On the face of the sun its countenance gazes, then all of sudden nothing is there!” Ever the river has risen and brought us the flood, the mayfly floating on the water. “Ever do we build our households, ever do we make our nests, ever do brothers divide their inheritance, ever do feuds arise in the land. Later, upon Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh journeys to the edge of the earth where he goes in search of the secret of eternal life and, not finding it, returns home to Uruk having in some manner, in spite of life’s sorrows and travails, made peace with his own mortality. They undergo various battles including fighting and defeating the bull of heaven. The basic story follows the King Gilgamesh of Uruk (modern-day Warka, Iraq) and his friendship with the wild man Enkidu. Fragments of the story on stone tablets continue to be found in modern-day Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Much of the reason it is lesser known than the younger works of Homer is because the epic itself was not rediscovered until 1853, cuneiform was not deciphered until 1857, and it wasn’t well translated until 1912. The epic poem, one of oldest works of world literature, was composed in its earliest versions over 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and written in Babylonian cuneiform on clay tablets. The Epic of Gilgamesh, or He Who Saw Deep translated by Andrew George
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