Gilgamesh is the king of the city-state Uruk. He is part god — beautiful, energetic, huge-boned and muscled — and has used his great energy to create a well-fortified city. He has brought wealth and security to his people.

He also drives the work force too hard. His subjects pray for a force to temper his energy.

Gilgamesh has a frightening dream in which he is toppled by a rock from the sky. While he cannot defeat the rock, he finds himself attracted to the rock, as he would be “attracted to a woman.”

His mother, who is a high priestess in the temple, interprets the dream. She tells him he will soon meet someone who will be the most important person in his life, his greatest and truest friend. They will become inseparable.

The head of the gods orders the creation of a wild man, Enkidu, out of mud to tame Gilgamesh. Enkidu is civilized so he can interact with humans, with the aid of the temple love-priestess, who feeds him human food, and has sex with him.

To stop Gilgamesh from having sex with another bride-to-be, Enkidu challenges him in battle. Equal in strength, they become fast friends and lovers.

The arrogance and callousness, once part of Gilgamesh’s behavior, is gone. Because of his love for Enkidu, he becomes compassionate.

To open the trade routes, Gilgamesh and Enkidu combined forces and free the woods of a deadly demon by beheading him.

The goddess Ishtar appears to Gilgamesh and proposes marriage to him. He refuses. Insulted, she sends the Bull of Heaven to kill him.

Once again, Gilgamesh and Enkidu team up and are able to vanquish an enemy. But Enkidu further insults the goddess, and she sends him into a fatal coma.

Enkidu dreams of his death. He awakes to say goodbye to Gilgamesh, and dies.

Grief-stricken, and now terrified of death, Gilgamesh throws off his kingly crown and makes a pilgrimage to find the sage who has the secret to immortality.

Gilgamesh’s journey takes him to the Scorpion-Beings, who guard the only way to his destination. Emerging from the mountain tunnel in which no light can shine, he finds himself in the jeweled Garden of the Gods.

He is then aided by the Tavern-Keeper-by-the-Sea. She directs him to the Ferryman and his crew of Stone-Men. A misunderstanding leads to Gilgamesh killing of the Stone-Men, the only ones who can navigate the Waters of Death.

By a feat of great strength, Gilgamesh is able to transverse the Waters of Death and finally locate the sage and his woman.

The sage tells Gilgamesh how he came be immortal: a result of a gift from the gods after he survived the great flood.

The sage had built an ark, packing seed, animals, family and friends, and road out the storm. After seven days, the rains stopped, and the ark landed. After making offerings to the gods, they granted the sage and his woman immortality.

The sage makes a test for Gilgamesh, to see if he is worthy of receiving the knowledge of immortality. Gilgamesh fails the test.

The sage’s woman encourages him to tell Gilgamesh a way to gain immortality through a plant found in deep waters. Gilgamesh finds the plant. However, he looses the plant to a hungry snake.

It is with this final loss and discouragement that Gilgamesh returns to Uruk.

Gilgamesh dreams Enkidu is yet alive in the underworld. However, because Enkidu does not follow instruction, the dead forever claim him as one of their own, and drag him back to the underworld. Gilgamesh begs the gods to bring Enkidu back from the dead.

They meet for one last embrace, and a vitally important message from Enkidu.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was found in Iraq, at the turn of 1900, in the form of fragmented clay tablets that were created about 2,600 BCE. They had writing on them that consisted of a wedge-shaped design known as cuneiform. These writings are among the earliest known on earth.

The text told of a real king — Gilgamesh — who ruled over the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, in ancient Mesopotamia some time during 2,700-2,500 BCE. Remnants of the city lie beneath the present-day city of Al Warka in Iraq.

The Sumerians were true pioneers of civilization, developing cities and a system of writing. Sumerian culture included the invention a lunar calendar, the wheel, and bronze (a combination of copper and tin). They also created the system of dividing time and degrees into the number 12, and common measurement of a “dozen,” all of which are still in use today.

Eight versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh have been discovered, often grouped into early, middle and late periods, and they were written in the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hitite languages. The writings had been worked and re-worked for about two thousands years and appear to be the earliest epic poems written, predating Homer and the Bible by at least a thousand years.

The Gilgamesh story contains the roots of the legends of Orpheus, and the Biblical stories of the flood, the snake in the Garden of Eden, and others. Interestingly, the sage’s ark landed on Mount Nisir, thought to be modern-day Pir Omar Gudrun, south of Zab in Turkey, which is sometimes identified as the biblical Ararat.

Gilgamesh is also a likely source for the Jewish folk tales of the “golem” — a mud sculpture brought to life — which we later see mimicked in the gothic story of Frankenstein. It may also be a source for the Tarzan stories, a reflection of Enkidu being an animal-man who is civilized.

The Gilgamesh stories appear to have been very popular, judging by the number of different versions and spread of the fragments across the Ancient Near East.