Epic of Gilgamesh John Harris

A brief introduction to the Epic: its origin and significance to our lives.
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Image is of the famed eleventh tablet
of the Epic of Gilgamesh,
in which the tale of the Flood is related.
Now housed in the British Museum,
it was found in the pillaged remains
of the royal library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-631 BC)
in his palace at Nineveh.

Preamble to the adventures, introducing Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and alluding to the goddess Ishtar whose presence is preeminent among all divinity in this tale, and in whose temple are kept the tablets which are to be read to tell this tale.
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Image is an Akkadian representation of Gilgamesh in his prime.
Music excerpt is “Ur” from the album
The Forest by David Byrne

The Adventure of Enkidu continues tablet I of the Epic and finishes on tablet II. It is supplemented by Bablyonian material where the Akkadian text is damaged.
Gilgamesh is a young king of Uruk, arrogant, and overbearing. He so abuses his authority by the mistreatment of his people, even his own warriors and peers, even taking their brides in sexual intercourse, that he is feared and despised, even while admired.
The people pray for a champion to deliver them, another strong man who can best him. The creator Aruru places Enkidu (the "wild man") on earth for this purpose. He is eventually tamed and comes to Uruk to challenge Gilgamesh.
This is the tale of that encounter.
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The image is an Akkadian frieze
representing Enkidu drinking at a waterhole
in the wilderness like a beast.
Music excerpt is “Ur” from the album
The Forest by David Byrne

The text of this episode is much damaged in both the Akkadian and the Babylonian series; rather than indicating the frequent gaps and ambiguities, the text is reconstructed from the best sources, including the more ancient Sumerian.
Much is conjectural, and is given some poetic license. The Sumerian, rather than the Akkadian, contains more details, and so the temper of the story reflects its more “archaic” tone.
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Image is a classic Sumerian representation of Gilgamesh wrestling a lion to his death.

Music excerpt is 
“Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis”
from the album, Vaughan Williams: Symphonic Works

The conclusion of the adventure, the confron-tation with Humbaba.
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The image is a Sumerian
clay model of the face of Humbaba,
said to be the image of coiled intestines.

Music excerpt is 
“Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis”
from the album, Vaughan Williams: Symphonic Works

This is the heavily damaged twelfth tablet in the Gilgamesh Epic found in the royal library of Ninevah. It’s content is disconcerting to scholars as the final chapter to the Epic, because so ranked it would seemingly resurrect Enkidu from the dead for a gratuitous and incoherent conclusion; an end to the Epic with Tablet 11, where Gilgamesh returns to Uruk after his wanderings, seems much more fitting and so nicely closes with an epilogic passage that poetically parallels the prologue in Tablet 1.
But this adventure is a traditional Sumerian tale of Gilgamesh and was appended by the Ninevah compiler for some importance, perhaps as further elucidation of the central theme of death, or rather, the meaning of life in the midst of death. I find its color and its archaic lore mysterious and so include it where other renditions omit it. I have rendered it perhaps more poetically and liberally than my other renditions here, so as to evoke its strangeness. We should remember that in traditional oral story telling, tales concatenate “spiritually” related matter, even if they are otherwise illogical. Relation, rather than logic, rules the story. Still, in deference to modern narrative sensibilities, I have opted to place the tale among the series of adventures that precede the death of Enkidu and the final wanderings of Gilgamesh.
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Music excerpt is 
“Fra Angelico”
by 20th century composer, Alan Hovnhaness;
the album is Hovhaness: Symphony Etchmiadzin