Gilgamesh

The epic starts out with a general overview of Gilgamesh the two-thirds god, one-third man king of Uruk. Gilgamesh's kingdom is perfectly laid out and running smoothly. There is, however, one problem, Gilgamesh is a cruel and heartless leader forcing labor and raping whomever he pleases. In response to his subjects' pleas the gods create a man named Enkidu who is every bit Gilgamesh's equal and place him in the wild. This is where the story really starts. Enkidu is living in the wild among the animals when he is discovered by a hunter and tamed sexually by a woman from the temple and brought to live in civilization. When told of the cruelty of Gilgamesh Enkidu goes of to kill him and after the two wrestle for a while Gilgamesh comes out on top and the two decide to become friends a go looking for adventure. They decide to steal cedar trees from a distant forbidden forest and in doing so they kill a demon named Humbaba and make a raft from the trees to sail back to Uruk. When they get back Ishtar, the goddess of love is overcome with lust for Gilgamesh but when he turns her down she angrily asks her father the god of the sky to send down the bull of heaven. Together Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight and kill the bull but as punishment for their actions the gods decide to kill one of the two friends and soon after Enkidu falls ill. After Enkidu's death Gilgamesh becomes obsessed with his own so he puts on animal skins and travels into the wilderness seeking Urshanabi, the immortal so that he may learn the secret of immortality. He travels to the great mountain Mashu and pleads with the two scorpion guards until they let him travel through the dark tunnel to reach the a great sea where he meets Urshanabi, the ferryman, who takes Gilgamesh on a trip across the Waters of Death to meet Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh the story of the great flood and how the gods tried to wipe out humans but he was warned by the god of wisdom, Ea, and survived,