The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Problem of Mortality

The Epic of Gilgamesh survives in several distinct versions across more than a millennium of Mesopotamian literary history, from Sumerian poems about the historical or semi-legendary king Gilgamesh of Uruk (who, if historical, would have reigned around 2700 BCE) through an Old Babylonian version (c. 18th century BCE) to the fullest and best-known 'Standard Babylonian' version, edited by the scholar-priest Sin-leqi-unninni sometime between roughly 1300 and 1000 BCE, most completely preserved on twelve cuneiform tablets recovered from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (reigned 668–627 BCE) at Nineveh, discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in 1853 and first substantially deciphered and published by George Smith in 1872. The epic opens by presenting Gilgamesh as a tyrannical king of Uruk whose oppressive exercise of royal privilege over his subjects prompts the gods to create Enkidu, a wild man formed from clay by the goddess Aruru, initially to serve as a check on Gilgamesh's excesses.