The Epic of Gilgamesh/Headscratchers

• Gilgamesh was 2/3 immortal. How does that work?
  • Canonically (if my knowledge of Mesopotamian mythology is up to par), Gilgamesh was not born in the normal sense, but rather created by the gods. Three gods created different aspects of him (body, intellect, and something else I think). Two of them were divine in nature, but one (most likely his body or his lifespan) remained human.
  • As Gilgamesh was essentially the Babylonian equivalent of Chuck Norris, the answer is that he's such a Badass that he actually re-fertilized his own embryo.
    • Uh-Chuck-uh-NORR-ISSSSSSSS!!!!
  • Don't forget that the story is basically a Shonen anime in written form. I'm surprised they haven't made an anime from it!
    • They did. Sorta.
    • Don't forget Gilgamesh, which picks up the story in modern times.
  • Maybe his mother slept with two gods that day, and he got genes (or whatever the closest equivalent the Babylonians believed in back then) from all three.
    • It could have been that he was the result of a set of fraternal twins combining to form a chimera...I'm not too sure if two zygotes could have been formed with different fathers however but then this is an ancient legend so...
      • It's possible, though unlikely, for twins to have different fathers.
  • He got 1/2 and 1/8 from somewhere and they rounded off to the nearest common fraction.
  • Ask Schrodinger's cat.
  • The Sumerians only had analogue genes - digital genes weren't invented until much later.
  • Easy. First, a god and mortal had a kid. Then this demi-god child had a kid with a god as well. The child born from it is Gilgamesh
    • That would be 3/4 god, not 2/3. The simple answer is that ancient Babylonians probably didn't understand genetics.
  • Easy. His grandparents are one mortal, two gods, and one 2/3 god. The 2/3 grandparent's grandparents are also one mortal, two gods, and one 2/3 god. Turtles all the way down.
    • Well played, good sir.
  • Presumably, the Sumerians may assumed there were three parties involved in Gilgamesh's birth. The obvious ones would be his divine mother Ninsun, and his mortal, yet royal father Lugalbanda. So there may have been a second god that was party to his birth, or alternatively, since Lugalbanda was a divine king, he was considered to be simultaneously a god and a man - hence, Gilgamesh got two parts of god, and one part of human.
  • Lugulbanda became a god afterward. Obviously he was 1/3 on the way to godhood when Gilgamesh was conceived.
    • Or... the scribe just thought 2/3 sounded cool.
  • Dude, three-way. It's good to be the King.
  • Always thought it was figurative. A fancy way of saying he was more god than man.
  • It means he could only mostly die.
  • Gil's mother was a hermaphrodite.
  • His mother was a goddess, and his father became a god gradually over the course of his life. So his father was about 1/3 divine when Gilgamesh was conceived.
    • But it was the norm that the kings were all considered to be like that. If my understanding of how these things worked is correct then it is much like with the ancient Pharaohs and it was something like the same fallacies behind the 3/5ths compromise. They were trying to have it both ways and not giving any thought to reason because...well, because they were people and most people just dont think very hard about anything. (Or if they did, then they wouldn't dare do so aloud about something like this. It might be physically dangerous for them given the circumstances.) You see, they were living in somewhat of a thearchy: the dude must be such a badass as to be godly if he's our king, but he's clearly not really a god because he's going to die and have a successor: experience teaches us that. And he'd been injured or sick before, in all likelihood. So...I've got it! He's sort of a demi-god! That's it!
  • No, no, no. C'mon guys, this one is easy. Gilgamesh's divine parent(s) reached down into his human parent(s), snipped out two-thirds of his human DNA, and replaced it with divine DNA. Nobody said Gilgamesh had to be built entirely the old-fashioned way.
  • Okay, this is hitting WAY off the mark...but the Troper before has a point. Y'see, Gilgamesh's father (King = God) made love to his wife that night. During that "session", a god wandered by seeing this, and rather than watch, get in on the "fun". Although the god was visible, they didn't seem to care, saw it as "Divine Intervention". During the "fun", God A's sperm devolved to combine with God B's sperm, causing one great "super-sperm" to impregnate her egg. Thus, Gilgamesh was born. Okay? Okay.
  • I always figured it was because the Sumerians didn't understand about heritage(or whatever it is called). One of his parents was half god, the other full god. Therefore, he is two-thirds.
  • Maybe Gilgamesh' mother was... active, if you catch my drift. The Sumerians knew sex led to pregnancy, but didn't really know about genetics. Maybe they assumed that if a woman has sex with two man, the child born is going to be from both of them together. It sounds like something that would make sense to an ancient people...
  • The above is not maybe, but cannon (according to Babylonian belief). They believed that a woman's child was fathered by ALL the men she slept with while pregnant.

• When you think about it, how is it possible for the first "hero" in the book to be Genre Savvy? That would suggest Genre Blindness and the fourth wall are the more post-modern way to go, and originally, characters were assumed to be aware that their lives were governed by tropes!
  • OR, people had stories before the books/tablets were written. These stories had tropes in them and Gilgamesh was one of the first story to end up with Genre Savvy characters. Since then it's just been people forgetting about this story or simply ignoring it as opposed to being really post-modern.
  • Maybe it's not so much Genre Savvy as it is the ancient belief that everyday life was ruled by the hands of Fate. Things are going to happen because Destiny/The Writer Says So.
  • Strictly speaking, it's not really the oldest - the actual Epic of Gilgamesh is actually a really good Adaptation Distillation - and adaptation Expansion - from around the 19th century BC or so, based on a series of Sumerian stories about the man that didn't actually comprise a single, solid story. To be precise, the version that is most often read now (the so-called "Standard Version") is an even later reworking of the story, from around the 12th century or so, which became the "canonical" version, apparently.
    • Anyway, the point is, we don't know how old the original Sumerian stories are, since the earliest written copies (from around the 21st century BC or so) are probably just that, copies of earlier texts that haven't been found - but for the record, there are also Sumerian epics involving Gilgamesh's father Lugalbanda, and his predecessor Enmerkar, which are at least contemporary with the earliest forms of the Gilgamesh epic. The reason why Gilgamesh is considered the first epic hero is simply because he's the first important one; the Gilgamesh Epic was known for two thousand years, and was translated to at least half a dozen languages and spread across the ancient Near East, having immense influence on subsequent literature everywhere. And Now You Know.
  • In other words, he's Genre Savvy and subject to prehistoric Adaptation Decay.
  • People were telling stories for ages and ages and ages before they were written, and we have no idea what the real first written stories were, only what the oldest *known surviving* ones are.

• "Six days and seven nights"? Really?
  • What's wrong with starting something at nighttime?
  • I think the original complaint may be more on the... "stamina" aspect.
  • Yes, they are just that good.

• And speaking of which, if Enkidu had such an easy time staying awake for seven nights, why couldn't Gilgamesh manage a few seconds?
  • Maybe if he had something as... engaging as Enkidu had to keep him occupied...
  • I got the impression it was something mystical that put him to sleep. Any other view just means Gilgamesh abruptly turns into a narcoleptic wimp.
  • He just killed a bunch of lions, two scorpion men, walked for twenty-four hours non-stop, killed a bunch of stone giants, cut down some three hundred or so trees, then had to listen to a looong speech from Utnapishtim. Cut the guy some slack.

• If Gilgamesh wanted to know how to become immortal, why didn't he just ask his father, Lugulbanda, who became a god?
  • Utanapishtim was closer, probably.

• How is it possible that nobody yet thought to make the most awesome video game ever about this story? I mean... This is just God of War in written form. It's waiting to turn into a video game. Or at the very least a Sword and Sandal kind of movie with incredible CGI and stuff.
  • Oh You maen like this one?
  • Because it would probably suck, and definitely have little to do with the original story.
  • Video game would be difficult. But a movie would be awesome.
  • Yeah, an actual fairly straight Shonen anime adaptation (not an update like Gilgamesh) would be pretty great.

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