The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Epic of Gilgamish, by Stephen Langdon

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Title: The Epic of Gilgamish
A Fragment of the Gilgamish Legend in Old-Babylonian Cuneiform

Author: Stephen Langdon

Release Date: July 23, 2006 [EBook #18897]

Language: EN

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The Epic of Gilgamish

by

Stephen Langdon

University of Pennsylvania
The University Museum
Publications of the Babylonian Section
Vol. X No. 3

INTRODUCTION

In the year 1914 the University Museum secured by purchase a large
six column tablet nearly complete, carrying originally, according to
the scribal note, 240 lines of text. The contents supply the South
Babylonian version of the second book of the epic _sa nagba imuru_,
"He who has seen all things," commonly referred to as the Epic of
Gilgamish. The tablet is said to have been found at Senkere, ancient
Larsa near Warka, modern Arabic name for and vulgar descendant
of the ancient name Uruk, the Biblical Erech mentioned in Genesis
X. 10. This fact makes the new text the more interesting since the
legend of Gilgamish is said to have originated at Erech and the
hero in fact figures as one of the prehistoric Sumerian rulers of
that ancient city. The dynastic list preserved on a Nippur tablet
[1] mentions him as the fifth king of a legendary line of rulers at
Erech, who succeeded the dynasty of Kish, a city in North Babylonia
near the more famous but more recent city Babylon. The list at Erech
contains the names of two well known Sumerian deities, Lugalbanda
[2] and Tammuz. The reign of the former is given at 1,200 years and
that of Tammuz at 100 years. Gilgamish ruled 126 years. We have to
do here with a confusion of myth and history in which the real facts
are disengaged only by conjecture.

The prehistoric Sumerian dynasties were all transformed into the realm