Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Gilgamesh
    Gilgamesh
    Gilgamesh
    Ebook136 pages2 hours

    Gilgamesh

    By Jeff Barcham

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This book presents a new version (in verse) of the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. It tells the history of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk (a city called Warka in modern Iraq) who is believed to have lived in the 28th century BC.

    Gilgamesh starts the story as a brilliant but brash monarch, having inherited the throne from his father (Lugalbanda) at a young age, with no rivals. When an equally powerful rival emerges, in a wild man named Enkidu, Gilgamesh realises that he needs to perform heroic feats to make his name.

    In so doing, Gilgamesh and Enkidu offend the gods and the people of Uruk, and learns the value of diplomacy and subterfuge.
    When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is grief-stricken, renounces his throne, and embarks on a journey to discover the secret of immortality. There he finds Utanapishtim, the Sumerian equivalent of Noah, who survived the great flood and was granted immortality by the gods.

    The Gilgamesh story represents the first great literary consideration of human mortality. The work centres around themes that still resonate today: impetuousness, ambition, maturity, retribution, renunciation, quest. And, of course, the consequences of failure. Gilgamesh is unique in that it deals equally with these themes, and not just the heroic derring-do of a mythic king. Gilgamesh may be mythically powerful, but he is also tragically, and wonderfully, human.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJeff Barcham
    Release dateDec 29, 2011
    ISBN9781465845191
    Gilgamesh

    Related to Gilgamesh

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Harvesting History

      Mar 24, 2020

      Harvesting History
      4 min read

    • Article

      Farmers And Foragers

      Dec 2, 2022

      Farmers And Foragers
      1 min read

    • Article

      A Touch Of Magic

      Feb 19, 2024

      THE GRIMMELINGS by Rachael King (Allen & Unwin, $24.99) A lonely teenager. Parents missing in action. A boy who appears from nowhere. An enormous black stallion. So far, so classic. Yet nothing is what it seems in this first children’s book in more

      2 min read

    • Article

      Call Of The Wild

      Jan 31, 2024

      Call Of The Wild
      4 min read

    • Article

      Where It All Began

      Mar 3, 2021

      Where It All Began
      9 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      Holly Nil, Ivy One

      Dec 15, 2021

      Holly Nil, Ivy One
      3 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2022

      Nothing is as important to our ability to survive as our ability to hurt. -Haider Warraich, The Song of Our Scars, 2022 In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. -William Blake, T

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ursula K. Le Guin

      Jun 15, 2018

      He was thinking of Lookfar, abandoned long ago, beached on the sands of Selidor. Little of her would be left by now, a plank or two down in the sand maybe, a bit of driftwood on the western sea. As he drifted near sleep he began to remember sailing t

      15 min read

    • Article

      Until We See Their Faces

      Jul 17, 2018

      Again and again, brave Thai divers plunged into the murky waters of a flooded cave to search for a soccer team and its coach in the dark depths. At last, after days of tension that seemed to last forever and drew the attention of the whole world, the

      2 min read

    • Article

      AI, Wildlife And A Valentine's Day Read

      Feb 9, 2024

      Here we're talking the other AI – not artificial insemination but artificial intelligence, although wisecracking tech guru and journalist Goldstuck could no doubt align the two with a great quip . . . Given that he was a Vrystaat lad from Trompsburg

      2 min read

    • Article

      Read All About It

      Nov 25, 2021

      Award-winning author Karen Wyld lives by the sea on Kaurna Country south of Adelaide, SA. How did you choose your heroes? I chose Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who lived during the invasion and early colonisation era, who had shown wha

      1 min read

    • Article

      I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls

      Sep 15, 2021

      THIS is a deft and stylish exploration of a vast and complex topic. The author, a former Architectural Editor and Editor of COUNTRY LIFE, has visited hundreds of country houses, investigating and understanding their stories, and this naturally inform

      5 min read

    • Article

      Forfeit

      Jan 1, 2021

      Forfeit
      7 min read

    • Article

      Wild Things

      Jun 3, 2018

      The ground was spongy and green, the accents Irish, the light atmospheric and ‘soft’ (in other words, it was raining); the scene was set for a storytelling session about epic battles and strange worlds, good versus evil. Especially as we were standin

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Call Of The Wild

      Nov 30, 2020

      The Call Of The Wild
      2 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Dec 1, 2022

      Shelf Life
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Literary Zoo

      Dec 9, 2021

      A Literary Zoo
      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Shelf

      Nov 18, 2019

      IF WE LOOK back on the writings of Hemingway or Ruark, we can appreciate how the role of the African professional hunter has changed as the 20th century merged into the 21st. Today’s PH needs to be, first and foremost, a true conservationist and a cu

      6 min read

    • Article

      High Up In The Mountains

      Nov 25, 2021

      High Up In The Mountains
      5 min read

    • Article

      Labyrinth Of Love

      Oct 1, 2021

      Labyrinth Of Love
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Inner Workings Of Gertrude Jekyll

      Aug 4, 2021

      GERTRUDE JEKYLL is one of those enduring arbiters of taste whose influence extends far beyond her own lifetime. It is natural that modern garden historians should wish to mine her considerable paper archive, especially now that we live in a digital a

      5 min read

    • Article

      RV Road Books

      Dec 12, 2019

      Jackie Norman RRP $34.99 New Holland Jackie Norman met her soul mate and sold her suburban home, swapping it for a life travelling around New Zealand in a campervan. Her aim was to exchange a stressful life servicing a crippling mortgage, with a more

      7 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Mar 1, 2023

      Lulu Jones, age 9 Bowling Green, KY Their Wishes The kitten sits by the fire,Wishing for a mouse. The horse lies down in the stables,Wishing for some hay. The dog dozes in the bed,Wishing for a bone. The bunny burrows down into its nest,Wishing for

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Gilgamesh

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Gilgamesh - Jeff Barcham

      Gilgamesh

      Jeff Barcham

      Gilgamesh

      Smashworks Edition

      December 2011

      The image on page one is the head of a Portal Guardian from Nimroud.

      Jeff Barcham asserts the following moral rights: to be identified as the author of this work; not to have this work altered in a prejudicial way; and not to have authorship falsely attributed. All rights are reserved under Australian, International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

      Copyright Jeff Barcham 2011

      ISBN 978-0-646-55776-2

      A catalogue record for the print version of this book is held at the National Library of Australia

      Smashworks Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashworks.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      Cast

      Tablet 1 - Dedication to The Coming of Enkidu

      Tablet 2 - At the Waterhole to Friends

      Tablet 3 - The Council to Brothers

      Tablet 4 - Dreamscape

      Tablet 5 - The Battle of the Trees to Rain Fell In the Mountains

      Tablet 6 - The Charms of Ishtar to Dance of the Bull of Heaven

      Tablet 7 - The Sentence to Curses

      Tablet 8 - Enkidu in the Underworld to The River

      Tablet 9 - Wanderings to Passage at Night

      Tablet 10 - The Tavern by the Ocean to Before the Flood

      Tablet 11 - Afloat to The Sammu

      Afterword

      PREFACE

      This book presents a new version (in verse) of the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. It tells the history of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk (a city called Warka in modern Iraq) who is believed to have lived in the 28th century BC.

      Gilgamesh starts the story as a brilliant but brash monarch, having inherited the throne from his father (Lugalbanda) at a young age, with no rivals. When an equally powerful rival emerges, in a wild man named Enkidu, Gilgamesh realises that he needs to perform heroic feats to make his name. In so doing, Gilgamesh and Enkidu offend the gods and the people of Uruk, and learns the value of diplomacy and subterfuge.

      When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is grief-stricken, renounces his throne, and embarks on a journey to discover the secret of immortality. There he finds Utanapishtim, the Sumerian equivalent of Noah, who survived the great flood and was granted immortality by the gods.

      A list of the characters in the story is presented below, along with a short historical note at the end of the text.

      CAST

      Gil / Gilgamesh - King of Uruk

      Enkidu - Gilgamesh’s friend and comrade

      Ninsun - Gilgamesh’s mother

      Shamhat - One of Ishtar’s sacred prostitutes

      Humbaba - Guardian of the sacred cedar forest

      Inanna - High Priestess of Ishtar

      Shiduri - Barmaid at the end of the world

      Urshanabi - Ferryman of Utanapishtim

      Utanapishtim - Immortal survivor of the Great Flood

      Ishtar - Principal goddess of Uruk

      Enlil - One of the leading trinity of gods, war god (cult centre: Nippur)

      Anu - Another of the leading trinity of gods, father of Ishtar

      Ea - Wisest of the leading trinity of gods

      Aruru - The mother goddess

      Shamash - The Sun god, rising in influence (cult centre: Larsa)

      Ereshkigal - Queen of the underworld (sister of Ishtar)

      Tablet 1

      Dedication

      Welcome, traveller.

      Feast upon the sight of Uruk.

      Climb atop its wall

      That winds Uruk like a skein of flax.

      Walk upon the girdle

      Of the capital of the world!

      Marvel at its masonry,

      Double thickness, glazed in local kilns.

      What architect could rival it?

      Did not the Seven Sages themselves

      Draw the plans?

      Now can you finally see Uruk?

      Sheepfold of its people.

      Guardian of fruit groves,

      Of great quarries.

      God-bastion, birthplace of Ishtar.

      Adoptive home of Shamash.

      What other city is like it?

      Once you are sated with all this,

      Seek out the Cornerstone.

      Within it a chest of Cedar.

      Within the chest tablets that tell,

      To those with eyes and understanding,

      The journey of Gilgamesh.

      Gilgamesh it was who built the walls.

      Who pieced back together

      The temples and rites of the Gods,

      Lost since the Flood.

      He who cut roads from sheer rock,

      Dug wells in the wilderness!

      Gilgamesh who led armies to victory.

      A battering ram to his enemies,

      Strong shield-arm to his men.

      The mightiest in the land.

      The most beautiful that ever was.

      The same Gilgamesh who travelled

      Across the world, and over all seas.

      Journeyed through pain and despair,

      Loss and ignorance.

      He alone who braved the deep,

      Returned a King!

      King Gil

      Gil was born to be King,

      His father dead before Gil

      Could walk unaided, let alone rule.

      At the funeral, the Widow/Queen Ninsun

      Raised him up to all Uruk.

      He wore the child-sized purple cloak

      Of a child-sized monarch.

      Gil squinted through the sun’s glare,

      Stoic and dry eyed amidst the misery.

      The people made up for his lack of tears.

      How they cheered him!

      How they grew to love him as he grew!

      Always big for his age,

      Faster, noisier, stronger than his playmates.

      Stronger soon than the Palace men

      Who raised him.

      He was the child of the city.

      Which door was ever barred to him?

      Who would refuse him food or a bed?

      Who upbraid him for broken pottery,

      Or playmates’ arms,

      When the wrestling went too far.

      His face ever smiling.

      The world a vast nursery.

      Those his age were smitten with him:

      He seemed born to lead,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1