19
votes
Accepted
Does the Epic of Gilgamesh have a continuous cultural history?
When the Medes and the Babylonians conquered Nineveh in 612 B.C. they also destroyed the "Library of Ashurbanipal". Clay tablets from that library mainly "survived" as fragments. ...
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17
votes
Do the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh really contain the same rare proverb about the strength of a triple-stranded rope?
The relevant passage in the Bible is easy enough to find: it is Ecclesiates 4:12 (see Bible Hub):
And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. (...
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8
votes
Does the Epic of Gilgamesh have a continuous cultural history?
Kind of. The name Gilgamesh and its themes did survive the text's loss. Gilgamesh was mentioned twice in later years, first as one of the giants (along with Humbaba, both names rendered into Hebrew ...
- 1,039
8
votes
Which flood story was first: Genesis or The Epic of Gilgamesh?
Walther Sallaberger's book Das Gilgamesch-Epos. Mythos, Werk und Tradition (C. H. Beck, 2008) discusses the flood story
mainly in the context of the Standard Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh Epic. ...
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8
votes
What is the 'full' version of The Epic of Gilgamesh?
What you want depends on what you mean by "full version". Translators have taken different approaches to translating the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is due to the fact that only two thirds of ...
- 43.8k
6
votes
Accepted
Why is it notable that the "monkey tablet" has monkeys?
I think that the question may be over-interpreting the linked article by Osama S. M. Amin. The author is excited by the discovery, but that’s natural: if the tablet is genuine, it provides twenty new ...
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6
votes
What is the 'full' version of The Epic of Gilgamesh?
Assuming the online version you read was by AINA (the Assyrian International News Agency), which indeed sits at 27 pages (and is the third result when I Googled "Epic of Gilgamesh"), note that the PDF ...
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5
votes
Is there really a single "Old Babylonian version" of the Epic of Gilgamesh?
There isn't any single Old Babylonian version. The same is true even of the different witnesses to the so-called standard version, but to a lesser extent, hence "standard" – the Old Babylonian ...
- 310
5
votes
Accepted
How can Gilgamesh be one-third man and two-thirds god?
I have consulted several translations and each of them renders the "proportions" the same, i.e. one third man and two thirds god.
This claim has been translated in slightly different ways.
...
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5
votes
Does the Epic of Gilgamesh have a continuous cultural history?
It’s hard to say one way or another. Let’s take the most likely instance of a continuous knowledge of Gilgamesh, the flood narrative of tablet eleven. The parallels with, e.g., the account of the ...
- 2,985
4
votes
Accepted
Is there really a single "Old Babylonian version" of the Epic of Gilgamesh?
In 1977, Jeffrey H. Tigay published the article Was There an Integrated Gilgamesh Epic in the Old Babylonian Period?
(Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Jacob Joel Finkelstein, Connecticut ...
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4
votes
Why did the gods send the flood in The Epic of Gilgamesh?
In the "standard version" of the Babylonian epic (see the translation by Andrew George, Penguin, 1999), it is not very clear. After the gods discover that Uta-napishti has survived the flood, Ea ...
- 43.8k
4
votes
Accepted
What does it mean that Gilgamesh "took" the people of Uruk?
Assyriologist Andrew R. George (The Epic of Gilgamesh, Penguin, 1999) translates the relevant passages as follows
(page 3; an almost indentical passage occurs on the following page):
He has no ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Why did the gods decide that Enkidu must die?
There are various ways to approach this question, both philological and literary.
From a philological or textual point of view, we need to look at the source of the statement that Enkidu must die.
...
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3
votes
What is the content of the “monkey tablet” of the Gilgamesh epic?
The "monkey tablet", a Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablet identified by Farouk Al-Rawi, is important in several ways, as Al-Rawi and Andrew R. George explain in their article
"Back to the Cedar Forest: ...
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3
votes
Why did the gods send the flood in The Epic of Gilgamesh?
Here is another version of the answer above, also referring to "The Epic of Atraḥasis", in Gary Beckman's introduction to Stanley Lombardo's verse rendering of "Gilgamesh" (Hackett,...
- 725
3
votes
What does it mean that Gilgamesh "took" the people of Uruk?
Andrew George, in his updated translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation, offers a perspective on this stanza. In short, Gilgamesh' monstrous appetites mean that he has 'taken' (in the ...
- 4,686
2
votes
Accepted
Who is Gugalanna?
The Wikipedia contributors did a fairly decent job of gathering what little information is available about Gugalanna.
The only text in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) that ...
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1
vote
Why is it notable that the "monkey tablet" has monkeys?
Apparently, the significance is less the monkeys and more the forest god that they kill.
The previously available text made it clear that [Gilgamesh] and Enkidu knew, even before they killed Humbaba, ...
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