Essay 1 (due Thursday, September 26)

Please write an essay of at least 1000 words on one of the following questions:

1) In what way did the Epic of Gilgamesh provide ancient Mesopotamians with an education? That is, what useful and significant lessons did this story teach to these peoples?

2) At the beginning of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the eponymous protagonist is a powerful man, but a bad king, for "his arrogance has no bounds by day or night . . . Yet the king should be a shepherd to his people. . . . His lust leaves no virgin to her lover . . . yet this is the shepherd of the city." When he dies at the conclusion of the epic, however, "all men of flesh and blood lift up the lament." How did Gilgamesh become a hero? Why did the people of Uruk "great and small" come to think he was a hero?

3) The Epic of Gilgamesh emerged among the Sumerians, the earliest civilized people of Mesopotamia. A wide variety of invaders inundated the Sumerians repeatedly—the Akkadians, Babylonians, Kassites, Assyrians, and Persians among them. Nevertheless, this Sumerian epic survived. Why? What accounts for the enduring appeal of this story? In what ways is this epic timeless and universal?