or people, but rather transcends the boundaries of geography, focusing on the suffering of the hero and his argument in the conflict of his animal soul with the spiritual and his struggle with divine imperfection.
Belgamesh in the Sumerian language, or Gilgamesh, king of the city of Uruk or the country of Uruk, the beautiful and prosperous city, his mother is a god and his father is ordinary human beings, so a third of him is human and two thirds is a god. Primitively fighting Gilgamesh called Enkidu, he lived in the forests, eating with animals and spoiling the traps of the hunters. He challenges the king and wrestles him to redress his oppression. The two wrestle fiercely. Both of them are strong in body. However, Gilgamesh defeated him because two-thirds of him is a god. Enkidu acknowledged Gilgamesh’s victory and defeat. After this battle, they became good friends, and the change began in the king’s personality and behavior. They went on an adventure to the forest and wrestled with Humbaba and overpowered him and cut down the huge cedar trees to Making a gate to the temple and a boat to return to Uruk and they returned to the city with the door and the head of Humbaba. On the way, the gods asked Ishtar to marry Gilgamesh, but he refused because of her betrayal with her lovers. Enkidu managed to overpower him and kill him.
And the gods gathered to punish one of the two friends with his death to choose Enkidu because he is human. As for Gilgamesh, the blood of the gods flows in his veins, so Enkidu dies, and Gilgamesh grieves greatly for the death of his friend.
As a result of the human death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh began to think about immortality and seek to know his secret, and he went to Utnapishtim, the only human who had reached immortality. He built a giant boat and took his family with him and survived the flood, so the gods decided to grant Utnapishtim and his wife immortality. Gilgamesh asked Utnapishtim to teach him the secret of immortality, so the latter decided to test Gilgamesh and stay awake for a week. If he passed the test, he granted immortality, but he failed and did not get the secret.
However, Gilgamesh insisted on Utnapishtim and his wife to find another way to immortality, and Utnapishtim’s wife feels pity for him and shows him a herb under the sea that can bring the youth back to him. On his return to the city, he stopped washing on the road, and one of the snakes stole the herb and ate it all, so he returned to his city empty-handed, and saw the great wall that he built around Uruk, and he thought that such a huge work is the best way to immortalize his name, and the sages of Warka advise him on justice, construction and work as a way to immortality. He built great projects and became a good ruler, finally surrendering to his mortal human body.
The impossibility of a definite translation of the epic due to the damage of the tablets, the uncertainty of the correctness of the reproduction of cuneiform symbols, the difficulty of reading old writing, errors of copying, guessing the replacement of parts that were found damaged, and replacing the meanings of words with multiple linguistic usage.
Sources
Wikipedia
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