See also: Gilgamesh (homonymy)
According to the royal List sumérienne, written at the beginning of thousand-year-old IIe, Gilgamesh (also Gilgameš ), wire of Lugalbanda, was the fifth king of Uruk (old period dynastic, first dynasty which would have held the authority with Uruk after the Déluge). The List allots hundred twenty-six years of reign to him.
Myth and history
Lugalbanda (in sumérien “furious King”) is him even in the center of one or two heroic legends of some four hundred worms. It was said husband of a goddess second-rate, Nin.suna (Ninsun), “Lady” and Owner “ of the wild Bovidae ” (buffaloes). The List is unaware of this relationship and allots to him, for father a demon Lilū, in other words “unknown”, which makes of it all the same already a partly supernatural being.
According to another document, the History of Tummal , Gilgamesh, perhaps accompanied by his/her son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a district of the town of Nippur.
In the Épopée of Gilgamesh , it is often known as that it directed the construction of the legendary walls of Uruk that Sargon d' Akkad will affirm to have destroyed to show its military power later two centuries.
Fragments of a text epic, found on the site of old Meturan (today Such Haddad) inform us that, with its death, Gilgamesh was buried under water of a river. The people of Uruk would have deviated the floods of the Euphrate which crossed the city with an aim of even burying the late king in his bed.
In Iraq, archeologists think of having found the tomb lost of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest “book” in the history, writing there is 4 500 years.
In April 2003 a German forwarding discovered what is supposed to be the site of the whole city of Uruk - including, the last residence of its famous king. “I cannot affirm that it is fall it from King Gilgamesh, but that is very similar to what is described in the epopee,” declared Jorg Fassbinder, of the Bavarian department of the historic buildings with Munich “We just found apart from the city in the middle of the old course of Euphrate the remainders of a building which could be interpreted as a tomb” it added.
This astonishing discovered ancient city under the Iraqi desert was made possible by modern technology. By the observation of the differences in magnetizing between bricks and the sediments, one can observe the basement. The Magnétogramme then gives a precise plan of the city. What is astonishing it is that one found structures already described in the Epopee (gardens, houses of the Babylonian type, etc) But the most astonishing lucky find is a system incredibly sophisticated of channels (the archeologists compared Uruk with “Venice in the desert”).
In spite of the lack of direct evidence, the majority of the historians do not dispute the historical character of Gilgamesh. In addition to the royal List, inscriptions were found which confirm the existence of other characters who are associated for him: the kings Enmebaragesi and Agga of Kish. If Gilgamesh were a historical king, it probably reigned in the neighborhoods of 2650 av. J. - C.
Same time five legends in sumériens concerning its exploits date. Gilgamesh and Agga tells the confrontation of the king of Uruk with Agga, king of the city close to Kish. the death of Gilgamesh is a badly preserved account of the anguish of the hero, on which the gods confer the role of judge of deaths. These two parts were not integrated into the versions akkadiennes of the exploits of Gilgamesh. The situation is quite different of two accounts of combat, known as Gilgamesh and the celestial Bull and Gilgamesh and Huwawa which oppose the hero, helped of his/her friend Enkidu, with monsters: the bull sent by the goddess Inanna or the terrible giant Huwawa (Humbaba), guard of the Forest of the cedars, episodes taken again later in akkadien. In the fifth poem, Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Hells , Enkidu goes down to the Hells to seek there the badges of royalty given by Inanna to Gilgamesh, that this one dropped there; Enkidu is then retained with the Hells, but its spirit returns to tell in Gilgamesh what occurs in the world from deaths. All these texts indicate that, at the beginning of thousand-year-old IIe at least, circulated on Gilgamesh of the multiple accounts, whose recurring sets of themes were its heroic combat and its obsession of death.
Its name, probably sumérien and which, in this language should be articulated Bilga.mes , could mean “the old one is still in the force of the age”.
In the majority of the texts, the name of Gilgamesh is accompanied by the determinant specific to the divine beings, in the star shape (DINGIR) - (Tenger) - Tangra but it has no proof there that a worship was returned to him of alive sound, and the myth sumerien of Gilgamesh suggests that its deification was a late development (contrary to the god-kings akkadiens). History or not, Gilgamesh became a legendary character thanks to the epopee which bears its name.
It is interesting to bring closer the Epopee to Gilgamesh of the myth of Hercules: certain authors thus establish a filiation between the epopee of Gilgamesh, the “Glory of Uruk”, written in Mésopotamie of, and the myth of Hercules, the “Glory of Hera”, consigned by Homère to eighth century BC. Indeed, the similarity is striking between Gilgamesh, king d' Uruk, two thirds god and a human third, carrying out a series of works having to lead it to immortality, and Hercules, Gloire of Héra, half god and half man, carrying out 12 work which will lead it to its turn with immortality (see on this subject work of the Syrian anthropologist Firas Sawwah).
gilgamesh: malhamat rear-râfidayn Al-khâlida (dirâsa shâmila ma' has Al-nuçûç Al-kâmilat wa i' dâd drâmy, dimashq, 1996, Gilgamesh: the eternal epopee mésopotamienne (study supplements with the whole account and dramatic presentation), Damas, 1996 -->
Gilgamesh in the popular culture
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Gilgamesh is the hero of the novel To the doors of the life (1990) of Robert Silverberg. In this history, being bored hell, Gilgamesh decides to find the door of the world of the alive ones;
- It also seems supporting character in the magic labyrinth (1980), fourth volume of the river of eternity , a novel of Science-fiction writes by Philip Jose Farmer;
- In the series Final Fantasy , Gilgamesh is:
- It is also a character of the series of Animation Japan ease Fate/stay night ( Type-Moon);
- the Epopee of Gilgamesh is used as basic screen with the popular episode Darmok of Star Trek: The new generation ;
- Gilgamesh is also the central figure of the cartoon éponyme, of Gwen de Bonneval and Frantz Duchazeau (2 volumes published: the tyrant and wise the );
- Gilgamesh also indicates a group of Visual Kei Japanese;
- Gilgamesh is also one of the heroes of the Univers Marvel, being one of the members of the Éternels;
- It is also a animated Série Japan ease of 26 episodes of 24 min realized in 2003 by Masahiko Murata and diffused since on Saturday, March 10 2007 on the channel Europe 2 TV of TNT.
- It is mentioned in the Trilogie of Bartiméus of Jonathan Stroud.
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