HIST-102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 34: Cedar Forest, Enlil, Humbaba
9 Oct 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The epic of gilgamesh: historians note that there was a historical sumerian king gilgamesh of uruk who lived around 2650 bce. He is 2/3 god and only 1/3 human. He is also renowned as the builder and king of the great city of uruk in mesopotamia, present day iraq. Kings are more human and therefore idolized: the abiding criterion for judgment is not the happiness of the individual, even if that individual is king, but the good of the society as a whole. He becomes aware of change, not through a sense of gain, the experience of sex, but a sense of loss, diminution of his physical capabilities. He had gained reason and expanded his understanding: mesopotamia. The first part of his epic details enkidu"s development, his life in the wilderness, his separation from the animals, his emergence into wisdom. If gilgamesh is 2/3 god and 1/3 human, his double, enkidu, seems to reverse the ratio.
