The Inevitability Of Death In The Epic Of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Inevitability of Death

As mortal human beings, our lives have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We are born, we live, and we die. But what happens to us after we die? Do our souls separate from our physical bodies and ascend somewhere above the clouds to a place a lovely as the Heavens? Or have our souls been tarnished with mal-content and wrong-doing, thus condemning ourselves to a fate as demonic as Hell? Or perhaps there is nothing that awaits us after death, and our bodies simply decompose, returning to the Earth? These questions still plague modern man today, so it comes as no surprise that the inevitability of death weighed heavily on the hearts and minds of ancient Mesopotamians. Although The Epic of

No one wants to be remembered as a tyrant, rapist or murderer, therefore it seems the reasonable solution would be to live a life full of doing good deeds and helping others. This gives rise to the concept of morals - a concept that all religions center themselves around. It is almost hard to ignore the religious undertones throughout the Epic, as there are obvious multiple deities, an account of creation and even a flood event. But even though the Epic of Gilgamesh is the most complete version of a mythical flood account that we have, it is by no means the first. The Sumerian Eridu Genesis, and the Akkadian Atrahasis Epic both predate their Babylonian cousin. But aside from these Mesopotamian accounts, similar stories are also found in both the Hebrew Book of Genesis, and in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Each of these summarize a creation myth, a flood account, and a set of morals to live by, thus essentially comprising a set of religious beliefs. Perhaps the reason that The Epic of Gilgamesh continues to be translated throughout the ages, is the simple fact that it addresses our biggest fear as human beings - the inevitability of