Lesson 1.2 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.2, RL.9-10.9
The oldest story we have, and what it wants
The Epic of Gilgamesh was written on clay tablets in Mesopotamia and is older than Homer by more than a thousand years. It is worth reading first because its concerns turn out to be recognizable, which is itself the interesting fact.
- Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving long narrative in any language, preserved on clay tablets in cuneiform.
- The standard version dates from roughly 1200 BC, drawing on Sumerian poems that are older still.
- It was lost for two thousand years and rediscovered in the 1850s in the ruins of a library at Nineveh.
- The plot has two halves: Gilgamesh and Enkidu together, then Gilgamesh alone after Enkidu dies.
- Enkidu is created as a rival and becomes a friend, which is the poem's central relationship and the reason the second half works.
- The turn is Enkidu's death, after which the poem stops being about adventure and becomes about mortality.
- Gilgamesh fails to obtain immortality, and the poem ends with him looking at the walls of his city.
- The flood narrative in Tablet XI parallels the biblical flood closely enough that the resemblance was the discovery's first sensation.
Where students lose marks: treating the poem as a curiosity because of its age. The question worth asking is why a story about a friend's death and the fear of dying is the oldest thing we have.
The text. The Epic of Gilgamesh, from R. Campbell Thompson's English verse rendering of 1928 and the early prose translations of the tablets. Public domain.
Enkidu, my friend whom I loved, is turned into clay. Shall I not lie down like him, and never rise again through all eternity?
Gilgamesh, whither rovest thou? The life thou pursuest thou shalt not find. When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they allotted, life in their own hands retaining.
Step one: locate the poem's turn. Enkidu dies at the end of Tablet VII. Everything before is monster-killing and glory; everything after is a journey undertaken out of fear. One death changes the genre.
Step two: read the first passage for its logic. "Enkidu is turned into clay. Shall I not lie down like him?" The argument is inductive: a particular death is evidence about a general fact. Gilgamesh has known that people die and has just learned it.
Step three: state why the friend has to die rather than a stranger. Because a general truth about mortality persuades nobody. The poem makes the abstraction specific by attaching it to the one person Gilgamesh loves, which is the same technique the rhetoric unit will call pathos.
Step four: work the alewife's answer. "The life thou pursuest thou shalt not find." She does not argue that he should accept death; she states that the search will fail. It is a statement of fact rather than consolation, and it is offered before he has even begun.
Step five: notice the theology. "When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they allotted, life in their own hands retaining." Mortality is not a punishment or an accident. It is the design, and the gods kept the alternative for themselves.
Step six: state what that makes the quest. Not a heroic attempt at something difficult but an attempt at something the system was built to prevent. Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine and it makes no difference, which is the poem's point.
Step seven: examine the ending. He obtains the plant of rejuvenation and a snake eats it while he bathes. Then he returns to Uruk and shows a companion the walls of the city, describing their construction. The poem ends on masonry.
Step eight: state what the ending argues. What survives a person is what they built, not what they were. The poem's first lines and its last lines both describe the walls, so the structure closes on the only kind of permanence available. That is a complete argument about mortality made four thousand years ago, and it is the reason this is not merely an old text.
Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.
- What was Gilgamesh written on, and roughly when?
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Clay tablets in cuneiform; the standard version dates from about 1200 BC
- How was the poem recovered?
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It was rediscovered in the 1850s in the ruins of a library at Nineveh
- Who is Enkidu, and what happens to him?
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A man created as Gilgamesh's rival who becomes his friend, and who dies
- What does Gilgamesh fail to obtain?
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Immortality; the plant of rejuvenation is eaten by a snake
- What does the poem end by describing?
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The walls of Uruk
- Why must Enkidu die rather than a stranger?
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Because a general truth about mortality persuades nobody. Gilgamesh has known that people die for his entire life and it has changed nothing about how he behaves. The poem makes the abstraction specific by attaching it to the one person he loves, so that a fact he already possessed becomes knowledge he cannot put down. That is the same mechanism the rhetoric unit will call pathos. A general truth persuades nobody; a particular death does
- What does the alewife's reply actually claim?
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Not that Gilgamesh should accept death, which would be consolation, but that the life he is pursuing does not exist to be found. It is a statement of fact delivered before the search has properly begun, and it turns out to be accurate. The poem gives its own conclusion to a minor character early, which means the remaining tablets are not suspense but demonstration. That the search will fail, stated as fact rather than comfort
- What does the poem's theology make of mortality?
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Not a punishment, not an accident and not a flaw to be corrected, but the design. "When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they allotted, life in their own hands retaining" says the gods kept the alternative deliberately. That makes Gilgamesh's quest an attempt at something the system was built to prevent, which is why being two-thirds divine makes no difference to the outcome. It is the design, with the gods keeping immortality deliberately
- Why does the poem end on the walls of the city?
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Because the walls are the only permanence available to a mortal. Having failed to keep himself alive, Gilgamesh shows a companion what he built, and the poem argues that what survives a person is their work rather than their person. The first lines and the last lines both describe the walls, so the structure closes on the answer it was always going to give. Building is the only permanence a mortal can have
- Why is the poem's age not the most interesting thing about it?
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Because age alone would make it a curiosity. What makes it worth reading is that the oldest long narrative in any language turns out to be about a man who cannot accept his friend's death and travels to the edge of the world to avoid his own. The concerns are immediately recognizable, which says something about what stories have always been for. Its concerns are recognizable, which is a claim about what stories are for