60 Fun Facts About Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh comes from which ancient region?

It is generally called the world's oldest surviving work of narrative literature.

Gilgamesh was king of which city?

At the end of the epic the sight of the city's massive walls consoles him for his failure to find eternal life.

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

His mother was a goddess who helps interpret his dreams.

How many tablets make up the Standard Babylonian version of the epic?

The final one is a later appendix in which Enkidu is somehow alive again; roughly a third of the whole is still missing.

Which scribe-scholar compiled the Standard Babylonian version around 1300-1000 BCE?

He is thought to have pushed the theme of mortality to the fore, turning the hero from adventurer into wise man.

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

The 'deep' refers to the wisdom the hero brought back from his meeting with the flood survivor.

The oldest combined Gilgamesh epic, from the 18th century BCE, is titled after its first words. What are they?

Only a few tablets of this Old Babylonian version survive.

In which language were the earliest poems about Gilgamesh written?

There are five of them, some perhaps from the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2100 BCE.

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

The Akkadian epic turned him into an equal and friend created by the gods.

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

About 15,000 tablet fragments came out of the library in the early 1850s.

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

Austen Henry Layard, Hormuzd Rassam and W. K. Loftus did the digging.

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

His 1876 book was called The Chaldaean Account of Genesis, and the flood parallels caused a sensation.

By what name was the hero first reintroduced before scholars could read the signs in his name?

Alfred Jeremias even titled his translation 'Izdubar-Nimrod' to stress a link with Genesis.

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

For the brides that meant being raped on their wedding night; the young men were probably worn out with games or forced labour.

Which temple prostitute is sent to tame Enkidu through six days and seven nights of sex?

Afterwards his animal herd flees from him; she consoles him that he now has knowledge like the gods.

Who first spots the wild Enkidu, because he keeps destroying their traps?

The trapper tells the sun god, and the taming plan is arranged.

At the shepherds' camp Enkidu is civilised: his hair is cut and he learns to eat bread and drink what?

He is made night watchman, and only sets off for the city when he hears about the king's treatment of brides.

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

After a fierce battle Enkidu acknowledges the king's superior strength.

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

She also asks the sun god to protect them on the journey.

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

It takes them six days, with a dream ritual on a mountain every few nights.

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

He begs for his life and offers to be Gilgamesh's slave, but Enkidu insists he must die.

How many winds does the sun god send to bind the forest guardian?

The mountains quake and the sky turns black during the fight; the guardian's seven sons are killed too.

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

Enkidu even blames the god's protégée for taking him from the wild, before recanting his curse.

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

On his deathbed he curses that very door.

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

He turns her down by listing what happened to her earlier lovers, such as Dumuzi.

What creature does the spurned goddess bring down on the city to avenge herself?

Its bellowing opens pits that swallow 300 men and it drinks the Euphrates down.

What did the goddess threaten to do if her father Anu refused her the beast?

Anu gives in, warning it will mean seven years of famine, so she stockpiles seven years of provisions.

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

The heart goes to the sun god instead; the insult helps seal Enkidu's fate.

How do the gods choose to punish the heroes for the two killings?

He sickens for twelve days and dies lamenting that he could not fall in battle.

In a famous line, what finally makes Gilgamesh accept that Enkidu is really dead?

He then tears at his hair and clothes and orders a funerary statue and grave gifts.

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

They are dressed in bird feathers and watched over by terrifying beings.

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

The name means 'the Faraway'; he and his wife are the only humans to have survived the great flood.

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

They appear to be a married couple; the wife takes pity and lets Gilgamesh pass.

What grows on the trees in the Garden of the Gods that Gilgamesh reaches after the tunnel of darkness?

He gets through the twelve 'double hours' of darkness just before the sun would have burned him alive.

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

She first takes the ragged hero for a murderer or thief, then tells him to enjoy life's simple pleasures.

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

Gilgamesh smashes the ferryman's stone charms in a rage, so they have to punt across instead.

After destroying the ferryman's stone charms, how many trees must Gilgamesh cut down for punting poles?

In the Old Babylonian version the number is 300 oars.

Which god warned the flood hero to build a boat, sealed with pitch and bitumen?

The god who actually sent the flood was later scolded for a punishment out of all proportion.

How long did the storm of the flood last in the epic?

Afterwards all humanity had perished, and the boat lodged on Mount Nimush.

Which three birds does the flood hero release from his boat?

When the last one fails to return, he opens the ark and frees its inhabitants.

The flood hero challenges Gilgamesh to do what for six days and seven nights?

He fails at once; a loaf baked on each day he slept proves how long he was out.

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

He plans to test the boxthorn-like plant on an old man back home before eating it himself.

What steals the plant of youth while Gilgamesh bathes?

It sheds its skin as it slithers away, an image later reworked in the Alexander legends as a fish revived by the water of life.

In the appended twelfth tablet, what does Enkidu volunteer to fetch from the underworld?

Translations describe them as a drum and a ball; he breaks every rule he was given and is kept there.

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

Artefacts of Enmebaragesi of Kish, named in legend as Aga's father, lend some support to a historical Gilgamesh.

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

It was meant for the Museum of the Bible; officials seized it in 2019 and sent it home in 2021.

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

A dealer had sold it in 2007 with a fake letter claiming it came from a 1981 auction box of bronze fragments.

Which Hayao Miyazaki film is partly based on the epic's episode in the sacred forest?

The epic only reached a wide modern audience after the First World War.

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

The Genesis flood story, meanwhile, follows the epic's flood 'point by point and in the same order'.

Whose two-volume 2003 Oxford edition is the definitive modern English translation of the epic?

Sandars's popular 1960 version was by an independent scholar who was never a university academic.

Gilgamesh is seen as the prototype for which later Greek hero?

M. L. West suggested the memory of Gilgamesh reached the Greeks through a lost poem about him.

In the Alexander Romance, Alexander's quest inspired by Gilgamesh is for what?

The snake shedding its skin becomes a fish coming back to life when washed in the fountain.

Roughly how many cuneiform tablet fragments were found in the Library of Ashurbanipal in the early 1850s?

Austen Henry Layard, Hormuzd Rassam and W. K. Loftus made the finds; the British Museum then hired George Smith to study them.

George Smith's fuller 1876 translation of the epic fragments was published under what title?

Paul Haupt collected the cuneiform text in 1891, Peter Jensen produced a full edition nine years later, and Samuel Noah Kramer later reassembled the Sumerian poems.

In 1998, Theodore Kwasman found a fragment with the epic's first lines where?

The piece had been dug up in 1878 and sat unexamined for more than a century; it reads 'He who saw all, who was the foundation of the land'.

Which Kish king, father of one of Gilgamesh's adversaries, is attested by artefacts from about 2600 BCE?

The finds lend weight to the idea that Gilgamesh himself was a real ruler of Uruk rather than pure legend.

To which god does Gilgamesh pray for protection before killing a pride of lions on his journey?

He wakes from an encouraging dream, slays the lions and wears their skins as clothing for the rest of his quest.

How many 'double hours' does Gilgamesh take to race through the sun's tunnel before Shamash catches him?

He runs the whole way in total darkness and emerges just ahead of the sun god, who would otherwise have burned him alive.

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

The river is taken off its course for the burial and then returned, and Gilgamesh goes on to reign as a semigod judging the dead.

Which British archaeologist, never a university academic, published a popular translation of the epic in 1960?

Her Penguin version brought the poem to general readers decades before Andrew George's scholarly Oxford edition.