Karbala-

The "Gilgamesh" epic still constitutes many opinions and attracts analyzes that take from it what can be projected onto reality.

For this reason, critics and workers in the field of myth considered it a popular text, given that it circulated on occasions and holidays during which rituals were held, where the events and texts of its chapters appear on the bench of the theater, streets and squares.

Thus, it gained its popularity by being close to the concerns of the parishes in Uruk or Uruk (the city in which Gilgamesh lived and wrote his famous epic) or other cities to which the text moved, justifying that it was a popular text because it balanced between dealing with the life of the king and the present and the problems of the subjects of “Uruk” And it became part of the bookcase, then documents, and other directories.

One of the panels of the Epic of Gilgamesh in the British Museum (communication sites)

Epic, roots and source

This epic - which is considered one of the oldest literary works of mankind and narrates the adventures of one of the powerful kings of Mesopotamia in his quest for immortality - still represents a fertile source for writers, researchers and writers alike, being one of the most immortal epics of the literature of ancient Mesopotamia, dating back to The era of the third dynasty of Ur, and is the second oldest remaining religious texts from that period, after the religious texts of the pyramids.

The "Gilgamesh" epic begins with 5 Sumerian poems about Belgamesh (which is the Sumerian word for Gilgamesh), the king of Uruk, and sources confirm that it became a reference to an epic poem collected in the Akkadian language.

The oldest surviving copy of this collected epic bears the name (Old Babylonian) and dates back to the 18th century BC.

Only a few clay tablets remain from that poem.

A person named "Sin Leqi and Nini" was able to collect a copy of the epic dating back to between the 13th-10th centuries BC and bearing the name "He who saw the abyss", or in contemporary words "He who sees the unseen".

About two-thirds of this copy of the 12 clay tablets has been recovered.

Some of the better off copies were discovered in the ruins of the royal library of Ashurbanipal (Mosul) from the seventh century BC.

Asi: The Epic of Gilgamesh deals with man's struggles with himself and with force majeure (Al-Jazeera)

epic sections

The blogger made the epic into sections and wanted its dramatic action to be apparent in order to make it a popular text;

The first section was about Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and the last is a wild man who was created by the gods (according to what they claim) to put an end to Gilgamesh's tyranny over the Warka people.

Jassim Asi, a critic and researcher specialized in the legend of Gilgamesh, says that the epic deals with "man's struggles with himself, and with force majeure, and tells about their stories and their plight, and what they suffer as a result of the injustice that befalls them."

And the legend says, "Because the king is alone, it was necessary to find a rival source for him, so the gods responded in creating his counterpart (Enkidu) to meet the needs of the subjects and their desire for salvation and also to find an end to the conflict between the superior powers and people."

Assi explains the importance of the response and its dramatic transformation by saying, "her scenes were represented through her performance and acting, and reciting sections of her poetry, accompanied by movements and gestures, which were the first roots of theater in ancient Iraq, which provided the epic with its character and popular position by approaching the subjects." The conflict seems to be a symbol of its continuity and diversity. the rise of its goals.

Therefore, the researcher asserts that the blogger focused on the treatment to activate the conflict and bring it closer to the popular act, so he made people “cry to the gods to put an end to the policy of King Gilgamesh, whose actions irritated them, as he used to enter the bride’s bedroom before her husband,” which is what made the epic as a demonstration of tyranny in the popular influence, To agitate the conflict, the blogger increased the amount of conflict - as the researcher says - by "clarifying the contents of the temple of concubines and boys who participate in the ritual of sacred marriage inside the temple and perform their functions inside it, which is a popular ritual."

epic summary

The epic was written in Sumerian and was translated into Akkadian before the discovery of the Arabic letters. Two-thirds of him is a god, and the other third is a human, and he is Gilgamesh, the son of the god Ninson, who was conceived by the king of a legendary, holy hero.

Gilgamesh saw himself, and all saw him full of majesty and primacy;

He looks at the sun and becomes black from the spark of his sight, and waits for the moon to hide from it and darkness falls on Uruk and its people, so that he alone remains the guardian and arrogant god. .

In light of this oppression and injustice from the giant Sumerian ruler;

The people of Uruk find the giant half-human and half-animal Enkidu saved from eternal torment at the hands of Gilgamesh.

Part of a tablet about the "Epic of Gilgamesh" that America will return to Iraq (Associated Press)

And here begins the change in the personality of the king and his friend, and the cases of violence, murder and rape decrease little by little, and they even eliminate the evil demon Khmbaya, who was disturbing the people of Uruk.

At the moment of Enkidu's death, the hero, the king, finds himself - after the consolation he held - in front of the reality of annihilation and death when he sees his friend rotting in the body and worms devouring his body.

Gilgamesh begins a journey in search of immortality and survival, and his grandfather describes to him a herb for eternal life.

Gilgamesh returns empty-handed and sighs, and the sages of Uruk advise him that the only way to immortality is through work, justice and construction, and here he takes another path and a new approach to life and the way he deals with citizens.

Despite this simplified explanation of the content of the epic, it can be said that the tragedy of its hero and its eternal complex was in the struggle of his animal self with his spiritual self or the lower being with the higher, so he was conflicted by the complex of inferiority and divine incompleteness to surrender to his humanity in the end, as the body with its meanings and emotions - including The aggression had a significant impact on Gilgamesh's internal reversal towards his last behavior.

Conflict and the popular blogger

The epic, as it is said, flew into the horizons;

It was describing life in its beginnings through the transformations of the text;

So in the second section, grief prompts Gilgamesh to undertake a long, perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life, a dramatic journey, which made the epic receive increased popularity and attention, and it was translated into many languages ​​and appears in many famous literary works.

Assi says that the epic blogger wanted his text to be immortalized by "transferring the conflict from being a text for a high class to a popular text about man, so he wanted to achieve the vocabulary of the basic human consciousness infrastructure, which explains his bias in principle."

This is what we see achieved in the chapters of the epic - the researcher continues - which is what made the herb of immortality that the blogger focused on to be one of the ways to turn into a popular epic when he made Gilgamesh insist “on a lot of the herb of immortality by planting it and then spreading its use, to include Every Shaybah of Uruk."

A tablet believed to be from the Epic of Gilgamesh (networking sites)

Struggle and perpetuation of the popular text

The researcher insists that the epic is a popular text, which is the secret of considering it a miraculous text, as the researcher shows, and believes that the blogger pushed towards creating another conflict, so he created areas filled with dramatic action. Finding the secret of immortality has to find a person.

The researcher Assi continues his conclusion, and sees that there are relationships that came through the adoption ritual, which he considers among the ceremonial rituals that contributed to the escalation of the element of participation by “Enkidu” in the act of change on the material and intellectual levels;

Therefore, the researcher considered the adoption of “Enkidu” to protect the property of shepherds and watch over their livestock as evidence of the practice of a popular ritual that enters the door of people’s preoccupations and the establishment of their relationships, through teamwork and sacrifice. Gilgamesh is a woman of epistemological authority who advises him on immortality.

Sanctity and number "7"

The researcher Asi considers that this epic connects the dialectic of existence and myth to the ancient belief in “the sanctity of the number 7”, as it coincides with the mythological concept in ancient religions and myths, in that it has a cosmic significance in the creation of the universe, which withdrew to all popular rituals, and gained its sanctity from its significance in Every space and time.

The researcher also adds - referring to what he called Gilgamesh's mourning ritual over Enkidu's death - that it was through cutting the hair of the head, and choosing a requirement for a special representative, which he repeats near his body, for 7 days.

In the end, Asi confirms that “all the connotations place the epic in the ranks of texts that are directly related to people, in every time and place, and it is part of their popular culture,” and therefore expresses his belief that it and other epics “contributed to the phenomenon of its circulation through all ages and times because it gained Its connection to the bottom of life, which means its connection to the purely popular meaning.