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Gilgamesh:
British Museum.
(Click
to enlarge)
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Gilgamesh
is the first great epic poem. In ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilisation,
the tale is told of the King of Uruk and his search for the
secret of eternal life.
There
is clear evidence that a king of Uruk named Gilgamesh lived around
2700-2600 B.C. Excavation of sites in the area bounded by the great rivers Tigris and
Euphrates
began in 1839 and thousands of tablets were discovered at various
locations. It was not until 1870 that decipherment restored the poems of
Gilgamesh
to the world, providing links to the Old Testament stories of the Garden
of Eden and the Flood.
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The
most complete version comes from the library of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria, who had the original Sumerian texts translated into
Akkadian Semitic in the seventh century B.C. They were written in
cuneiform on clay tablets and then baked. Shortly after this, invasion
destroyed the Assyrian cities and, for twelve hundred years, the story was
lost.
Next:
A
Scene from Gilgamesh
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