True or False Enkidu and Gilgamesh were on their way to Gilgameshs castle.

How many times was death mentioned? Death is important because Gilgameshs biggest fear was of death. What is the last thing that happens in the story? Gilgamesh kills his best friend to save himself. Enkidu betrays Gilgamesh and leaves him behind. Enkidu is paralyzed after touching a gate and cannot cry out for help. Humbaba traps Enkidu and Gilgamesh is a deep lava pit in the forest floor.

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

Key Facts

F U L L T I T L E The Epic of Gilgamesh A U T H O R The ancient authors of the stories that compose the poem are anonymous. The latest

and most complete version yet found, composed no later than around 600 B . C . , was signed by a Babylonian author and editor who called himself Sin-Leqi-Unninni.
T Y P E O F W O R K Epic poem

G E N R E Heroic quest; heroic epic

L A N G U A G E Sumerian; Akkadian; Hurrian; Hittite. All these languages were written in cuneiform

script.
T I M E A N D P L A C E W R I T T E N Between 2700 B . C . and around 600 B . C . in Mesopotamia

(present-day Iraq)
D A T E O F F I R S T P U B L I C A T I O N Tablet XI of Gilgamesh was first translated into English and

published in 1872. The first comprehensive scholarly translation to be published in English was R. Campbell Thompsons in 1930.

P U B L I S H E R The Clarendon Press, Oxford

N A R R A T O R Most of the epic is related by an objective, unnamed narrator.

P O I N T O F V I E W Third person. After Enkidu appears in Tablet I, most of the story is told from

Gilgameshs point of view. Utnapishtim narrates the flood story in Tablet XI.
T O N E The narrator never explicitly criticizes Gilgamesh, who is always described in the most

heroic terms, but his portrayal of him often includes irony. In the first half of the story, Gilgamesh is heedless of death to the point of rashness, while in the second, he is obsessed by it to the point of paralysis. Gilgameshs anticlimactic meeting with Utnapishtim, for example, is quietly ironic, in that everyone involved, including Utnapishtim and his wife, knows more than Gilgamesh does.
T E N S E Past

S E T T I N G ( T I M E ) 2700 B . C .

S E T T I N G ( P L A C E ) Mesopotamia

P R O T A G O N I S T Gilgamesh, king of Uruk located in Southern Mesopotamia

M A J O R C O N F L I C T Gilgamesh struggles to avoid death.

R I S I N G A C T I O N In the first half of the poem, Gilgamesh bonds with his friend Enkidu and sets out

to make a great name for himself. In doing so, he incurs the wrath of the gods.
C L I M A X Enkidu dies.

F A L L I N G A C T I O N Bereft by the loss of his friend, Gilgamesh becomes obsessed with his own

mortality. He sets out on a quest to find Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian Noah who received eternal life from the gods, in the hope that he will tell him how he too can avoid death.
T H E M E S Love as a motivating force; the inevitability of death; the gods are dangerous

M O T I F S Seductions; doubling and twinship; journeys; baptism

S Y M B O L S Religious symbols; doorways

F O R E S H A D O W I N G The most important instances of foreshadowing are explicit, because they

come in the form of premonitory dreams. Gilgamesh dreams about a meteor, which his mother tells him represents the companion he will soon have. Few things, however, are as ephemeral as a falling star, and already we have a hint of Enkidus eventual fate. Enkidu interprets dreams during their journey to the forbidden forest. In one a mountain falls on them, which Enkidu says represents the defeat of Humbaba. It also suggests Enkidus journey to the underworld and Gilgameshs passage through the twin-peaked mountain. In another dream, a bull attacks them. Enkidu says the bull is Humbaba, but it may also be the Bull of Heaven they fight later.
The 12th tablet is a sequel to the original 11, and was probably added at a later date. It bears little relation to the well-crafted 11-tablet epic; the lines at the beginning of the first tablet are quoted at the end of the 11th tablet, giving it circularity and finality.