Gilgamesh: a book club kit

Where it comes from. Scribes in ancient Mesopotamia, now Iraq, pressed this into clay tablets about 4,000 years ago. It is one of the oldest stories ever written down.

In short (for the leader; it gives the ending away). Gilgamesh is the strong, proud king of the city of Uruk, and the gods make a wild man, Enkidu, to match him. The two fight and then become dear friends, and together they take on the guardian Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh searches the world for a way to live forever, and he returns to Uruk wiser, though without the answer.

Reading plan, by the story's parts. Meeting 1: Part One, “The King and the Wild Man” and Part Two, “Closer Than Brothers”, pages 1–5 (about 6 minutes aloud); Meeting 2: Part Three, “The Cedar Forest” and Part Four, “The Bull of Heaven”, pages 6–9 (about 5 minutes aloud); Meeting 3: Part Five, “The Ends of the Earth” and Part Six, “The Wall of Uruk”, pages 10–15 (about 8 minutes aloud). Each stop's own questions, which never give away what comes next: Gilgamesh by chapter.

Questions to talk about

1. Who was Gilgamesh?
   The story's answer: Gilgamesh was a king of the city of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia. In the epic he is two-thirds god and one-third human, the strongest man alive, and his friendship with Enkidu changes him. His grief when Enkidu dies sends him searching for a way to live forever. Historians think a real king of that name ruled Uruk, but the hero of the epic is a legend.
2. Was Gilgamesh a real king?
   The story's answer: Probably, but no one can be sure. Many historians think a king named Gilgamesh ruled Uruk some time between about 2800 and 2500 BC. He is in the Sumerian King List, and an old text credits him with building Uruk's walls. But the king list gives him a reign of 126 years, and the poem calls him two-thirds god. Apart from the fragments of the epic, there is no definitive evidence about his life.
3. How old is the Epic of Gilgamesh?
   The story's answer: The oldest Gilgamesh poems, in Sumerian, may be from about 2100 BC, so the story is more than 4,000 years old. The earliest surviving tablets that tell it as one epic are from about 1800 BC, and the standard 12-tablet version was put together between about 1300 and 1000 BC. Many of the tablets were found at Nineveh, in the royal library of Ashurbanipal, in the early 1850s.
4. Is Gilgamesh the oldest story in the world?
   The story's answer: It is often called the world's oldest surviving narrative literature, and the word “surviving” matters. The epic is made of tablets from different times, the early poems are only thought to date from about 2100 BC, and large parts of the oldest versions are missing, so it is the oldest we still have, not necessarily the first ever told.
5. What does this myth explain, or try to explain?
   Listen for: Many myths explain how something came to be: a season, an animal, a name.
6. Was the main character right or wrong? Was the ending fair?
   Listen for: Myths are often hard on people; let the group disagree.

Did you know?

• The oldest Gilgamesh stories are Sumerian poems that may date to about 2100 BC, more than 4,000 years ago.
• The earliest surviving tablets that tell the story as one epic are from about 1800 BC.
• The standard 12-tablet version was compiled by a scribe named Sîn-lēqi-unninni, who is thought to have lived between 1300 and 1000 BC.

Activity: Make a new myth

Each reader explains something they see every day (why cats purr, why puddles dry up) with a short made-up myth of their own, told round the circle in three sentences.