The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sep 06, 2026, 1st of 2 Mtgs, Please read Tablets I-V
Details
Session #1 of 2
We now turn to an epic poem one thousand years older than Homer: The Epic of Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh rewards our group precisely because it's the root from which Homer's world grew—composed thirteen centuries before the Iliad, in the same eastern Mediterranean cultural sphere that later fed into Greek epic. Reading it after Homer reverses our chronology but sharpens it: you'll see Bronze Age Mesopotamia's fingerprints on the tradition you've just spent months with.
The parallels are striking and substantive. Gilgamesh's grief over Enkidu—his wild, civilized companion whose death sends him fleeing into the wilderness—echoes Achilles' grief over Patroclus so closely that scholars have long debated direct influence. Both heroes rage against mortality; but where Achilles accepts his fate and seeks glory instead, Gilgamesh refuses to accept his, journeying to the ends of the earth to defeat death outright, and failing.
That failure, and his eventual return to build and accept his city, offers a different resolution than Homeric kleos—one worth discussing against Odysseus's own homecoming.
The poem's flood narrative predates and illuminates the biblical deluge and Greek myths of Deucalion alike, useful for tracing how ancient Near Eastern stories traveled and transformed. And Enkidu's transformation from beast-man to civilized companion mirrors the nature-versus-culture tension running through the Odyssey's encounters with Cyclopes, Circe, and the Lotus-Eaters—humanity's oldest surviving epic asking whether love or glory matters more against oblivion.
Editions [available from your local library or online]:
Any English verse translation, but we recommend for the supplemental materials:
The Epic of Gilgamesh, Second Norton Critical Edition. Translated by Benjamin Foster, W. W. Norton, 2019, ISBN: 9780393643985
For an 1100-page examination of the first epic visit this archive (watch the lecture below first):
Andrew George, The Babylon Gilgamesh Epic, 2003. PDF
Online via Zoom
RSVP for the link.
Schedule of Readings:
Sep 06, 2026 - The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablets I-V
Sep 20, 2026 - The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablets VI-XI
Summary of previous sessions:
The Iliad Books 1-24
The Odyssey 1-24
Our Reading Schedule for 2026 [subject to change]:
Homer: Iliad/Odyssey
Norton: Epic of Gilgamesh
Virgil: Georgics/Aeneid
Ovid: Metamorphosis /Erotic Poems
Eliot: Four Quartets