The Sumerians

>>9262473
I'm just bumping this because you deserve an answer.

Sadly, I have no answers for you.

Read more into Gilgamesh, there's a lot more to it that you probably realize.
>muh impermanence
Is surface level.

There's the one about Ishtar going into the underworld. I was actually about to make a Mesopotamian lit thread today myself, glad there's interest.

>>9263245
Gilgamesh' success grows greater literally every single day
>muh immortalization through great works

>>9263407
That's a thing but it isn't the depth of the epic.

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321KB, 1274x838px

>>9264808
You're right, I just like really like that aspect of the epic. What did you take from Gilgamesh if you don't mind my asking?

My favorite part was Enlil scolding Ea (or was it vice versa) about causing the flood. It's this part that really shows that sort of merging with Homeric and Biblical texts that the poem has part of its renowned for. Just like an argument from Iliad, but with the repetition and wording of Bible-fame. It's such an incredible and beautiful work. Gilgamesh is my favorite book and I could talk about it for hours

>>9264808
Do enlighten us, oh you who saw the Deep.

>>9265463
I like Shamhat the harlot. She is motherly, yet whorish, she is fleeting orgasmic feeling, she is the earthy, fertile bedrock of civilised life. She births and raises--as it were--Enkidu as a city dwelling man and doesn't ask for anything in return. For six days and seven nights her cunt becomes Enkidu's world--to use that infamous grrm-ian turn of phrase--and this allows him to discover a new world, the world of girdled men who live in cities and raise sheep and bake bread and brew ale and bake bricks and dig canals and do the work of the eternal gods for them. To call someone a harlot or a whore nowadays would be to belittle them; Shamhat though, it is implied I think, is given great respect. After all it is for her that the sun god Shamash scolds dying and raging Enkidu and makes him recant his curses into blessings; it's funny how he doesn't feel the need to do the same for the hunter who, after all, had discovered Enkidu the beast. I like mother/whore female characters like that. What do you think?

>>9265463
Wasn't it funny how the gods rushed and barged to get a whiff of the smoke of the first sacrifice made by Uta-Napishti after the flood, like hungry strays around a thrown bone? Ea was only the first to speak up but I'll bet Enlil got his share of pissed off looks for a while after his little stunt almost left the mighty immortals to fend for themselves for a while.

>>9265956
Forests. Enkidu dies because he crossed the line against nature by being the first to enter and by killing its guardian.

You can see later Biblical parallels here too, but the way it is executed in Gilgamesh is really something else. There's a good bit of literature on the subject. It might just be my translation.
>>9266537
The gods are throughout depicted as almost lesser to Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Just look at their speech, the way they act, and so on. Ishtar tries to snatch Gilgamesh, and then there is that extremely memorable rejection which almost reads like surrealist poetry.

>>9265463
There's also the part where sweet fuck-happy Ishtar goes crying home to daddy after she gets served a cold heap of uncomfortable truths from our remarkably non-pussywhipped hero and daddy can't withstand her screeching threats to ruin things for everybody and lets princess have the keys to his prize war toy which she gets to see proper ruined so that we get to witness more impotent screeching and an awfully close almost-encounter of her pretty godly head with a piece of flying Taurus prime rib.

>>9266667
>Forests.
That's a good point as well. Was it Enkidu who slew the forest warden though? I remember it was definitely him in one of the Sumerian poems who deals with the episode, however, in the standard Babylonian version, wasn't it Gilgamesh who dealt the fatal blow while Enkidu was standing by, enticing his stronger friend to do it? I read the Andrew George and Stephanie Dalley editions but this part is very jumbled and I couldn't follow the story properly. Anyway, I think the gods judged them equally guilty both for slaying Humbaba and for felling the sacred cedars, except Gilgamesh was part god while Enkidu was a kinless orphan who had just been adopted, so he gets to play the scapegoat for both. Plus there was that slaughtering the bull of heaven business and Enkidu's senseless insolence towards Ishtar at the end couldn't pass unpunished.
What is the biblical counterpart of this "hero gets punished for spoiling sacred nature" episode?

>The gods are throughout depicted as almost lesser
Right. Doesn't Homer do the same when gods and humans play on the same stage, yet the gods seem to be enacting a comedy while the men star in their own tragedy?

>>9267000
Enkidu was the one that told Gilgamesh that Humbaba/Huwawa needs to die. He was also the one to open the gate to the forest, in my translation (Sandars, Penguin Classics) his arm is paralyzed and it implies that he loses some of his strength.

Gilgamesh did do the killing, but he only did it because he was told to.

In my translation, Enkidu states that he was chosen instead of Gilgamesh because he opened the gate, throwing the bull's testicles/thigh at Ishtar was apparently minor. Note that it was Gilgamesh that actually killed the bull.

>What is the biblical counterpart of this "hero gets punished for spoiling sacred nature" episode?
Genesis 3.
>Doesn't Homer do the same when gods and humans play on the same stage, yet the gods seem to be enacting a comedy while the men star in their own tragedy?
It's hard to tell exactly how they are portrayed in Gilgamesh, it could just be that the gods were given less dialogue, and what dialogue they have seems silly.

Why are Gilgamesh threads always the comfiest?

>>9267955
Because the poem itself is. You can read it as a collection of related folk tales if you want and not think about it very much, although there is depth there, emotion and all sorts of existential musings, plus some parts that are pure fun.