Did you know that “The Epic of Gilgamesh” is considered to be the oldest known piece of fictional literature?

The great Babylonian poem was composed nearly 4 millennia ago in ancient Mesopotamia.

What makes it special?

Written in the Akkadian and Summerian languages used by the people of lower Mesopotamian, “The Epic of Gilgamesh” is a series of poems and tales dating back to 2100 B.C., but the most complete version was written around the 12th century B.C. by the Babylonians. No one knows who is the original writer of the story of Gilgamesh or if it was written by a group of authors.

The mythical poem is centred around the tale of King Gilgamesh, whose mother is the clever goddess Ninsun, a cow. Gilgamesh is a tyrant who rules the city of Uruk. The villagers complain to the gods and they create a man called in Enikdu to restrain him. But Gilgamesh and Enikdu end up becoming friends. The two ravage a forest, cut down Cedar trees and kill the forest guardian. Eventually, Enikdu dies. After his friend’s death, the Gilgamesh humbled and relies is the consequences of his barbaric actions.

The Sumerian civilisation first developed writing around 5000 years ago. Scribes wrote on clay tablets in a script known as cuneiform. People even worshipped a god of writing called Nabu. His symbols were the stylus and clay tablet.

How it was discovered

In 1845, Austen Henry Layard from the UK discovered parts of clay tablets with some writing on it, on his way to site Ceylon. Some of these tablets contained the story of Gilgamesh. But these were not the original tablets. They were copies of the text commissioned by King Ashurbanipal, who was the fan of the Gilgamesh. The king had preserved the tablets in a library. However, the library burnt down after Ashurbanipal’s empire fell, but the clay tablets remained buried under the ruins.

Work in progress

Although Layard discovered the tablets, no one knew how to read it. It was George Smith who deciphered it first in 1872 while working in the British Museum. Over the years, more tablets were recovered from different sites including the Iraqi city of Mosul. Interestingly, the text continues to grow and evolve with new findings. That’s why “The Epic of Gilgamesh” is still considered to be a work in progress. It may take years before we get to have a complete version of the epic.

 

Picture Credit : Google

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