Epic Of Gilgamesh Literary Analysis

Because of the limitation of scientific knowledge, people in early civilizations could not explain the causes of calamities like floods, so they tended to believe that gods controlled the whole world and brought all these catastrophes. Hence, some people then claim that in ancestors’ perspectives, gods regarded human as creatures that disobeyed the laws of the natural, so they bring these disasters to eliminate settled civilizations. However, based on the literature that these early civilizations(Mesopotamia, Egypt and China) left, gods did not necessarily stand on the other side of these settled societies. Instead, they cared about human and tried to help them to run their societies efficiently by directly bring presents(harvest or protection,

They would also express their sympathy to human. In Sumerians’ perspective, for example, gods would feel regret and sympathy to the unfortunate that humans experienced. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ishtar regretted after she saw people are “like spawn of fish they float in the ocean” because of the heavy flood (The Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 22). She cried out that she felt regret of commanding evil, which caused the suffering of people she created (The Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 22). Her regret demonstrates that according to Sumerians, gods like Ishtar did not hate human beings but even loved them. After all, if gods regarded a settled society as the opposite of the natural world, they would destroy them all without any guilt or sympathy that Ishtar had. Besides sympathy, gods would also provide spiritual and physical support to human beings. For instance, ancient Chinese believed that their gods would support and protect their citizens and followed the law called “The Mandate of Heaven”. If the former dynasty lost The Mandate of Heaven, it would be replaced by a new dynasty, which would receive the nurture from gods, such as having high agriculture productivity and experiencing fewer natural disasters (Lecture #4). In other words, ancient Chinese believed that gods seemed to choose great rulers for their people to ensure their society worked well. In addition, though for Egyptians, gods could not be contemplated, these gods did not regard mankind as the enemy of nature either. In Egyptians’ gods’ perspectives, human beings were part of the natural world and would receive gift from gods as all creatures in the world had. For example, the text Hymn to the Nile illustrated that Nile River (a god more than a human to Egyptians), would endow mankind with valiancy, “enriching some, bestowing his love