In The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Book of Genesis, there are a couple of similarities that they both have in common. For example, they both discussed the story about the God(s) sending the flood to the city in order to destroy the whole civilization, while leaving some of righteous humans alive: Uta-napishti from The Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah from The Book of Genesis. Despite the difference in their backstory, these two characters are both given the same role as the one who tries to recreate their own society with animals and resources that they brought with on the Ark. Another similarity is that they both send out ravens outside of the Ark to make sure the water is subsided and the land is dried after the flood.
There are many similarities and differences between The Assyrian Capture of Jerusalem and The Epic of Gilgamesh. First I will be talking about the similarities between the two texts. The first similarity is that both of the text is are both using god, but in different ways. “When the rulers of darkness send at eventide a destructive rain, the rulers of darkness sent a destructive rain at eventide”. In The Epic of Gilgamesh is using the gods by saying that the gods are the ones that caused the storm.
When reading The Epic of Gilgamesh we can find different examples of the six criteria for evaluating works of art. Therefore we are able to hone in on a few that really prevail throughout the story that persuades the reader to think critically about what exactly the author wants the reader to understand. Three main themes of the Christian critical tradition in The Epic of Gilgamesh are truth, righteousness, and beauty. When looking at the epic of Gilgamesh and accessing the literature for truth we see that an ultimate truth is death.
Noah’s Ark VS Gilgamesh First let’s start with Noah and the Ark. Noah was warned by God that he was going to flood the earth. According to Genesis, God gave Noah instructions for building the ark. Seven days before the rains came, God told Noah to enter the ark with his family and the animals. The story describes the ark staying afloat throughout the entire flood.
Even though Genesis and Gilgamesh are two separate stories, they both have similarities as well as differences such as: why the two Gods were upset and why they made the Flood, who the two Gods saved from the Flood and how the Flood ended up. Throughout different cultures, there have been different types of literature. It has changed the content but not necessarily the overall meaning. Different cultures have their own way of how The Flood came about and what really happened. In both of these stories, the Gods get mad at mankind, but they get mad for different reasonings.
The paper I’m going to be writing is a compare and contrast about the stories “Gilgamesh” and “Genesis.” The story “Gilgamesh” is about a man who’s one third man and two third god (Gilgamesh). He and his companion, Enkidu goes into a forest to slay Humbaba. While the story “Genesis” is a biblical story.
The Epic of Gilgamesh gives a lot of insight to what was happening and what was expected in ancient Mesopotamia. The epic poem which revolves around a king, includes many details in to the civilization, beliefs, and values of the Mesopotamians. The king thrives to be remembered and many of his actions reflect that. The Epic of Gilgamesh show how an ideal heroic king should be in ancient Mesopotamia. The first thing it shows us is that hero kings should be strong.
Even though both The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis are similar in that they all used the floods for the destruction, both the stories are different from each other in distributing roles within the Gods and a way to warn the extermination from the Gods. First, the similarity between The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis is the relevance with the floods that were used to exterminate the human. To prove the occurrence of the flood, chapter 5 of The Epic of Gilgamesh includes, “For six days and six nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts (line 62-63, p. 21)”. Also, in Genesis, the text “The waters flooded the earth for a
Silvy Elsa Mathew Hum 120 3/1/18 Paper 1 - The Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s Iliad The two main oldest epic tales in the world, ‘Epic of the Gilgamesh’ and Homer’s ‘Iliad’ deals with many significant issues that pose a meaning in the life of an individual and communities. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written 1500 years before Homer wrote the Iliad.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the first epic poem to be written in ancient West Asia. It was written around the third millennium BCE in Mesopotamia by Sumerian people (Spodek, 127). The epic is based on actual an historical figure, a Sumerian king who reigned the city-state of Uruk around third millennium BCE. Ashurbanipal, the last Neo-Assyrian king who was literate, built a great library in his capital and preserved 20,000 tablets including the earliest complete version of The Epic of Gilgamesh (Spodek, 128). Sumerian attitudes towards gods, friendship, and the story of the great flood are revealed throughout the epic.
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception (Carl Sargon)”. According to The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis, unprecedented floods occurred in both stories. The exception fell on the kind men, Utnapishtim and Noah: they survived the powerful event of destruction. However, in the same theme of the stories, there are sources of similarity and differences.
Not only do these shared themes point to an innate psychology present in all people in every culture, but perhaps even to a direct influence of “The Epic of Gilgamesh” on these holy texts. In the book of Genesis, the creation story of The Old Testament, God creates all things, the earth and the Heavens. He makes the animals and then finally mankind to watch over it all, as God says, “Let us make a human in our image...to hold sway over the fish...and all the crawling things that crawl upon this earth” (2. 1-4). Depending on the variation of the story, God either creates both Adam and Eve from soil, or Adam from soil and then Eve from his rib to be his companion.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest story known to mankind, being written on Sumerian clay almost five thousand years ago (Garone). Since the story was originally known orally, the culture and themes from The Epic of Gilgamesh must have existed long before it was finally inscribed (Mark 4). Having known this, the cultures and themes can be compared to today’s society, discovering about how they have shifted and evolved, and also observe how they are similar. The ancient days of Gilgamesh has brought culture that has greatly influenced today’s society. Because Gilgamesh was set around the time of late Babylonian or early Sumerian society, the Babylonian and Sumerian cultures also play a role in shaping the world into what is is today (Mark).
The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible have a few similar events and historians think that they may refer to the same event. The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible share a similar event, the flood, and a similar character, the serpent. Though there are still several distinctions between the two stories. The Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh both contain a serpent as one of the less significant characters.
The Epic of Gilgamesh: Relevant Truth for Today’s Society The Epic of Gilgamesh is set in Uruk, an ancient city of the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, now modern-day Iraq. The epic was said to be written by Sin-liqe-unninni, but it is based on five earlier Sumerian poems with no known author. The piece was difficult to translate, and there are two main version for the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is the result of the environment during the time the piece was being written.