Research Article
The Role of Death in the Epic of Gilgamesh
Abstract
Human’s fear of death and pursuit of eternal life have long been reflected in literary texts. As a representative of ancient Mesopotamian literature, the epic of Gilgamesh not only symbolizes the peak of Near Eastern epics, but also brings an ultimate proposition into literature for the first time——How to resist the fear of death and how to achieve infinite immortality in a finite life. This paper consists of three parts. The first part is the introduction, which introduces the background and significance of the research. The second part is the text analysis, and the third part is the analysis of the philosophical significance of the image of death by combining the ancient religious view of Mesopotamia and the concept of modern people.
Keywords: Gilgamesh; death and immortality; text analysis
References
- Joseph L. Angcl,”Reading the Book of Giants in Literary and HistoricalContext,”Dead Sea Discoveries 21(2014): pp.314 - 316.
- Jeffrey H.Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Wauconda,Illinois: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers,2002), pp.23 – 38 and Alhena Gadotti,” Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld” and the SumerianGilgamesh Cycle (Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter,2014), pp.93 – 108.
- A.L.Oppenheim, “The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East,” Pp.185 -186.
- A.R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epi : Introduction , Critical Edition andCuneiform Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
- Smith, M. S. (2014). Poetic Heroes: The Literary Commemorations of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.
- Türkarslan, K. K. (2020). Gilgamesh: the first tragic man. The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 43(1), 2-12.
- Assmann, J. (2007). Monotheism and polytheism. Religions of the Ancient World: A guide, 17-31.
- Deagon, A. (1998). THE TWELVE DOUBLE-HOURS OF NIGHT: Insomnia and Transformation in” Gilgamesh”. Soundings: an Interdisciplinary Journal, 81(3/4), 461-489.
- Lewis, J. (2021). Translating Epic from an Unfamiliar Language: Gilgamesh Retold (Doctoral dissertation, Goldsmiths, University of London).