Gilgamesh
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Destiny in Gilgamesh and The Iliad Stories do not need to inform us of things. From Gilgamesh for example, we know that some of the people who lived in the land between the Tigris and Euphates rivers in the second and third milleniums BCE. We know they celabrated a king named Gilgamesh; we know they believed in many gods; we know they were self- -consious of their own cultivation of the natural world; and we know they were literate. In the story, The Iliad we also know that great rulers and gods ruled and where top priority of the lands. Point being it can be argued that the story of Gil- -gamesh and the Iliad destinys are quite the same in relivence of the wars and the ways of life both of the storys complete to meaningful death. In hand which comtr- -ibutes to both of the epics. In the story of Gilgamesh, it is important to look careful what happened in the story; that is , look at it as if the actions and people it describes actually took place or existed. The questions raised by a characters actions discuss the implic- -ations of their consequences. But its not to consider how the story is put together rather how it uses the conventions of language, of events with beginings and endings of description of character and storytelling itself to reawaken our sensitivity to the real world. The real world is the world without conventions, the unnameable, unrep- resentable world–in its continuity of action, its shadings and blurrings of character its indecipherable patterns of being. The Iliad and Gilgamesh storys is greatly a remminder of the way life is today; just different in time but neitherless to say similar
in goals and destinys. Moreover, in the prologue of Gilgamesh its found to know that he was two- -thirds god and one-third man, and his knowledge is the key that follows. Gilgamesh is a hero– more beautiful, more courageous, more terrifying than the rest of us; his desires, attributes, and accomplishments epitomize our own. Yet he is also mortal: he must experience
the death of others and also die himself. How much more must a god rage against death than we who are merely mortal! And if he can reconile himself with death then surely we can. In fact, without death his life would be mean- -ingless, and the adventures that make up the epic would disappear. The story begins with the coming of Enkidu. As a young man and a god Gilgamesh has no compasion with the people of Uruk. He is their king but not their shepherd; he kills their sons and rapes the daughters. Hearing the peolpes lament, the gods create Enkidu as a match for Gilgamesh, a second self:[L]et them contend together and leave Uruk in quiet(31). The plan works in several ways. First Enkidu prevents Gilgamesh from entering the house of a bride and bridegroom; they fight embrace as friends. Second, Enkudu and Gilgamesh undertake a journey into the forest to confront the terrible Humbaba. There they encourage each other to face death triumphantly: [All] living creatures born of the flesh shall sit at least in the boat of the west/ and when it sinks/when the boat of Magilum sinks/ they are gone but we shall go forward and fix our eyes on this monster.(35) While everlasting life is not his destiny, Gilgamesh will leave behind him a name that endures. [I] will go to the country where the ceder is felled/ I will set up my name in the place where names of famous men are written(32) Thus Gilgamesh turns his attention away from small personal desires to loftier personal desires desires that benefit
rather than Uruk. To remember from the progue that the walls of the city, made from cedar taken from the forest, still stand in actuality or imagi- -nation to proclaim Gilgameshs fame, and the very first sentence of the epic attest to the immortality