Bible Vs Gilgamesh Essay

As long as the “Epic of Gilgamesh” and the Bible have been around, there have always been comparisons as to the floods in each story. There have been questions such as, which came first? Is the biblical flood account a modified copy of the “Epic of Gilgamesh?” Although, there is no exact date as too which story arose first because the cuneiform tablets found with each story on them are not the originals, there are some key similarities between both of the stories. The reading worldwide flood recorded in Genesis of the Old Testament is similar to the account recorded on Tablet XI of the Sumero-Babylonian version of the epic of Gilgamesh, was discovered in the 1800's by British archaeologists. The flood of Genesis and the flood of Gilgamesh are …show more content…
1900-250 B.C.E. According to Puncher, the story was thought to have been about Gilgamesh, a priest-king of the city-state of Uruk in Southern Mesopotamia, the lands around rivers of Euphrates and Tigris in modern-day Iraq (95). In the story, Gilgamesh is “two-thirds divine and one-third human,” and was the offspring of Ninsun. She was a goddess in the shape of a wild cow, and Gilgamesh's father was a human named Lugalbanada. Puncher said, “Gilgamesh means the offspring is a hero, or according to another etymology, the old man is still a young man” (95). The want for eternal life is essential in the “Epic of Gilgamesh.” “After many adventures, the king's companion Enkidu provokes the wrath of the deities and is sent to the House of Dust” (“Imprint”). Gilgamesh longs for immortality, and begins his journey to seek, Utnapishtim, the one man to survive the Great Flood--and the keeper of the secret of eternal life. In the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, Utnapishtim is not bestowed with any royal power or entrusted with any priestly office; we learn simply that he was a citizen of Shurippak (TabletXI:23) and a man of considerable

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