Friday, May 22, 2009

Gilgamesh and Agga

Gilgamesh and Agga

January 3, 2008
All this work is courtesy of Helvis213 and the Sumerian Scribe a link is on the left!
This Sumerian poem is one of the shortest of all Sumerian epic tales at 115 lines of text. Despite it’s brevity, it is of significance from several points of view. First, its plot deal with humans and earthly struggles alone. No mythological motifs are included in the epic. Secondly, it is of considerable historical importance since it provides hitherto unknown facts concerning the struggles between Sumerian city states. Finally, for history of governments and politics, the poem is very special as it records the two oldest political assemblies known to man.

Gilgamesh, thy praise is good.

The text of “Gilgamesh and Agga” is reconstructed from eleven tablets and fragments. Ten were excavated in Nippur while one of the reconstructed tablet’s orgins are unknown. All the tablets and fragments date from the first half of the second millennium BCE however, it is believed, the poem was originally composed much earlier.

These journals continue......May 23