And once commerce began, it was important to find a way to use some sort of "token system" in which to account for trade goods. Out of this grew a rather advanced system of writing, which then led to even more advances -- literature, formal religion, and a way to pass down cultural activities from generation to generation in ways other than oral traditions (Woods)
'Gilgamesh listened to the word of his companion, he took the axe in his hand, he drew the sword from his belt, and he struck Humbaba with a thrust of the sword to the neck, and Enkidu his comrade struck the second blow. At the third blow Humbaba fell.' (Kovacs)
These include personality traits such as bravery, wisdom, strength, intelligence, skill and above all loyalty, kindness and endurance. Without endurance and perseverance, a hero is unlikely to achieve triumph over evil or to overcome the obstacles in his or her path to salvation (Nagy)
This is one departure from what we get in Gilgamesh, where William W. Hallo (an emeritus Yale professor generally considered the dean of American Assyriologists) has claimed that "the epic is also noteworthy for its proverbial inserts" (Hallo 617)
The portion that describes the Flood is nearly entirely readable, while large chunks of other parts are either lost forever or remain buried in the sands of Iraq (Miller pp). The fragment, Rm956, was recently identified as the opening eight lines of the epic poem, "restores only one word previously unknown: "isdi" in the second hemistich of the first verse" (Castillo pp)
His identity as a hero is based on the desire to transcend death, destroy the forest and reject the goddess's power (Westling pp). The poem was not found until the mid-1800's during an excavation at an archaeological site in what is now Iraq (Miller pp)
Without the hero's wanderings, there would be no possibility for development and moral growth (Abusch pp). According to Louise Westling, behind the epic lies a long and powerful tradition focused on the feminine as the source of cosmic vitality (Westling pp)
The epic is essentially an exploration of the "mysterious paths" that lead humans from "infancy to maturity," from "savagery to civilization," from "narcissism and self-preoccupation to participation in communal life, and from a fascination with the word that commands and materially changes the natural world to the poetic word that orients us towards our neighbors" (Jager pp). Tzvi Abusch writes in the "The Journal of the American Oriental Society," that the epic combines both the "power and tragedy of the Iliad with the wanderings and marvels of the Odyssey," and although the work is basically an adventure, "it is no less a meditation on some fundamental issues of human existence" (Abusch pp)
, is a work of three thousand lines, written on twelve tablets that was discovered amid the ruins of Nineveh and relates the adventures of the imperious Glgamesh and his friend Enkidu (Gilgamesh pp). The extraordinary essence of the poem lies not only in its antiquity but also in the quality of the writing and the comprehension of humanity (Jager pp)
There are also some qualities of heroism that are common to Odysseus and Gilgamesh in most of the accounts regarding them. According to renowned historian Will Durant, the basic standards of male heroism during the hunting stage and in early civilizations were "acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and ready sexuality" (Durant, 2001)
In the earlier Sumerian version of the same tale, however, the friend is by far the more reluctant of the two. When Gilgamesh revels his plan to go to the mountain and establish renown for himself, Enkidu -- who in this version is referred to as a slave -- preaches caution: "My lord, if today you are going to set off into the mountains, Utu should know about it from us" (George, 1999)
Another critic notes, "On his journey, Gilgamesh is, like Odysseus, stripped of his following, of his energies, of his chief companions, and of his ambitions. Ultimately he is brought to the extremity of the world, the Far West, the land of death and immortality" (Leed 6)
" He writes, "If Achilles is valorous, Odysseus is crafty. Gilgamesh is both; he lures the wild man of the steppe to town through the entrapment of a harlot, and then outwrestles him" (Oinas 5)
Gilgamesh is the world's first super-hero and the reader discovers the stories of his fantastic deeds on tablets dating back to approximately 2000 BC. The tablets describe Gilgamesh as "two-thirds god and one-third human, is the greatest king on earth and the strongest super-human that ever existed; however, he is young and oppresses his people harshly" (Hooker, 1999) Monkey is also described in a super-human manner and acquiring super-human skills
¶ … Epic of Gilgamesh, considered a "hero-king" of ancient Mesopotamia (Kovacs, 1989)
In search of the wind" (Sanders, 103). Universal truths associated with Gilgamesh's travels center around "fatigue, hardship and danger" and suggests journey or travel has the ability to change individuals and create "shepherds" of peace from "predators," often with characters like Gilgamesh and even Odysseus traveling in search of immortality, which they are not to find (Leed, 6)
Yet if the struggle is against death itself -- as Dante seems to imply -- why should it not be troped as heroic? If we turn back from Dante's epic Commedia all the way to the Epic of Gilgamesh, we can find a similar linkage of death with intellectual quest for understanding. In his famous lament of Tablet IX, Gilgamesh laments not the death of heroism, like Dante's Ulysses, but actual death: after Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh seemingly becomes aware of his own mortality, lamenting: I am going to die! -- am I not like Enkidu?! Deep sadness penetrates my core, I fear death, and now roam the wilderness I will set out to the region of Utnapishtim, son of Ubartutu, and will go with utmost dispatch! (Kovacs, Tablet IX) In a subsequent tablet which Kovacs omits as being from a later textual tradition, Gilgamesh will indeed seek out the legendary Utnapishtim, a sort of analogue to the Biblical Noah with the added magical element that Utnapishtim has learned how to cheat death entirely, and has become immortal
While the characters of Gilgamesh and Okonkwo come from vastly disparate historical eras and regions of the world, they each share a number of personality traits that serve to unite them as emblems of mankind's continual struggle to overcome adversity. By closely analyzing the comparisons and contrasts between the demigod Gilgamesh, who "supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance & #8230; is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull" (George 4) and the patriarch Okonkwo, who "tall and huge & #8230; when he walked his heels hardly touched the ground" (Achebe 3), it is possible to identify the common literary constructions used to create such enduring figures of flawed heroism
The arrival of Christian missionaries signals the slow demise of Okonkwo's own power, as well as the decline of his Umuofia clan, and it soon becomes evident to the reader that Achebe has imbued his fictional world with the emotional turmoil he experienced firsthand during the uprising in Biafra. When Achebe submitted his original manuscript for Things Fall Apart, literary agents initially expressed reservations, but soon came to recognize that, while "the novel as an African form was still very young, 'Things Fall Apart' represented a new approach, showing the collision of old and new ways of life to devastating effect" (Franklin)
. But there is also a marked alteration of emphasis and detail" (Kirk 87)