Introduction
Gilgamesh is the legendary king of Uruk, described as two-thirds divine and one-third human, and the central hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest surviving major works of world literature.
Family
- Father: Lugalbanda
- Mother: Ninsun
Friendship, Loss, and the Search for Immortality
Gilgamesh's close friendship with Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to check his excesses, drives the epic's first half, including their journey to the Cedar Forest to kill the monster Humbaba and their slaying of the Bull of Heaven sent by a spurned Inanna. Enkidu's subsequent death from a divinely-sent illness devastates Gilgamesh and drives the epic's second half: a desperate quest for immortality that takes him to the flood survivor Utnapishtim, who recounts the great flood story and ultimately demonstrates, through a test Gilgamesh fails, that eternal life is not attainable for him. Gilgamesh returns to Uruk having gained wisdom, if not immortality, about the limits of human life.
Mesopotamian religion spans Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sources composed and recopied across nearly three thousand years, so names, genealogies, and even a deity's role often shift between traditions (Sumerian An/Enki/Inanna alongside their Akkadian/Babylonian forms Anu/Ea/Ishtar); the account above follows the most widely attested version, usually as consolidated in the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh.