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Gilgamesh Quotes

Gilgamesh (Bilgames in the earliest texts) was a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, a major hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology, and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late second millennium BCE. He likely ruled between 2800 and 2500 BCE and was posthumously deified.

Also known as: Gilgamec

Random Gilgamesh quote

8 quotes

Who is there, my friend, can climb to the sky?
Only the gods dwell forever in sunlight.
As for man, his days are numbered,
whatever he may do, it is but wind.

Enkidu opened his mouth,
saying to Gilgamesh:
"where you've set your mind begin the journey,
let your heart have no fear, keep your eyes on me!"

Read out
the travails of Gilgamesh, all that he went through!

You will be accounted a god. [...] Lord of Kulaba, [...] hero of the pristine mountain.

The life that you seek you never will find:
when the gods created mankind,
death they dispensed to mankind,
life they kept for themselves.

What should I do and where should I go?
A thief has taken hold of my flesh!
For there in my bed-chamber Death does abide,
and wherever I turn, there too will be Death.

Unable to stand up, unable to sit down, he laments.
Unable to eat, unable to drink, he laments.
Held fast by the door-bolt of Namtar, he is unable to rise. [...] Like a gazelle caught in a trap.

O man of Shurrupak, son of Ubara-Tutu; tear down your house and build a boat, abandon possessions and look for life, despise worldly goods and save your soul alive. Tear down your house, I say, and build a boat.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Gilgamesh (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.