110 Fun Facts About Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh comes from which ancient region?

Mesopotamia. Scribes there copied the poem for well over a thousand years, then it lay forgotten under ruined cities until Victorian excavators dug its tablets up.

Gilgamesh was king of which city?

Uruk. The poem opens and closes on its massive walls: home from his failed quest, the king tells his boatman to walk along them and admire the brickwork.

According to the epic, what fraction of Gilgamesh was divine?

Two-thirds divine and one-third human. His mother is a goddess, yet the mortal third decides his fate: the second half of the poem is his failed search for a way not to die.

The tablets that preserve the epic are written in which script?

Cuneiform, from the Latin for 'wedge'. Scribes pressed a cut reed into damp tablets, and once the script died out some two thousand years ago nobody could read it until the nineteenth century.

Which scribe-scholar is credited with compiling the Standard Babylonian version around 1300-1000 BCE?

Sîn-lēqi-unninni. Babylonian tradition held that he reworked centuries-old poems into the version read today.

What is the opening phrase, or incipit, of the Standard Babylonian version?

'He who saw the deep', also rendered 'He who saw everything'. Babylonian works were known by their first words, and these point to the wisdom the hero carries home, not to his strength.

After his days with the woman sent to tame him, how do the wild animals react to Enkidu?

They run from him. He tries to follow but can no longer keep up, and the poem sets the loss against a gain: his body is slower, but his understanding has widened.

In which language were the earliest poems about Gilgamesh written?

Sumerian. Five separate poems about him survive in it, and Babylonian poets later wove some of their episodes into one long epic in Akkadian.

In the older poems that predate the Akkadian epic, what is Enkidu's relationship to Gilgamesh?

His servant. The later epic remade him as a wild man created by the gods to be the king's equal, turning master and attendant into inseparable friends.

The best copies of the epic were found in the ruined library of which 7th-century BCE Assyrian king?

Ashurbanipal. Proud that he could read ancient scripts himself, he sent scribes across his empire to collect or copy every old text they could find for his palace.

In which ancient city was the great royal library containing the epic excavated?

Nineveh. When enemies sacked and burned the city in 612 BCE, the fire that destroyed the palace baked the library's tablets hard, which helped them survive.

Which British Museum scholar read translated fragments of the epic to a learned society in 1872?

George Smith, a self-taught former banknote engraver. On deciphering the flood story he reportedly rushed about the room in excitement, pulling off his clothes.

Victorian scholars at first misread the signs of Gilgamesh's name as what?

Izdubar. Early translations and even an 1884 verse retelling used that name; the correct reading was only published in 1890.

The gods created Enkidu to stop Gilgamesh doing what to the people of his city?

Oppressing them. The citizens complain to the gods, who decide the king needs a match for his 'stormy heart' and have a wild man made in the wilderness.

Which temple prostitute is sent to tame the wild man Enkidu?

Shamhat. Afterwards she dresses him in part of her own clothing and leads him to a shepherds' camp to learn human ways.

Who first comes face to face with the wild Enkidu at a watering hole?

A trapper. Too frightened to go near the wild man, who keeps filling in his pits and freeing his catch, he tells his father, who sends him to the king for help.

At the shepherds' camp, Enkidu learns to eat bread and to drink what?

Beer, given as wine or mead in older translations. After seven helpings he turns cheerful and starts to sing, then washes, oils his shaggy body and guards the flocks at night.

Where does Enkidu block Gilgamesh's path, starting the fight that makes them friends?

At a wedding chamber. The king was on his way in to the bride when the newcomer blocked the door with his foot; they wrestled until the walls shook, then became friends.

Which goddess, Gilgamesh's mother, adopts Enkidu as her son before the heroes leave?

Ninsun. First she climbs to her roof, burns incense and asks the sun god why he gave her son such a restless heart, then begs him to watch over the pair.

To which distant place do Gilgamesh and Enkidu journey to win fame?

The Cedar Forest. The city elders call the trip reckless and even Enkidu, who knew the place in his wild days, argues against it, but the king wants a name that will outlast him.

What is the name of the monstrous guardian of the forest whom the heroes kill?

Humbaba. Beaten, he begs for his life and offers to serve the king and cut timber for him, but Enkidu urges a quick kill before the gods can step in.

What does the sun god send to pin down the forest guardian?

Thirteen winds. They blast him in the face from every side until he can neither charge forward nor back away, and only then can the heroes close in.

Which sun god protects the heroes and later argues against Enkidu's death sentence?

Shamash. In the gods' council he protests that the pair killed at his own command, and is told he is to blame too, for travelling with them daily like a friend.

Enkidu plans to turn a gigantic felled tree into a door for the temple of which god?

Enlil. The door is floated downriver to his temple at Nippur, and the dying Enkidu later rages at it as if it could hear him.

Which goddess proposes to Gilgamesh and, when spurned, demands a monster to punish him?

Ishtar. He turns her down by reciting the fates of her past lovers, among them a shepherd she turned into an animal chased by his own dogs.

What creature does the spurned goddess unleash to avenge Gilgamesh's insult?

The Bull of Heaven. Each snort opens a pit that swallows men by the hundred, until Enkidu seizes its tail and Gilgamesh drives a blade in behind the horns.

What does the goddess threaten if her father Anu refuses her the beast?

Raise the dead to devour the living, until corpses outnumber the breathing. Anu gives in, but warns that the beast will bring seven years of famine.

What does Enkidu hurl at the goddess after the beast is killed?

One of its hindquarters, flung in her face with the taunt that he would do the same to her if he could catch her. The heart went to the sun god as an offering.

On the road to the forest, how does Enkidu interpret each of Gilgamesh's terrifying dreams?

As good omens. A mountain falls on him, a storm breaks in lightning and fire: every time Enkidu insists the dream is favourable and they press on.

What finally makes Gilgamesh accept that Enkidu is really dead?

A maggot drops from the corpse's nose. For six days and seven nights he had refused to let the body be buried, hoping his cries might bring his friend back.

In Enkidu's vision, what do the inhabitants of the Netherworld, the 'house of dust', eat?

Clay. The dead sit without light, dressed in feathers like birds, and kings who once ruled the land now wait at table like servants.

Whom does Gilgamesh set out to find in the hope of learning the secret of eternal life?

Utnapishtim, 'the Faraway', who survived the great flood and was made immortal by the gods. He tells his visitor the gift was a one-off and that death comes to everyone else.

What guards the tunnel of the sun at the twin peaks of Mount Mashu?

Two scorpion monsters, a male and a female whose glance alone is said to kill. Seeing that the traveller is part god, they question him and then let him through.

What grows on the trees in the garden Gilgamesh reaches beyond the sun's tunnel?

Jewels. He walks out of the dark into a grove where carnelian hangs in clusters like fruit and the foliage is lapis lazuli.

What is the occupation of Siduri, whom Gilgamesh meets at the edge of the world?

Alewife. Seeing a ragged stranger approach her tavern she takes him for a killer and bars the door, then hears his story and tells him to enjoy the life he has.

What is the name of the ferryman who takes Gilgamesh across the Waters of Death?

Urshanabi. In a rage Gilgamesh smashes the mysterious 'stone things' the boat relies on, so the two of them have to punt across with freshly cut poles instead.

When the punting poles run out on the Waters of Death, what is held up as a makeshift sail?

A garment. Each pole can be used only once, so that no hand touches the deadly water, and when the last is gone stripped-off clothing is held up to catch the wind.

Which god, called Ea in the Akkadian epic, warns the flood hero to build a boat?

Enki. Sworn to secrecy with the other gods, he whispers the warning to the reed wall of a house instead, so that technically he tells no human.

After the flood, what draws the gods to crowd around the survivor?

His sacrifice. Once the boat grounds on a mountain he makes an offering, and the very gods who drowned humanity smell the sweet smoke and crowd round it like flies.

Which three birds does the flood hero release?

A dove, a swallow and a raven, in that order. The first two find nowhere to land and come back; the raven finds food and never returns, the sign that the waters have dropped.

The flood hero challenges Gilgamesh to do what for a week?

Stay awake. He nods off almost at once, and a loaf is baked for each day he sleeps, so the row from rock-hard to fresh proves how long he was out.

How does Gilgamesh reach the plant of youth at the bottom of the sea?

He ties stones to his feet, sinks to the seabed, grabs the thorny plant and cuts the stones loose to float back up. He means to test it on an old man before eating any himself.

What steals the plant of youth while Gilgamesh bathes?

A serpent. Drawn by the plant's scent it carries it off, shedding its skin as it goes, young again, while the hero who dived for it sits down and weeps.

In the epic's appended final tablet, what does Enkidu volunteer to fetch from the underworld?

Gilgamesh's lost possessions, two objects rendered as a drum and drumstick or a drum and a ball. He breaks every rule for visiting the dead and is held there for good.

In the early poem 'Gilgamesh and Aga', the hero defeats and forgives a besieging army from which city?

Kish. Its king Aga is captured in the middle of his own army, yet Gilgamesh sets him free to go home, repaying a kindness Aga had once shown him.

Which US company bought the illegally imported 'Gilgamesh Dream Tablet' in 2014 for a museum?

Hobby Lobby, the arts-and-crafts chain, bought it in a private sale for the Museum of the Bible. Federal agents seized the tablet from the museum in 2019 because its ownership papers were false.

To which country was the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet returned in September 2021?

Iraq received it at a ceremony in Washington. A dealer had sold it in 2007 with a false letter claiming it came from a box of bronze fragments bought at a 1981 auction.

In the early poem 'Death of Gilgamesh', what role do the gods grant the hero in the underworld?

Judge of the dead. The gods decide that even he must die, then console him with a place among the underworld's gods, where his verdicts will weigh as much as theirs.

Which biblical book is thought to borrow Siduri's advice and the triple-stranded rope proverb?

Ecclesiastes. Its 'threefold cord is not quickly broken' echoes a saying the heroes trade before battle, and its counsel to eat, drink and enjoy life closely tracks her advice.

Which scholar published Oxford University Press's 2003 critical edition of the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic?

Andrew George. In 2014 he and Farouk Al-Rawi published a newly identified tablet that restored some twenty lost lines, filling the monster's forest with noisy birds and shrieking monkeys.

In a Roman-era book of animal lore, what catches the baby Gilgamesh when guards throw him from a height?

An eagle caught him in mid-air and set him down in a garden, where its keeper raised him. His royal grandfather had kept his own daughter under guard after a prophecy that her son would take the throne.

In the Alexander Romance, thought to echo Gilgamesh's quest, what does Alexander go searching for?

The Fountain of Life. In the Greek romance it is Alexander's cook who stumbles on it, when a dead fish he is rinsing springs back to life and swims off; the conqueror himself never gets to drink.

Which serving British prime minister sat in the audience when the epic's flood story was first presented in 1872?

William Gladstone. The reading caused such a stir that a London newspaper paid for an expedition to look for the tablet's missing lines.

Which Star Trek captain tells the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to a dying alien in the episode 'Darmok'?

Jean-Luc Picard. The stranded alien captain speaks only in allusions to his own people's legends, so Picard answers in kind with Earth's oldest tale of two fighters who became friends.

Where did a scholar spot a fragment bearing the epic's opening lines in 1998?

A British Museum storeroom. The piece had been dug up in 1878 and shipped to London, where it lay unrecognised for more than a century.

Who persuades the flood hero to give Gilgamesh a parting gift, the secret of the plant of youth?

His wife. As the worn-out visitor's boat is leaving she urges her husband not to send him home empty-handed, and only then does he reveal where the plant grows.

To which god does Gilgamesh pray when lions frighten him in a mountain pass?

The moon god Sin. He reaches the pass at nightfall, prays, sleeps, wakes from a heartening dream and kills the lions, then travels on dressed in their skins.

In the epic, what shape is the flood hero's giant boat?

A cube. Each side and the height measure 120 cubits, with six decks inside, quite unlike the long, low ark of the Bible story.

In the early poem 'Death of Gilgamesh', where is the hero buried?

Under the diverted Euphrates. His people turn the river aside, build his tomb in the dry bed and then let the water flow back over it.

Which British archaeologist wrote the prose version of the epic that Penguin Classics published in 1960?

Nancy Sandars. She spent the war as a motorcycle despatch rider and then listening in on German radio for Bletchley Park, and trained as an archaeologist only afterwards.

Which book of the Bible tells a flood story that follows the Gilgamesh flood tale point by point?

Genesis matches the Babylonian flood tale so closely, even in the order of events, that few scholars doubt it derives from an older telling.

Scholars have long compared the taming of wild Enkidu by a woman to the story of which biblical couple?

Adam and Eve echo the tale: in both, a man made from the soil accepts food from a woman, covers his nakedness and must leave his old home for good.

Which Hayao Miyazaki anime film is partly based on the Gilgamesh episode of the slain forest guardian?

Princess Mononoke, released in 1997, likewise sends its heroes into an ancient forest whose guardian spirit comes under human attack.

Which Greek epic about a wandering king has opening lines that seem to echo the Epic of Gilgamesh?

The Odyssey and the Babylonian poem both open by praising and pitying their heroes, and each hero later meets a woman who can turn men into animals.

A great fire swept the Assyrian royal library holding Gilgamesh; what did the heat do to its tablets?

Partly baked them is the surprising answer: the blaze that destroyed the palace in 612 BCE hardened the tablets and helped preserve them.

The Fragmentarium project has matched up scattered Gilgamesh fragments using which modern technology?

Machine learning has matched broken pieces held on different tablets, adding new passages to English translations printed in 2020 and 2021.

Siduri's advice to grieving Gilgamesh has been called the first recorded occurrence of which Latin-named theme?

Carpe diem sums up her counsel: give up the hunt for immortality, enjoy life on earth and start a family.

In Philip Roth's 1973 book The Great American Novel, the star called Gil Gamesh plays which sport?

Baseball is his game: Gil Gamesh is the star pitcher of the invented Patriot League, and he wins a kind of immortality by vanishing after his final game.

The scholar who first translated the Gilgamesh flood tablet had been apprenticed at fourteen in which trade?

Banknote engraving was his day job, and he spent his lunch hours at the museum studying publications on the tablets.

After winning the plant of youth, Gilgamesh says he will first test it on whom when he gets home?

An old man was to be the first to try it, but the plant was lost on the journey home before any test could happen.

Back home at the end of the epic, Gilgamesh proudly shows the ferryman which enduring work?

The city walls close the story where it began: the opening lines of the first tablet are repeated at the end of the eleventh.

What job is Enkidu given at the shepherds' camp once he has learned human ways?

Night watchman suited him: the wild man who once ran with the animals now guarded the shepherds' sheep.

How do Gilgamesh and Enkidu bring their giant felled tree home after killing the forest guardian?

On a raft they float the timber home down the river, possibly with the guardian's severed head aboard.

What does Gilgamesh smash in a rage, only to learn the ferryman needed them to cross the deadly waters?

The Stone Ones remain a puzzle: scholars have read them as anchor stones, talismans or even living statues.

Which fertility goddess does the sky god Anu direct to create the wild man Enkidu in the steppe?

Aruru makes him as a match for Gilgamesh after the citizens complain to the gods about their overbearing king.

Which deified king, honoured by Gilgamesh as his personal god, is named in the epic as the hero's father?

Lugalbanda was himself a legendary king of the same city, and later rulers of Ur named him as their own father, calling themselves brothers of Gilgamesh.

Which older Babylonian epic, named for its priest hero, ends with a flood story that largely matches Gilgamesh's?

Atra-Hasis means 'exceedingly wise', and in that poem the trouble starts when multiplying humans disturb the gods with their noise.

The name of Gilgamesh's divine mother is usually read as 'lady of the' which animals?

Wild cows gave the goddess her name, and the epic itself at one point addresses her with an epithet that calls her one.

An ancient depiction shows the face of Gilgamesh's forest-guardian foe resembling which grisly thing?

Sheep's intestines were what diviners examined to foretell the future, and the monster's coiled features were likened to them.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, on which mountain does the flood survivor's boat lodge and hold fast?

Mount Nimush holds the boat firmly for several days before the survivor starts sending out birds to look for land.

During the storm in Gilgamesh's flood story, the terrified gods are said to cower like which animals?

Dogs lying by an outer wall is the poem's unflattering image for gods who fled to the heavens in fear of their own storm.

In Gilgamesh, the gods swear to keep the flood secret; through what does one god warn the man he favours?

A reed wall gave the god his loophole: he repeated the plan to a reed house, and the man inside heard every word.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, what is used to seal the flood survivor's giant boat before the storm?

Pitch and bitumen keep the water out, and the builder takes aboard his family, his craftsmen and the animals of the field.

Which Middle Eastern dictator, fascinated by Gilgamesh, blended the epic into his novel Zabibah and the King?

Saddam Hussein's first novel, published in 2000, is a love story meant as an allegory of the Gulf War, and it also draws on the One Thousand and One Nights.

The German scholar Alfred Jeremias equated Gilgamesh with which biblical king, famed as a mighty hunter?

Nimrod was his match for the hero, and Jeremias also argued that Gilgamesh's strength must lie in his hair, as Samson's did.

Which archaeologist discovered the Standard Babylonian tablets of Gilgamesh in 1853?

Hormuzd Rassam, born in Mosul, began as a British excavator's assistant and is widely seen as the first-known archaeologist from the Middle East.

Which London newspaper paid for an expedition to dig up the missing lines of the Gilgamesh flood story?

The Daily Telegraph's editor, Edwin Arnold, arranged for the translator to excavate at the paper's expense, hunting for the missing fragments.

Esther Hamori compares the wrestling match of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to a story about which biblical patriarch?

Jacob is the parallel she draws, in a study called Echoes of Gilgamesh in the Jacob Story.

Which 2004 Japanese visual novel from Type-Moon features Gilgamesh as a major antagonist?

Fate/stay night made the ancient king a villain for a new generation, and he returned in the 2006 light novel Fate/Zero.

Which Czech composer wrote the oratorio The Epic of Gilgamesh, first performed in Basel in 1958?

Bohuslav Martinů composed it near Nice in 1954–55, and the premiere was sung in German under the title Das Gilgamesch-Epos.

Before Enkidu reaches the city, what do Gilgamesh's dreams, explained by his mother, foretell?

A new companion is what she sees coming, so Gilgamesh is expecting a beloved friend before the two have even met.

When the haggard Gilgamesh first approaches Siduri at the edge of the world, how does she react?

Bars her door: she takes the ragged traveller for a dangerous hunter and even hides on the roof before hearing his story.

Before Gilgamesh sails home from the flood survivor's island, the ferryman washes him and dresses him in what?

Royal robes replace the hides he wore while wandering the wild, so he goes home looking like a king again.

In the twelfth tablet, in what form does Enkidu rise through a crack in the earth to talk to Gilgamesh?

As a ghost he reports on the world below, where he was trapped after doing everything Gilgamesh had warned him not to do.

A possible portrait of Gilgamesh, an Assyrian palace relief of a hero gripping a lion, is held by which museum?

The Louvre holds the relief, which was carved between 713 and 706 BC for the Assyrian royal palace at Dur-Sharrukin.

Which American science fiction author retold the legend in the 1984 novel Gilgamesh the King?

Robert Silverberg followed it with a sequel, To the Land of the Living, and sent the hero into the shared-world series Heroes in Hell.

In the oldest telling of the flood legend that Gilgamesh retells, what is the boat-building survivor called?

Ziusudra means 'life of long days', a fitting name for a man the gods reward with immortality.

The flood survivor's story in Gilgamesh begins in which old city on the banks of a great river?

Shuruppak was a real place, and a flood deposit unearthed there has been dated to around 2900 BC.

Rejecting the goddess of love, Gilgamesh cites her mistreatment of past lovers such as which god, later called Tammuz?

Dumuzi was her husband, and in another myth he is dragged down to the underworld as her replacement after she escapes it.

On Tablet VI, the sky god Anu warns that granting his daughter's demand will bring the city seven years of what?

Famine was the price, so she hands over provisions for seven years before leading the beast down to the city.

On Tablet VI of Gilgamesh, the rampaging beast sent against the city opens up what, swallowing hundreds of men?

Huge pits swallow 300 men, and the creature also drinks the river low and dries up the marshes.

In the dying Enkidu's vision of the 'house of dust' on Tablet VII, what are the dead clothed in?

Bird feathers cover the dead in a realm of darkness supervised by terrifying beings, and Enkidu dreams he is dragged there as a captive.

As his illness worsens on Tablet VII of Gilgamesh, Enkidu laments that he was denied which kind of end?

Death in battle would have been heroic; instead the sentence of the gods takes the form of a sickness that drags on for twelve days.

Rebuked by the sun god, dying Enkidu withdraws his curse on the woman who tamed him and does what instead?

Blesses her, because he is reminded that she fed and clothed him and introduced him to Gilgamesh.

On Tablet VIII, what does the grieving Gilgamesh commission to honour the dead Enkidu?

A statue of him is ordered, and Gilgamesh also gives grave gifts from his treasury so his friend will be well received in the realm of the dead.

Which epithet does the epic give the immortal flood survivor whom Gilgamesh sets out to find on Tablet IX?

The Faraway suits a man who lives across the Waters of Death, beyond the reach of ordinary travellers.

On Tablet IX of Gilgamesh, the two guardians of the sun's tunnel appear to be related to each other how?

A married couple, it seems: the husband tries to turn Gilgamesh back, but his partner takes pity on the traveller.

Inside the sun's tunnel on Tablet IX, Gilgamesh must travel for twelve double hours through what?

Total darkness surrounds him the whole way, and he has to reach the far end before the sun enters the tunnel and burns him alive.

Which Austrian psychoanalyst read Gilgamesh and Enkidu as standing for 'man' and 'crude sensuality'?

Sigmund Freud's pupil Carl Jung took up the theme as well, returning to Gilgamesh often in an early book of his own.

Who tells Enkidu about Gilgamesh's abuse of new brides, sending him to the city in a rage?

A passing stranger brings the news to the shepherds' camp, and the outraged Enkidu sets off at once to confront the king.