Gilgamesh Quotes

Gilgamesh is both man and God. The Epic of Gilgamesh which detail his exploits show his struggle in being part man and God. As some scholars such as Tzvi Abusch have noted, Gilgamesh, “must find ways to express his tremendous personal energy, but still act in a manner that accords with the limits and responsibilities imposed upon him by his society and universe”. Gilgamesh being both God and man is in a gray space. Just as Abusch says in the quote above, Gilgamesh has an energy and power akin to a God, however, he himself is also a man, and living in a human world. In this world, he is above other men in feats of strength and skill. However, he is still forced to accept his reality. This reality is that he is in a world of humans, and is not
a full-fledged, immortal, God. In a way, he must conform to either being a man or being a God. He deals with certain issues such as floods and monsters and this puts him above most other men and performs tasks as a God would, but is still, in the end, a mortal and must come to grips with this. I argue that although Gilgamesh is both man and God, he still must fight his own inner nature and the natural world around him to help him grapple with the fact that he is both a deity and a mortal man combined. Gilgamesh in multiple instances shows how he handles the problems with the limited abilities has as a mortal man and with his heightened abilities as a God. He fights the natural world around him by building a wall around his city Uruk to protect his people from being decimated by floods. He fights his own inner nature by overcoming a fear of death that plagues him. His solutions to these problems show how exactly he has come to accept his situation as a demigod.