The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of a great Mesopotamia king, Gilgamesh. It tells how Gilgamesh finds his kindred spirit and brother Enkidu, how the two of them defeat the god Humbaba and the sacred bull, and how Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh mourns. He goes on a spiritual quest for understanding of death and the afterlife.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, we see themes that have remained a part of the human imagination in all the millenia since. The brotherhood between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is something of an ideal relationship. Their heroism in defeating Humbaba and the bull is the archetypal victory of man over nature. And Gilgamesh's quest for immortality and understanding is echoed in everything from the Aeneid to Dante's Inferno to modern fantasy novels.
It is interesting to speculate if Gilgamesh inspired these themes in later works, or if it is just one of the earliest reflections of natural human imagination. The epic's author was probably not too different from the many authors who followed him. Though they wrote in different languages and with different styles, they asked the same questions of humanity.
Mesopotamia (Gilgamesh) *Greece (Odysseus) *Rome (Aeneas) *England (Romeo and Juliet) *America (the Kennedys)