In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the main character is Gilgamesh, who was a king of Uruk in Babylonia. According to the Sumerian King List, Gilgamesh was in the first dynasty of Uruk who reigned for 126 years. (http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa072997.htm) Which shows he may have been an historical person. In the epic, he was portrayed as two-thirds god and one-third human, a harsh ruler, who drove his people to cry out for the gods to help. After hearing their prayers, the gods built Enkidu, who became best friends with Gilgamesh after a fight. Gilgamesh and Enkidu set off to lots of adventures together; it’s one of the adventures that gets Enkidu killed. After seeing the death of Enkidu, the thought of dying sends him into a panic, and Gilgamesh gets torn apart by the death of his beloved friend. It was then that he started to look for an eternal life, and takes a journey to look for Utnapishtim and his wife, the only mortals whom the gods had granted immorality. Utnapishtim advises that “…death is necessary, because of the will of the gods; all human effort is only temporary, not permanent.” Then he tells Gilgamesh about the flood, how he and his wife were granted an eternal life. The Gilgamesh flood myth parallels between the other accounts of the flood in the Genesis and other Ancient Near East flood myths. Those myths indicated that a god had sent a flood as punishment for humans’ wrongdoing, and instructions were given to an individual to build an ark. After ensuring the survival of all species, the flood destroys the old race, after the flood, less sinful race emerges to repopulate the earth....
