Gilgamesh: An Epic King

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Gilgamesh: An Epic King Gilgamesh was a Mesopotamian king that ruled the large Sumerian city-state, Uruk, around 2600 B.C.E. Throughout the epic of Gilgamesh, the reader notices the relationship between the gods and mortals, how Gilgamesh’s humanity was displayed, and the role the Gilgamesh’s ego plays a part in the epic. In the epic tale of Gilgamesh, there is a personal relationship between both the gods and goddesses and the mortals. The gods would talk with humans like Ea did when he was forewarning Utnapishtim about the impending flood. “Ea the god whispered to me, his servant: ‘Tell them you can no longer live in the city, because you are out of favor with Enlil’”(Gilgamesh 67). The gods also had the ability to grant divinity to humans, as one can see when reading the eleventh tablet in which Utnapishtim relays his story to Gilgamesh. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh how “the god Enlil then went on board the boat… Then god then touched our foreheads, blessing us, and said: ‘You were but human; now you are admitted into the company of the gods’” (Gilgamesh 75). It is clear that the gods are in a very personal relationship with humans; the gods appear in physical form to humans, they converse with humans, and they touch humans. Another way in which the reader can see the intimate relationship between the divine and mortal is after Gilgamesh returns from slaying Huwawa, a demon, who guards the Cedar forest. After Gilgamesh cleaned up after the battle and the journey back, “the goddess Ishtar saw him and fell in love with the beauty of Gilgamesh and longed for his body. ‘Be my lover, be my husband,’ she spoke and said. ‘Give me the seed of your body, give me your semen’” (Gilgamesh 29). Gilgamesh refused Ishtar’s advances because she had had many other lovers before and all of those human men came to ruin. This displays how the goddess interacted with mortals,

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