Title: The Epic of Gilgamesh Author: Anonymous/Traditional (standard version attributed to Sin-leqi-unninni) Creation Date: c. 2100 BCE (earliest Sumerian poems); c. 1200 BCE (standard Akkadian version) Location: Mesopotamia
Summary
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving work of great literature. It tells the story of Gilgamesh, the tyrannical king of Uruk, who is two-thirds god and one-third man. When the gods create the wild man Enkidu to check his arrogance, the two instead become inseparable friends and embark on heroic adventures together, slaying the forest guardian Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. But when Enkidu dies as divine punishment, Gilgamesh is shattered by grief and terror of his own mortality.
Driven to despair, Gilgamesh crosses the waters of death to find Utnapishtim, the one mortal granted eternal life after surviving a great flood. He learns that immortality is not for humans, loses even a plant of rejuvenation to a serpent, and returns to Uruk empty-handed but changed. The epic ends where it began — at the walls of Uruk — suggesting that the enduring works of civilization are the only immortality available to humankind.
Why This Book Matters
This is where literature begins. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest narrative in which a human being confronts the fundamental problem of death and asks whether life has meaning in spite of it. Every subsequent meditation on mortality — from Homer to Shakespeare to Camus — walks a path that Gilgamesh walked first. The friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is the prototype for the great literary friendships, and the flood narrative predates and clearly influenced the biblical story of Noah.
Beyond its firsts, the epic captures the worldview of the earliest urban civilization. It dramatizes the tension between the wild and the cultivated, between individual desire and communal duty, between human ambition and divine power. To read it is to encounter minds recognizably like our own wrestling with questions we have never stopped asking.
Historical Context
The earliest Gilgamesh poems emerged from the Sumerian city-states of the third millennium BCE, a world of walled cities, irrigation agriculture, and temple complexes — the first urban civilization on earth. The standard version was compiled around 1200 BCE in Babylon, during a period of literary consolidation. Mesopotamia was a world where the gods were capricious, floods were existential threats, and death was understood as a dark, dusty underworld offering no comfort. The epic reflects all of this — a civilization acutely aware of its fragility and grandeur.
Literary Significance
The epic pioneered narrative structures that remain foundational: the hero's journey, the quest for knowledge, the journey to the underworld, the transformative power of grief. Its use of repetition, parallelism, and ring composition (ending where it begins) are sophisticated literary devices. The relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu carries genuine emotional weight across millennia. The poem's frank treatment of sex, death, and despair gives it a rawness that still startles. It influenced Homer, the Hebrew Bible, and through them the entire Western literary tradition.
Research Notes
Selected as the foundational work of the collection — the oldest surviving literary narrative of any civilization. Andrew George's Penguin translation is the scholarly standard, incorporating the most recent tablet discoveries. Stephen Mitchell's 2004 version is more poetic but takes greater liberties. The text remains fragmentary; roughly 30% of the standard version is missing, which any reader should understand. A major tablet fragment published in 2014 continues to expand our knowledge of the poem.
The Reading
He who saw the deep, who knew the countries of the world, who had experienced all things — let us hear of the man to whom all things were known. The poem begins at the great walls of Uruk, that city of ramparts and temple foundations laid in kiln-fired brick, and it invites us to walk those walls, to admire them, because they are Gilgamesh's truest monument. This is the story of how he came to build them, and what he had to lose before he understood their meaning.
Tablet I: The Coming of Enkidu
Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is two-thirds god and one-third man, a being of tremendous power and beauty. He is the builder of the walls, the restorer of the temples, the supreme warrior. But he is also a tyrant. He takes what he wants — exhausts his warriors in endless contests, claims the brides of his city before their husbands may touch them. The people of Uruk cry out to the gods for relief. No son is left to his father. No bride is left to her groom. Gilgamesh, shepherd of the city, mighty, superb, knowledgeable and wise — even he will not leave a girl to her mother.
The gods hear and answer. They create a counterpart, a match for Gilgamesh's restless energy. The goddess Aruru washes her hands, pinches off clay, and drops it in the wilderness. This is Enkidu — born of silence, endowed with the strength of Ninurta, his whole body shaggy with hair, living among the animals at the watering holes, eating grass with the gazelles, jostling at the water with the herds. He knows nothing of humanity, nothing of bread or beer, nothing of the city.
A trapper sees Enkidu at the watering hole and is terrified. His face grows pale like a long journey. He goes to his father and says: There is a man, the mightiest in the land, who fills in my pits and pulls out my traps. His father tells him to go to Uruk, to Gilgamesh, and to bring back Shamhat, a temple prostitute, to tame the wild man.
Shamhat waits at the watering hole. When Enkidu comes with the animals, she strips herself and lies with him for six days and seven nights. When he is sated and turns back to his animals, the gazelles see him and flee. The wild creatures shy away. Enkidu tries to run after them but his body is bound — his knees fail him. He has lost his wildness. He sits at Shamhat's feet, and she tells him of Uruk, of Gilgamesh, of civilized life. She divides her clothing and gives him half. She takes him to a shepherds' camp where he learns to eat bread and drink beer. He anoints his body, puts on garments, and becomes a man. He guards the shepherds' flocks through the night, catching wolves and lions. He is no longer wild. He is no longer innocent.
Word reaches him that Gilgamesh intends to exercise his right to a bride. Enkidu is outraged. He goes to Uruk, stands in the street, and blocks Gilgamesh's path. They seize each other like bulls. They grapple in the doorway, shattering the doorpost. The walls shake. They wrestle through the streets. At last Gilgamesh throws Enkidu, and Enkidu acknowledges his strength. But something has changed. Their fury passes into recognition, into something deeper. They embrace. They kiss. They become friends.
Tablet II-V: The Forest Journey
Now Gilgamesh has a companion, his restless energy turns outward. He proposes a great adventure: they will travel to the Cedar Forest, the sacred grove guarded by the terrifying Humbaba, whom the god Enlil appointed as guardian. They will kill Humbaba and cut down the cedars. They will make a name that endures.
Enkidu is afraid. He knows Humbaba. When I roamed with the wild beasts, he says, I found the forest stretched for ten thousand leagues in every direction. Humbaba's roar is the storm flood, his mouth is fire, his breath is death. Who could go into his forest and come out alive? But Gilgamesh will not be deterred. Who is there, my friend, who can climb to heaven? Only the gods live forever. As for mankind, their days are numbered. Whatever they achieve is but the wind. Why are you afraid of death? If I fall, I shall have made a name that endures.
The elders of Uruk bless them and give counsel. Gilgamesh's mother, the goddess Ninsun, prays to the sun-god Shamash. The two heroes set out. In the forest, Gilgamesh has terrible dreams — mountains toppling, storms raging — and Enkidu interprets each as a sign of victory. They reach the Cedar Forest. Its beauty is overwhelming. The cedars raise their luxuriance, their shade is sweet, it covers the mountain.
Humbaba comes upon them. His face is terrible, contorted like coils of intestine. He roars at them. Gilgamesh falters. Enkidu rallies him. Shamash sends thirteen winds against Humbaba — the great wind, the north wind, the ice wind, the storm wind — and Humbaba is pinned. He begs for mercy, offering Gilgamesh all the cedars of the forest. Enkidu urges Gilgamesh to kill him quickly, before Enlil learns what they have done. Humbaba curses them: May the pair of them not grow old! May Enkidu not find any peace in this world beyond his comrade Gilgamesh!
Gilgamesh strikes. Humbaba falls. They cut down the great cedars, and Enkidu fashions from the tallest a door for the temple of Enlil. They raft the timber down the Euphrates to Nippur. They have done a mighty deed. They have made their names.
Tablet VI: The Bull of Heaven
Gilgamesh washes the filth of battle from his hair, polishes his weapons, lets his hair fall over his shoulders. He is so splendid that the goddess Ishtar herself desires him. Come to me, Gilgamesh, she says. Be my husband. I will harness for you a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold. Kings and princes shall kneel before you.
But Gilgamesh refuses her. And he does not refuse gently. He catalogs the fates of her former lovers: Tammuz, the lover of her youth, for whom she decreed wailing year after year. The bird whose wing she broke. The lion for whom she dug seven pits and seven. The horse she drove with whip and spur. The shepherd she turned into a wolf so his own dogs savaged him. What could you offer me that you have not already destroyed?
Ishtar is livid with fury. She goes to her father Anu in heaven and demands the Bull of Heaven to destroy Gilgamesh. If you do not give me the Bull, she threatens, I will smash the door of the underworld and raise the dead to eat the living. Anu yields. The Bull of Heaven descends on Uruk. With its first snort it opens a pit and a hundred men fall in. With its second, two hundred. Enkidu seizes the Bull by its horns. Gilgamesh drives his sword between its neck and horns and kills it. They tear out its heart and offer it to Shamash.
Ishtar stands on the walls of Uruk and wails. Enkidu tears the Bull's haunch from its body and flings it in her face. If I could reach you, he shouts, I would do the same to you! That night, Gilgamesh and Enkidu celebrate. The craftsmen admire the Bull's horns, plated with lapis lazuli. But that night, Enkidu has a dream.
Tablet VII-VIII: The Death of Enkidu
Enkidu dreams that the great gods are in council. Anu says: Because they have slain Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, one of the two must die. Enlil says: Let Enkidu die. Shamash protests — it was at his encouragement they went to the forest — but Enlil is angry. Enkidu must die.
Enkidu falls ill. For twelve days he lies on his bed, growing weaker. He curses the trapper who found him, curses Shamhat who civilized him — if only he had remained wild, he would not be dying. Shamash speaks from heaven: Why do you curse Shamhat? She gave you bread fit for a god, beer fit for a king. She gave you Gilgamesh for a companion. And now Gilgamesh will weep for you. He will lay you on a great bed, set you on a seat of ease at his left hand. The kings of the earth will kiss your feet. He will make the people of Uruk mourn you. Enkidu's heart grows quiet. He takes back his curse and blesses Shamhat instead.
But the sickness does not relent. Enkidu describes a dream of the underworld: a figure with the face of a lion-eagle seizes him, transforms his arms into wings, and leads him to the House of Dust, where the dead sit in darkness, clothed like birds, eating clay and dust for bread. The crown-bearers who once ruled the land serve baked meats. The priests and acolytes sit there. This is the house where everyone who enters never leaves.
On the twelfth day, Enkidu calls to Gilgamesh: My friend, the great goddess cursed me and I must die in shame. I shall not die like a man fallen in battle. I feared to fight, yet happy is the man who falls in battle, and I must die in shame. And he dies.
Gilgamesh's grief is the axis on which the epic turns. He weeps over Enkidu's body for seven days and seven nights, refusing to let him be buried until a maggot drops from his nose. He tears his hair, strips off his fine garments. He commissions a great statue of Enkidu — its chest of lapis lazuli, its body of gold. He fills bowls of carnelian with honey, bowls of lapis lazuli with butter, and dedicates them. He weeps:
Hear me, O elders, and give ear to me! It is for Enkidu, my friend, that I weep. He was the axe at my side, the sword in my belt, the shield before me. And now what sleep has seized him? He has turned dark and cannot hear me.
But beneath the grief is terror. Not merely sorrow for a friend but a new, bone-deep understanding: I shall die, and shall I not then be as Enkidu? Sorrow has entered my heart. I am afraid of death.
Tablet IX-X: The Journey to Utnapishtim
Gilgamesh abandons his city and wanders the wild, clad in animal skins, eating raw meat. He has been domesticated by civilization and friendship; now, shattered, he returns to the wild. He seeks Utnapishtim, the one mortal who was granted eternal life — the Faraway, who survived the great flood and was made immortal by the gods. If anyone knows the secret of escaping death, it is he.
Gilgamesh comes to the twin peaks of Mount Mashu, where the sun rises and sets, guarded by Scorpion-men whose aura is terrifying, whose glance is death. They recognize him as two-thirds god and ask why he has come. For Enkidu, my friend, he says. Because he has died, I am afraid. I am afraid of death. The Scorpion-man tells him no one has ever made this journey, but lets him pass.
Gilgamesh enters the tunnel through which the sun travels at night. For twelve leagues he walks in total darkness, feeling the wind on his face, running because the darkness is so thick. At the end of the tunnel he emerges into a garden of jewels — trees bearing carnelian, lapis lazuli, hematite — a vision of impossible beauty at the edge of the world.
He comes to the shore of the sea and meets Siduri, the tavern-keeper at the edge of the world. She bars her door against his wild appearance. He tells her his story. She gives him the only counsel the epic offers, in a passage found in an Old Babylonian tablet:
Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find the life you are looking for. When the gods created mankind, they set death aside for mankind. They kept life in their own hands. So, Gilgamesh — let your stomach be full, day and night enjoy yourself, make merry each day. Look at the child who holds your hand. Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace. For this is the task of mankind.
Gilgamesh will not be consoled. Siduri directs him to Urshanabi, Utnapishtim's boatman. Gilgamesh smashes the Stone Things (mysterious objects essential to crossing the waters of death) in his impatience, and must cut one hundred and twenty punting poles to propel the boat across, because no living flesh must touch the waters of death. He crosses.
Utnapishtim sees him from the far shore. Gilgamesh tells his story. Why should I not look like a wanderer? My friend whom I loved has turned to clay. Shall I not also lie down like him, and never rise again?
Tablet XI: The Flood and the Return
Utnapishtim responds with a question that is really an answer: Do we build a house to last forever? Nothing endures. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they look. He tells Gilgamesh the story of the flood — how the god Ea warned him in secret by whispering to the wall of his reed house: Tear down your house, build a boat. Abandon possessions, seek living things. Despise property, save life. He built a great vessel, loaded it with the seed of all living things, his family, and his craftsmen. For six days and seven nights the storm raged. The gods themselves cowered like dogs crouched against the outer wall. Ishtar cried out like a woman in labor: How could I have ordered destruction of my people?
On the seventh day the storm ceased. Utnapishtim opened a hatch and light fell on his face. He wept. The sea was flat as a roof. All of humanity had turned to clay. He sent out a dove, which returned. He sent out a swallow, which returned. He sent out a raven, which did not return. He made offerings on the mountaintop, and the gods crowded around the smoke like flies. Enlil was furious that anyone had survived, but Ea rebuked him, and Enlil, relenting, granted Utnapishtim and his wife immortality and set them apart at the far end of the earth.
But this, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh, was a singular act. Who will assemble the gods for you, that you may find the life you seek? To prove the point, he challenges Gilgamesh to stay awake for six days and seven nights — a contest with sleep, the little death. Gilgamesh sits down and immediately falls asleep. Utnapishtim's wife bakes a loaf of bread each day beside him. When he wakes, seven loaves are there, the first already moldy. Gilgamesh cannot even conquer sleep. How will he conquer death?
Despairing, Gilgamesh prepares to leave. Utnapishtim's wife persuades her husband to offer the hero something for his trouble. Utnapishtim reveals a secret: there is a plant at the bottom of the sea, a thorny plant like a rose. If Gilgamesh can obtain it, it will restore his youth. Gilgamesh ties stones to his feet, dives to the bottom of the sea, and seizes the plant, tearing his hands on its thorns. He brings it to the surface, triumphant. He tells Urshanabi he will take it to Uruk and give it to the old men to eat, and he will eat it himself, and be restored to his youth.
But on the return journey, Gilgamesh sees a pool of cool water and stops to bathe. A snake smells the fragrance of the plant, rises from the water, snatches it, and slithers away, shedding its skin as it goes — renewing itself as Gilgamesh never will. Gilgamesh sits down and weeps. For whom, he asks, have my arms labored? For whom has my heart's blood been spent? I brought no blessing on myself. I did the serpent underground a good turn.
The Return to Uruk
Gilgamesh and Urshanabi travel the long road back to Uruk. And here the poem performs its most extraordinary gesture. As they approach the city, Gilgamesh turns to the boatman and says the very words the poem's narrator spoke in its opening lines:
Go up, Urshanabi, and walk on the walls of Uruk. Inspect the foundation platform and examine the brickwork. Is not its brickwork of kiln-fired brick? Did not the Seven Sages lay its foundations? One square mile of city, one square mile of gardens, one square mile of clay-pits, and the open ground of Ishtar's temple. Three square miles and the open ground make up Uruk.
The poem ends where it began. Gilgamesh has not found immortality. He has not cheated death. He has lost his friend, lost the plant of youth to a serpent, wept at the edge of the world and received no comfort. But he has come home. And what he brings back is not eternal life but something that, in the logic of the poem, substitutes for it: the story itself, inscribed on a lapis lazuli tablet and placed in the foundation of the walls. The walls of Uruk are his immortality. The epic we hold in our hands is his immortality. The poem that began by praising the walls now reveals that its own existence is the answer to the question it has been asking all along.
This is the oldest story we have, and it says: you will die. Your friend will die. The gods will not save you. The plant of youth will be stolen by a serpent. But build your walls. Tell your story. This is what remains.
The standard scholarly translation is by Andrew George (Penguin Classics, 1999; revised 2003), which incorporates the most recent tablet discoveries. Stephen Mitchell's 2004 version is more lyrical but takes greater liberties with the text. Roughly 30% of the standard version remains missing — new fragments are still being found. A major tablet fragment was published in 2014.
This post is part of Civilisations, a 149-book chronological journey through world literature. See the full collection →
