The Gilgamesh Epic originated in ancient Sumeria, one of the earliest civilizations that took up residence in the fertile crescent.

Lecture Outline Notes

Enuma Elish

The pantheon of deities the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia believed in can seem both strange and wonderful. We see many appearances of these Gods – Ea, Enki, Shamash and Ishtar, to name a few – in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Enuma Elish, which may be the oldest story in the world, gives a full account of the creation of the world and the origins of the deities. It also contains a flood story that has remarkable parallels to the Old Testament story of Noah. In fact, scholars trace the origin of many Old Testament stories back to the cuneiform of ancient Mesopotamia.

You can read a summary, my source for scholarship on the Enuma Elish, and access the full text of this epic mythical throwdown (the gods kill their parents, of course) here.

This clay tablet is a “chapter” of the creation epic, the Enuma Elish. The language you see here is cunieform. As you can see, some parts are missing.

Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE)

The world’s first poet to be known by name was a priestess from Akkadia, an early ruling culture in ancient Mesopotamia. The Akkaddians and Sumerian cultures coexisted, and as the daughter of the ruler Sargon and a high priestess of Inanna, Enheduanna had real political (and religious) power and used it to work towards synthesizing the cultures through shared religious practices, hymns, psalms, prayers and poems. Critics compare her work to the poetry of the Song of Solomon from the Hebrew Old Testament; her work came long before it, however, and is more sensual. You can read her “Adoration of Inanna” in the Asheville Reader, pages 5-10.

Her work also gives us a voice from a time in Mesopotamian history when women held political and religious power equal to their male counterparts. As Babylonian culture and rulers supplanted the early Sumerian and Akkadian empires, we see the stories change, a rise in importance of male “heroes” such as Marduk over the goddess Inanna, and a shift in cultural and political power – it becomes more male dominated.

For more scholarly info (this was my main source) check out this short entry on Enheduanna which also excerpts her work.

Epic of Gilgamesh

A fragment of Tablet V, recounting Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s journey to the Cedar Forest.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, also one of the worlds oldest stories, and the oldest epic, concerns an Sumerian ruler who lived around 2700BCE. The story itself began as a collection of tall tales, and evolved over 1000 year period, written in cuneiform 700-1000 years after Gilgamesh’s life. During this time Mesopotamia culture also evolved as cultural ruling powers shifted, and empires rose and fell.

We will explore the entire epic in class, and add some notes here. In addition to the translator’s intro in our book, here is my source for this information.