Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh West AsiaSemi-legendary King of Uruk and hero of the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic which was based on myths that had existed for centuries in Sumer. The fullest surviving text is the Assyrian one from the library of King Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, and therefore no older than the seventh century BC, at least a millennium later than composition.
Born of the union of a goddess and a man–possibly the sacral coupling of the ruler and the high priestess during the New Year Festival–Gilgamesh was said to be two-thirds divinity and one-third mortal. In the Sumerian fragment of the myth the haunting fear of death spurs the hero's exploits and one view holds that we have here an account of a funerary ritual connected with the death chamber excavated at Ur. The Akkadian epic portrays Gilgamesh as a tyrant, overbearing and prone to sexual misdemeanours. His people beseeched the gods for help, and on the steppe the mother goddess Aruru fashioned from...
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