Questions tagged [sumerian-language]

Questions about works of literature originally written in Sumerian, an extinct language from ancient Mesopotamia.

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3 answers
3k views

Does the Epic of Gilgamesh have a continuous cultural history?

Over 4000 years ago, the Epic of Gilgamesh was first told and written down on clay tablets. Today, as far as I understand, the story is known from the discovery of those tablets in recent centuries. ...
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2 votes
1 answer
606 views

Who is Gugalanna?

In this question I originally used the name Gugalanna for the Heaven-Bull slain by Gilgamesh and Enkidu, following Wikipedia. After a query in comments, I edited the question since the name Gugalanna ...
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5 votes
3 answers
264 views

What percentage of clay tablets found in Mesopotamia contain literature?

Most of the major cuneiform tablet discoveries date from the 1840s and later. Cuneiform was used to write several languages, including Sumerian (a language isolate according to the current state of ...
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5 votes
2 answers
8k views

Why did the gods send the flood in The Epic of Gilgamesh?

A previous question asks about the comparative timescale of the flood story that appears in the Book of Genesis and the one that appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh. An interesting apparent difference is ...
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8 votes
2 answers
587 views

Is there really a single "Old Babylonian version" of the Epic of Gilgamesh?

From the Wikipedia article about the Epic of Gilgamesh: From the diverse sources found, two main versions of the epic have been partially reconstructed: the standard Akkadian version, or He who saw ...
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10 votes
2 answers
1k views

What is the 'full' version of The Epic of Gilgamesh?

I looked at a PDF of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and it was very pretty. Then, I decided that I wanted to purchase the physical copy of the book. While the version that I read online, which I thought was ...
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15 votes
3 answers
2k views

Which flood story was first: Genesis or The Epic of Gilgamesh?

I have heard that The Epic of Gilgamesh may predate the stories of Noah told in Abrahamic works. Is there any evidence to support which story came first?