Epic, Scripture, and the Human Condition: Gilgamesh in Dialogue with the Bible
To modern sensibilities, “epic” and “scripture” occupy different shelves; one in the domain of art, the other in the domain of faith. Yet in the scribal houses of ancient Mesopotamia, no such division was absolute. The clay tablets that bore the labors, griefs, and triumphs of Gilgamesh were preserved alongside royal decrees, omen lists, hymns to the gods, and legal codes (Wiseman, 2025). These were not discrete genres so much as facets of a single cultural imagination—one in which the telling of a king’s quest for immortality could stand beside a hymn to Ishtar or a prayer to Shamash as part of a people’s collective self-understanding. The epic was not merely entertainment; it was a vessel of memory, moral instruction, and cosmology; the very functions that later societies ascribed to “scripture.”
It is within this blurred territory that Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible draw into proximity. That a polytheistic epic from the banks of the Euphrates should echo, in image and cadence, the monotheistic scripture of ancient Israel is no accident of literary coincidence. Both arise from the same alluvial cradle of civilisations, from a shared vocabulary of floodwaters and covenant, divine councils and human lament. In Gilgamesh, the gods convene in secret to unleash a deluge, only to relent at its devastation; in Genesis, the Lord repents of His wrath and sets a rainbow as pledge. As Andrew brilliantly noted in the prologue of his translation, the resemblance with Gilgamesh’s embrace of life’s pleasures in the face of certain death, sounds keenly similar to the Ecclesiastes, as the Teacher advises the same (even if they diverge in the matter of eternal life). Both texts address, with bracing clarity, the questions that refuse to die: Why do we perish? What endures? How should we live in the shadow of our mortality?
Yet to read Gilgamesh merely as a precursor to biblical narrative is to diminish its own theological audacity. For unlike the Hebrew Bible, the epic offers no covenant, no paradise, no resurrection. Death is not an interval but an ending, and immortality — if it exists at all — lies in the fragile permanence of human works, in the city walls of Uruk, in the carved words of the poet-scribe. This starkness does not strip the work of the sacred; it sharpens it. Here is a scripture without a religion, a theology without a god to worship, and yet a vision of life no less profound for its absence of promised afterlives. In tracing the parallels and divergences between The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible, this essay seeks to illuminate the shared narrative DNA of epic and scripture, to uncover the porous borders between art and faith in the ancient Near East, and to recover a vision of sacred literature capacious enough to include both clay and covenant. Perhaps the most radical truth of Gilgamesh is that even in a polytheistic world of gods and monsters, the deepest journey remains a human one—a quest not for divine favour, but for meaning itself.
The Flood Narrative (Tablet XI vs. Genesis 6–9)
One of the most striking parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible lies in their flood narratives, both recounting a divine decision to destroy humanity through a catastrophic flood and the preservation of life through a vessel. In Tablet XI, Uta-napishti reveals to Gilgamesh the gods’ collective decision: ‘the great gods decided to send down the Deluge’ (XI 14), an act initiated by Anu, Enlil, Ishtar, Ninurta, and other deities who swore an oath to enact destruction (XI 15-19). Similarly, Genesis describes God’s regret at human wickedness and His resolve: ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created’ (Genesis 6:7).
Uta-napishti’s instructions for the ark echo those given to Noah, emphasising survival over material wealth: ‘O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu, / demolish the house, and build a boat! / Abandon wealth, and seek survival!’ (XI 24-26). The ark’s construction is detailed with precise dimensions and multiple decks: ‘One acre was her area, ten rods the height of her sides [...] Six decks I gave her, dividing her thus into seven’ (XI 58-61), paralleling the detailed measurements of Noah’s ark (Genesis 6:15-16). The flood itself is vividly described with divine wrath personified by storm gods: ‘At the very first glimmer of brightening dawn, / there rose on the horizon a dark cloud of black [...] The god Errakal was uprooting the mooring-poles [...] The Anunnaki gods carried torches of fire [...] He smashed [the land] in pieces like a vessel of clay’ (XI 99-109). This imagery parallels the biblical ‘fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened’ (Genesis 7:11).
Following the flood’s cessation, both narratives employ birds as symbolic agents to assess the receding waters. Uta-napishti first releases a swallow, which returns, indicating no place to land; then a raven, which ‘saw the waters receding, finding food [...] it did not come back’ (XI 153-157). This closely mirrors Noah’s release of a raven and then a dove (Genesis 8:7-12), symbolising hope and the restoration of the earth. A covenant-like conclusion follows the flood’s end. In Gilgamesh, the gods ‘gathered like flies around the man making sacrifice,’ and Belet-ili proclaims that Enlil should not come to the incense because he ‘lacked counsel and brought on the Deluge’ (XI 160-170). Enlil, angered but reconciled, grants Uta-napishti and his wife immortality: ‘In the past Uta-napishti was a mortal man, / but now he and his woman shall become like us gods!’ (XI 202-206). In Genesis, God establishes a covenant with Noah, symbolised by the rainbow, promising never again to destroy all life by flood (Genesis 9:11-17).
Despite these parallels, key differences highlight divergent theological frameworks. The Epic of Gilgamesh presents a polytheistic context where multiple gods with conflicting motives govern fate and calamity. Enlil’s anger contrasts with Ea’s protective guidance, as Ea secretly instructs Uta-napishti, demonstrating divine intrigue (XI 19-23, 179-190). Conversely, the biblical account centers on a singular, sovereign God whose righteous judgment and mercy are unified and absolute. Thus, while the flood narratives share a core storyline, the divine decision to flood the world, the construction of an ark, the preservation of life, the sending of birds, and the establishment of post-flood divine-human relations, they reflect their distinct religious and cultural milieus. From this shared motif of world-ending flood comes a broader reflection on shared narrative patterns of origins and renewals, guiding us next to explore the archetype of world beginnings.
Creation and Innocence: Enkidu and Adam
The figure of Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh presents a compelling parallel to the biblical Adam, particularly as both characters embody archetypes of innocence, natural harmony, and a subsequent transformative “fall.” Andrew George’s translation vividly portrays Enkidu’s origin as a wild man fashioned by the gods to counterbalance Gilgamesh’s tyranny and masculinity: ‘All his body is matted with hair, / he bears long tresses like those of a woman: / the locks of his hair grow thickly as barley, / he knows not a people, nor even a country.’ (I 105-108). Moreover, Enkidu’s existence is marked by intimate communion with nature and its creatures, epitomised when he runs with gazelles and drinks at the watering hole alongside animals, and although these animals considered him their god, he took on a maternal care for them without a trace of domination. This innocence is one of unmediated existence, prior to human civilisation’s impositions, and it reflects on the mismanagement of political duties caused by greed—in other words an innocent ruler corrupted by the ‘evils’ of power. This state of primal harmony evokes strong intertextual resonance with the Genesis narrative of Adam in Eden. Like Enkidu, Adam inhabits an environment of perfect unity with creation, ‘the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it’ (Genesis 2:15). Adam’s innocence is similarly defined by unfallen communion with the natural world and the absence of knowledge of good and evil—in the same way Enkidu does.
The narrative pivot in both texts comes through a transformative “fall,” yet the moral valences differ markedly. Enkidu’s fall occurs through his encounter with Shamhat, the temple prostitute, who civilises him by introducing sexuality, human food, and social norms. After spending six days and seven nights with her, Enkidu’s relationship to nature irrevocably changes: ‘Enkidu ate the bread until he was sated, / he drank the ale, a full seven jugfuls. / His mood became free, he started to sing, / his heart grew merry, his face lit up. / The barber groomed his body so hairy, / anointed with oil he turned into a man.’ (I 100–109). This “fall” results in exile from the wild as Enkidu becomes part of human society, an initiation into culture and mortality. In a way, Enkidu is dislodged from the urban “paradise” in order to join the rural city of Uruk. By contrast, the Genesis fall is an expulsion from divine grace, linked to disobedience and the knowledge of good and evil: ‘the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked’ (Genesis 3:7). This loss of innocence carries a theological condemnation, estrangement from God, and the imposition of suffering and death.
In Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s transformation is ambivalent—while it severs him from the wild, it grants him social identity and companionship, initiating the hero’s central relationship. Rather than a moral punishment, it is a civilising necessity. As scholar Jeffrey H. Tigay notes, Enkidu’s fall is not a fall from grace but a movement from nature to culture: ‘Enkidu was modeled not on the nomad but on primordial man, whose culture was that of the animal, we perceive the contrast as one between human culture and its absence. (Tigay, 1982, p.209). The Eden narrative, conversely, portrays a moral rupture that introduces sin and alienation into human existence. This juxtaposition foregrounds the divergent theological frameworks underpinning these texts: Mesopotamian myth prioritises the human transition to civilisation, while the Hebrew Bible situates human origin within a moral covenant with a singular God. Nevertheless, both narratives grapple profoundly with the human condition at its beginnings—innocence, knowledge, and exile—establishing archetypes that resonate throughout their respective traditions. These shared archetypes naturally lead into another preoccupation that permeates Gilgamesh and biblical wisdom literature alike: the existential limits imposed by mortality.
The Quest for Immortality: Gilgamesh and Ecclesiastes
Following the profound disruptions of innocence and the onset of mortality, Gilgamesh centers its narrative on the hero’s desperate quest to transcend death. This pursuit anchors the epic’s meditation on human finitude, articulated most poignantly in the encounters with Siduri and Utnapishtim. Siduri, the tavern keeper, counsels Gilgamesh with sobering wisdom: ‘The life that you seek you never will find: / when the gods created mankind, / death they dispensed to mankind, / life they kept for themselves.’ (Georges, Gilgamesh at the End of the World). This counsel acknowledges death as an immutable divine decree, closing off the hope of literal immortality. Utnapishtim’s narrative, a Mesopotamian parallel to the biblical Noah, further underscores the futility of Gilgamesh’s quest. Utnapishtim recounts how the gods granted him and his wife eternal life following the flood: ‘In the past Uta-napishti was a mortal man, / but now he and his woman shall become like us gods!’ (XI 203-204). Utnapishtim’s rhetoric conveys a resigned acceptance of mortality’s universality, inviting Gilgamesh to embrace the transient pleasures of life rather than vainly seeking eternal life.
This ethos finds a remarkable parallel in the Hebrew wisdom tradition, particularly in Ecclesiastes, where the Teacher reflects on the inevitability of death and the limits of human striving: ‘For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other [...] All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again’ (Ecclesiastes 3:19–20). Like Siduri and Utnapishtim, Ecclesiastes advocates for a life of enjoyment and meaningful labor within the bounds of mortal existence that lies within the experiences of the living:
‘But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,
enjoy yourself always by day and by night!
Make merry each day,
dance and play day and night!
Let your clothes be clean,
let your head be washed, may you bathe in water!
Gaze on the child who holds your hand,
let a wife enjoy your repeated embrace!’
— Gilgamesh at the End of the World, Andrew George
‘Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart … Let thy garments be always white; and let not thy head lack ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of thy life.’
— Ecclesiastes 9:7–9. King James Version.
Unlike biblical texts that often situate death within a redemptive framework—anticipating resurrection or covenantal hope—Gilgamesh presents mortality as a final and inescapable condition, one that demands existential acceptance rather than metaphysical transcendence. Enkidu’s death serves as the pivotal moment catalysing Gilgamesh’s transformative quest. His lament reveals not only personal loss but an existential rupture: ‘my friend Enkidu, whom I love so dear, / who with me went through every danger: / ‘the doom of mortals overtook him. / Six days I wept for him and seven nights. / I did not surrender his body for burial, / until a maggot dropped from his nostril.’ (X 57-60). Gilgamesh’s grief is raw and unmediated by hope of reunion beyond death; it is a confrontation with finality. Therefore, the epic’s message is not one of religious consolation but of pragmatic humanism, where mortality emerges not merely as a thematic element but as the philosophical core of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It shapes the hero’s transformation and underpins the epic’s enduring appeal as a meditation on what it means to be human.
Moral Kingship and Political Structures: The Divine Tempering of Authority in Gilgamesh and Biblical Kingship
The Epic of Gilgamesh also offers a compelling exploration of the tension between absolute power and moral responsibility, a theme within the ancient Near Eastern literary and religious imagination that still resonates deeply nowadays. At the epic’s outset, Gilgamesh is introduced as a tyrannical monarch who abuses his prerogatives, provoking the gods to engineer a corrective intervention. As the goddess Aruru fashions Enkidu, fashioned from ‘a pinch of clay’ in the wild, the narrative immediately establishes kingship not as an unassailable right but as a role subject to divine and ethical scrutiny, especially when dealing with tyrannical forces. This narrative dynamic echoes a broader ancient Near Eastern conception of kingship as inherently relational and contingent: a king is only as legitimate as his ability to govern in accordance with divine will and social justice.
As Gilgamesh mourns the death of Enkidu, he begins to grasp the limits of his power and the inevitability of mortality, which propels him toward a more tempered, responsible kingship. This theme invites comparison with the biblical ideal of kingship, particularly as embodied by figures such as David and Solomon. The Hebrew Bible presents kingship as a divinely ordained office bounded by covenantal obligations. The “shepherd-king” motif underscores the king’s role as a caretaker accountable to the people. Unlike Gilgamesh’s initially unchecked sovereignty, biblical kingship is conceived as stewardship under God’s covenant: kings are expected to rule justly, uphold divine law, and serve as paragons of piety and righteousness. The Book of Samuel contains explicit warnings against tyrannical behavior and underscores the conditional nature of royal authority (Samuel 8:6-7). David, though flawed, is portrayed as a ‘man after God’s own heart’ (Samuel 13:14), emphasising the necessity of divine approval and obedience for legitimate rule.
Both traditions thus critique kings who abuse power, yet their mechanisms for restraining royal excess differ markedly. In Gilgamesh, divine intervention is direct and pragmatic: the gods send Enkidu to challenge Gilgamesh’s excesses physically and morally, catalysing his personal growth through friendship and loss. We can think of this polytheistic structure as a parliament with multiple actors; such as executive leaders, legislative bodies, judiciary, and often a network of departments and agencies. Which is an interesting approach that conjoins divine selection and political justice, millennia before the Hebrew Bible, which uses a monotheistic structure—god is the only one who can appoint a king. As it happens in most democratic governments nowadays, the people have the power to revoke or petition changes, in the same way that the citizens of Uruk plead to the ‘Divine Council’ for help. In this case, the gods opted not to revoke Gilgamesh’s kingship but reshape it through experience and revelation—in the same way the government may reform a law, the gods decided they would reform the king, thereby holding him accountable and transforming him from inside-out.
Scholars such as W. G. Lambert have observed that Mesopotamian kingship is often portrayed as a fraught balance between divine favor and human agency, with the king’s role requiring constant negotiation between personal power and social order (Lambert, 1983). The Gilgamesh epic dramatises this negotiation through narrative and character development, illustrating how moral kingship emerges not from birthright alone but from the capacity to respond to divine and human demands for justice. This contrasts with the biblical model, where kingship is inseparable from covenantal obedience and prophetic oversight.
Yet, both traditions share the fundamental conviction that rulers who fail to temper their authority with justice and humility imperil their realms and themselves. If kingship, therefore, is reshaped through moral encounters—whether divine or interpersonal—it follows that other central institutions of human society, notably the sacred bonds of friendship and covenant, are similarly transformative. This leads us to examine how Gilgamesh explores the proto-covenantal relationship between the king and Enkidu, ‘they kissed each other and they became friends’ (George, II, lines 146–147), a bond that parallels and prefigures the biblical covenants that define divine-human relations. The philosophical grappling with mortality also informs the epic’s critique of kingship, as Gilgamesh’s initial hubris—his tyrannical disregard for mortality and limits—must be tempered by wisdom that can only acquired through love and loss; thus softening his heart and liberating new emotions, such as grief and sympathy; turning him thus into a more just king.
Love as Covenant: the Moral Fabric of Gilgamesh
Love, therefore, works as the foundational moral that goes beyond death and power—stretching the reader’s conceptions of both; political thought and psychological enlightenment. This indicates that love contains more power than tyranny. Indeed, this brief but powerful gesture of mutual affection transforms Enkidu from rival to ‘brother’—or ‘lover’, as many academics have pointed out (Jeremy, 2007) and, that may be also understood as a formal “adoption pact,” wherein Enkidu is adopted into Gilgamesh’s royal family—legally as well as emotionally—thus sanctifying their bond under the aegis of Ninsun, Gilgamesh’s mother, who names Enkidu her son and equal of her divine offspring, ‘the foster-child. / Enkidu, whom [I love,] I take for my son, / Enkidu in [brotherhood,] Gilgamesh shall favour him’ (III 127-128). This pact is not merely symbolic. In their journey to the Cedar Forest, Enkidu acts as the guide and protector: ‘Who goes in front saves his companion, / who knows the road protects his friend. / Let Enkidu go before you, / he knows the way to the Forest of Cedar.’ (III 4-6). Their mutual defense and cooperation in the face of cosmic peril dramatise a horizontal covenant: two humans binding themselves in shared fate and loyalty.
In contrast, Biblical covenants predominantly articulate vertical relationships—between human and deity. The Noahic Covenant, for instance, is a promise God initiates: humanity need not act to sustain it, and the rainbow stands as divine assurance of non-destruction. The Gilgamesh–Enkidu bond, however, exists in human space—horizontal rather than vertical. It is a covenant not of divine decree but of shared destiny, enacted through physical gestures of embrace, oath, and joint action. In this light, the true “scripture” of Gilgamesh lies not in law or divine revelation, but in the lived ethics of companionship, of human-to-human covenant born from vulnerability and mutual transformation. It is through this bond that the epic achieves its moral resonance: surviving not through sacred decree, but through the shared memory of deep affection.
Therefore, we recognise that The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible, though born of different theological soils, grow branches that shade the same human landscapes. Each confronts mortality, each defines virtue, each challenges power—and in doing so, both offer to us the means of reflection: on what it means to build, to lament, to care, and to remember. Ultimately, this comparison invites us not to choose between myth, scripture, or poem—but to see them as parts of a shared human inheritance, one that persistently asks: How shall we live, knowing that our lives are finite? In listening to voices carved in clay tablets and inscribed on sacred scrolls, we discover not only ancient stories but ourselves.
References:
George, Andrew. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. 2nd ed., Penguin Classics, 2003.
The Holy Bible: King James Version. Ecclesiastes 9:7–9. Cambridge Edition, Cambridge UP, 1769.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, 1989. Genesis 6–9.
Wiseman, Donald John. "Ashurbanipal". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 May. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ashurbanipal. Accessed 9 August 2025.
Tigay, Jeffrey H. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford University Press, 2000).
Lambert, W. G. Ancient Mesopotamian Religion and Mythology: Selected Essays. Mohr Siebeck, 1983.
Nissinen, Martti. "Are There Homosexuals in Mesopotamian Literature?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 130, no. 1, 2010, pp. 73–77.
Schipper, Jeremy. “When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 16, no. 2, 2007, pp. 307–312.
BibleProject. Covenants. BibleProject, 2025, https://bibleproject.com/guides/covenants/.
