Gilgamesh and the Flood

In today's video, we examine the genesis and development of one of the world's oldest Mythological figures, the legendary King of Uruk, Gilgamesh, and the Epic that bears his name. Along the way we'll explore over 2000 years of history, culminating in an examination of the origins of the Mesopotamian flood myth, which continues to echo in modern religions to this day.

This video owes a special thanks to archaeologist Dr Geoff Emberling, who kindly allowed me to use a number of his photos of Iraq. You can find more information on his research activities in the links below:

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Articulations

Byron Lewis

A long, long time ago...

Stefan Milo as Robin Hallett

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#Gilgamesh #Mythology #Mesopotamia

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#Gilgamesh #Documentary #mesopotamia

[TheHistocrat]

General Sources:

Stephanie Dalley (2008) Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh and Others. Oxford World’s Classics.

Jeffrey H. Tigay (1982) The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers.

A. R. George (2003) The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Oxford University Press.

Walther Sallaberger (2013) Das Gilgamesch-Epos: Mythos, Werk und Tradition. Beck’sche Reihe 2443.

Barry Powell (2015) Classical Myth, 8th Edition. Pearson.

Theodore Ziolkowski (2011) Gilgamesh Among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic. Cornell University Press.

David Damrosch (2006) The Buried Book. Henry Holt Books.

Marc van de Mieroop (2016) A History of the Ancient Near East, 3rd Edition. Wiley Blackwell.

Harriet Crawford (2004) Sumer and the Sumerians, 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press.

Nicola Crusemann, Margarete Van Ess, Markus Hilgert, Beate Salje and Timothy Potts (2019) Uruk: The Worlds First City. English edition.

Harriet Crawford (editor) (2016) The Sumerian World. Routledge.

Paul-Alain Beaulieu (2018) A History of Babylon. Wiley Blackwell.


References:

Louis Watelin and Stephen Langdon (1930) Excavations at Kish: Volume III

C. Leonard Woolley (1929) The Excavations at Ur and the Hebrew Records.

Erich Schmidt (1931) Excavations at Fara, 1931. Penn Museum Journal.

P. R. S. Moorey (1981) Abu Salabikh, Kish, Mari and Ebla: Mid-third millennium archaeological interconnections. American Journal of Archaeology, 85(4): 447-448.

Tzvi Abusch (2001) The development and meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh: An interpretive essay. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 121(4): 614-622.

Philip Jones (2003) Embracing Inana: Legitimation and mediation in the ancient Mesopotamian sacred marriage hymn Iddin-Dagan A. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 123(2): 291-302.

Antoine Cavigneaux and Farouk Al-Rawi (1993) New Sumerian literary texts from Tell Haddad (Ancient Meturan): A First Survey. Iraq, 55: 91-105.

Nicole Brisch (2006) The priestess and the King: The divine kingship of Su-Sin of Ur. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 126(2): 161-176.

Gianni Marchesi (2004) Who was buried in the royal tombs of Ur? The epigraphic and textual data. NOVA SERIES, 73(2): 153-197.

Piotr Steinkeller (2003) An Ur III manuscript of the Sumerian King List. Literatur, Politik und Recht in Mesopotamien: Festschrift fur Claus Wilck.

Helmut Becker and Jörg W. E. Fassbinder (2003) Magnetometry at Uruk (Irak): The city of King Gilgamesh. Archaeologia Polona, 41: 122-124.

Jörg W. E. Fassbinder (2020) Beneath the Euphrates sediments: magnetic traces of the Mesopotamian megacity Uruk-Warka. The Ancient Near East Today, 3(6).

Roger Matthews and Amy Richardson (2018) Cultic resilience and inter-city engagement at the dawn of urban history: protohistoric Mesopotamia and the ‘city seals’, 3200-2750 BC. World Archaeology, 50(5): 723-747.

Melania Zingarello (2015) Fortification systems in central and lower Mesopotamia between the 3rd and the first half of the 2nd millennium BC: an overview. In Broadening Horizons 4: Conference of young researchers working in the Ancient Near East, Egypt and Central Asia, Archaeopress, pg. 309-317.

Hannah Jensen (2015) What does the Epic of Gilgamesh reveal about Mesopotamian culture and religion?

Robert D. Biggs (1974) Inscriptions from tell Abu Salabikh. The University of Chicago Press.

Piotr Michalowski (2007) A man called Enmebaragesi. In W. Sallaberger, K. Volk, and A. Zgoll, eds., Literatur, Politik, und Recht in Mesopotamien. Orientalia Biblica et Christiana, pg. 195-208.

Samuel Kramer (1967) Reflections on the Mesopotamian Flood: Cuneiform data new and old. Expedition, 9(4): 12-18.

Douglas Frayne (2010) The struggle for hegemony in “Early Dynastic II” Sumer. The Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies, 4:37-77.

Gianni Marchesi (2010) The Sumerian King List and the early History of Mesopotamia. Quaderni di Vicino Oriente V, pg. 231-248.

Valentina Yanko-Hombach et al. (2007) Controversy over the great flood hypotheses in the Black Sea in light of geological, paleontological, and archaeological evidence. Quarternary International, 167(2007): 91-113.

David MacDonald (1988) The Flood: Mesopotamian Archaeological Evidence. Creation/Evolution Journal, 8(2): 1-20.

[jinenjuce]

Fun little tidbit. The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories in human history, starts with "In those ancient days"

[ScunnyRhino]

I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times, but, we live in an era when "the history channel" runs anti-historical and psudo-history TV shows, not too dissimilar to MTV never playing music.
Well done YouTube history channels for the great work keeping factual documentaries a thing.

[robertpaulos]

What’s amazing that Gilgamesh searched for eternity and he lost it! However we still talk about him today after Thousands of years later 🤔

[whitfield-tsmith]

I am not a learned student or a person of any academic title, but when I was introduced to the Sumerian Kings List, I recognized a pattern in the numbers. Between the story of how the numbers were kept in the pre-dynasty period, the author of the article rubbed right alongside of the answer to the question they were asking. The measure of Sars and Ners. It is akin to the description of the temperature in a room. An American would write that the temperature of the room was 61, a European is likely to write that the temperature of that same room is 16. As Americans and Europeans use two different systems to measure temperature. The Ancients used different systems to measure time. Being practical, to set up a system of measure a person would count the number of days that passed from when a ruler came to power and when that ruler ceased to rule. Things start to make sense when one considers that the cycles recorded were days not years, for 28, 000 days is equal to 76.64 years. A far less whimsical concept of the passage of time. --After the flood swept through Sumer, the Sumerian Kings List picks up with Kish being the first city to organize post flood. The measure of time has shifted from being daily to becoming lunar. It is no secret that the semitic peoples of the area used the moon to track time, and with Kish being the Western most outpost of the Sumerian arena the next set of cycles would be in lunar configuration. "Jasur", The first king of Kish ruled for 1200 cycles. Since there are 12.3726 lunar cycles in a year, it comes out that Jasur reigned for 96.99 years. Fantastic, yet more to the concept of time that we possess. From this point until Sargons taking charge, time was kept in lunar script. Post Sargon the annuals were the cycles of time. The 360-day year was established. I once again reiterate that, five digits indicates "days", three to four digits indicates "moons" and after Sargon the years were close to how track time, but obviously not accurate. The First dynasty of Kish was the only true dynasty. It lasted some 1500 years, while most of the other kingdoms came and went like popcorn in a pan.

[rabidspatula]

Enkidu entering civilization and the wild animals who had been his friends suddenly refusing to have anything to do with him has always struck me as massively profound. The Mesopotamians knew that the rise of cities had severed man psychologically and philosophically from the natural world, even back then. How well we have proven them right thousands of years later.

[GrimrDirge]

It's always amused me that the oldest recorded story starts with rulers misbehaving. Nothing changes.

[BluJean]

It's just nice to hear the term "Annunaki" in a context other than wild and batshit speculation about alien astronaut visitors...

[cristianroth]

The mention of the flood at 1:46 gave me some goosebumps. First of all, it's extremely clear how vivid the flood remained in the Sumerian memory. Second, for anyone who listened to the Fall of Civilizations podcast, it explains in detail the most plausible origins of the flood myth. It says that the future Sumerians slowly retreated north as the valley that would become the Persian Gulf came underwater at the end of the epipaleolithic. If this is ever proven to be true, then it would make Oannes (the half-man half-fish that taught the people writing, farming and building) the oldest fictional character known to man.

[undergroundman]

Considering less than 1% of Uruk has been excavated it wouldn’t surprise me if more evidence for a historical Gilgamesh is discovered some day.

[StefanMilo]

What an absolutely banging intro. This is going to be a beast!

[lkd]

Can't understand why history channels always show modern desolate middle eastern landscapes for the ancient Fertile Crescent. Seems ludicrous

[faisalalkhedhrawi]

I am so glad that people are paying more attention to Mesopotamia, it is the origin of the civilization not Egypt as a lot of people believe.

[HistorywithCy]

Like the tale of Gilgamesh, this video is timeless epic!

[Xagzan]

It's kind of shocking that we've never gotten a cinematic adaptation of Gilgamesh after all these years. I don't even necessarily mean a big budget Hollywood movie like Troy. Something like Armand Assante's Odyssey from the 90s could have also worked, that was a pretty good adaptation.

[PAGANONYMOUS]

The part where Gilgamesh and enkidu fight and then become friends is timeless and still true today! I made many friends after first fighting them.

[apocalypsator]

I read about Gilgamesh in my teens. I didn't meet anyone who knew who he was until I was in my 40s. Now almost everybody knows him. Reading is fundamental even if it takes awhile. I really am amazed by the strangest of things.

[ab-fmdj]

I want to thank you for all the time and energy you put into your documentaries. They are really enjoyable and make these topics a lot more accessible.

[jayilene]

really psyched for this video. recently found histocrat and have been using him to fall asleep at night or just listen to as background noise. so soothing. and I reply some of these over and over again.

[saladinbob]

More like this, please! Superb video, I had no idea Gilgamesh was so influential.