Gilgamesh Epic, 2000 B.C., Is a Work Term Paper

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Gilgamesh epic, 2000 B.C., is a work of three thousand lines, written on twelve tablets that was discovered amid the ruins of Nineveh and relates the adventures of the imperious Glgamesh and his friend Enkidu (Gilgamesh pp). The extraordinary essence of the poem lies not only in its antiquity but also in the quality of the writing and the comprehension of humanity (Jager pp).

The Gilgamesh Epic, the first epic bequeathed to history that antedates the Iliad and the Odyssey by more than a millennium, is of superb literary quality, and "the philosophical intricacy and the psychological depth" of this ancient work is truly remarkable and unequaled in quality and depth (Jager pp). Bernd Jager explains that unlike the gradual developments in other cultural endeavors such as pottery and weaving, "poetry seems to have sprung to life complete in all respects ... Even the oldest fragments of the Gilgamesh poem are lacking neither in subtlety of style nor in the grandeur of their vision" (Jager pp). Moreover, the work's descriptions of the human condition and extraordinary insights into the human soul have lost none of their power through the ages to transform the human heart (Jager pp). The epic is essentially an exploration of the "mysterious paths" that lead humans from "infancy to maturity," from "savagery to civilization," from "narcissism and self-preoccupation to participation in communal life, and from a fascination with the word that commands and materially changes the natural world to the poetic word that orients us towards our neighbors" (Jager pp).

Tzvi Abusch writes in the "The Journal of the American Oriental Society," that the epic combines both the "power and tragedy of the Iliad with the wanderings and marvels of the Odyssey," and although the work is basically an adventure, "it is no less a meditation on some fundamental issues of human existence" (Abusch pp). Moreover, the epic deals with the issues of an existential nature and discusses the "powerful human drive to achieve, the value of friendship, the experience of loss, and the inevitability of death" (Abusch pp).

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The poem emphasizes that despite great achievements, humans are powerless against death, and even Gilgamesh, both man and god, must accept his own nature and learn to experience loss and death (Abusch pp).

The Epic of Gilgamesh tells of courageous deed, but does so only to highlight the pain that the deeds caused and the new problems that must be confronted (Abusch pp). As the hero struggles against the world, he is committed to his own personal absolutes as is Achilles, however, there is moral growth, he learns and he changes (Abusch pp). As with Odysseus, the….....

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