I’ve read The Epic of Gilgamesh several times, and it never fails to amaze me how accessible something so old can be. If you’ve ever read a comic book or watched a superhero movie, you might recognize a lot of elements from Gilgamesh, the legendary tale of a real king of Uruk in the 2nd millennium BC/BCE. In many ways, he was the world’s first superhero, or at least the first that we still know about. (An observation that Marvel Comics highlighted by making Gilgamesh a character in their Eternals comics.)

In the N.K. Sandars translation, Gilgamesh is described as having a “perfect body,” “beauty,” and “courage,” being “two thirds… god and one third man” (p. vii). He’s the king of a great city and builds massive walls and monuments, but he’s too full of himself to care much about his people – “his arrogance has no bounds by day or night” (p. 1). The people of Uruk cry out to the gods in misery under his rule, so the gods make another person to be his match, “his second self, stormy heart for stormy heart” (p. 1), thinking that the two would be so busy fighting each other that Gilgamesh would leave everyone else alone.

Thus is born Enkidu, whose body by comparison is “rough” and hairy, and who knows so little of mankind that he grows up as an animal, eating grass “with the gazelle” (p. 2). Enkidu’s humble beginnings teach him compassion, as he helps animals evade hunters’ traps. It is only when he hears of Gilgamesh’s harsh treatment of the people of Uruk that Enkidu challenges Gilgamesh to battle. The two fight “like bulls,” smashing everything around them (p. 8), until Gilgamesh realizes that Enkidu is as strong as he is. Against everyone’s expectations, this realization leads to admiration, a feeling that Gilgamesh has clearly never experienced before, and it immediately begins to change him. The two foes “embraced and their friendship was sealed” (p. 8), giving world literature its first recorded bromance.

Enkidu encourages Gilgamesh to use his power for good instead of abusing it like he has been doing, so Gilgamesh decides to “set up [his] name where the names of famous men are written” and “raise a monument to the gods” (p. 9). Enkidu becomes Gilgamesh’s protector and, essentially, sidekick on his hero’s journey, and after several adventures and battles that bond the two more and more, the moment so common to the superhero narrative arrives – the one who builds the hero up must be snatched away and the hero brought to their lowest point in order to reach their full potential in the end.

This is, of course, an oversimplification of mere fragments of the plot, and I encourage you to take this wild ride for yourself if you haven’t already, but the conclusion I make from reading The Epic of Gilgamesh is that stories that are popular today haven’t changed much from the stories that were popular with our ancestors 4,000 years ago. Gilgamesh is still a riveting tale full of elements and plot devices that are used in contemporary literature and blockbuster movies. I think there’s something beautiful in that.

This concludes the first month of my World LiteraTour project. I’ve really enjoyed this deep dive into the Sumerian language and literature, and I hope I managed to spark or enrich your own interest in these ancient writings. Reading the stories our ancestors heard and told is, in my opinion, the best way to feel a connection to them and to truly understand the unchanging aspects of human nature. I hope you’ll join me next month (February 2025) in reading The Rig Veda and The Upanishads and exploring the language of Sanskrit.

If you have 5 minutes, check out this video on Gilgamesh from the YouTube channel Mythology Mysteries.

Source used:
Sandars, N.K. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Epics, 2006.