“King Gilgamesh Lives”
Mesopotamia the earliest ancient civilizations known to us, throughout the years we’ve uncovered many artifacts, stories, and literature but still very little is known about this magnificent civilization and their culture. The findings of clay tablets with the story of the “Epic of Gilgamesh” portrays important information that helps us try to understand this advance civilization. The epic depicts the Mesopotamian’s usage of language, belief system, and their views on death as for afterlife.
Mesopotamian usage of language was expressed through the writing system cuneiform, a written system that was expressed through mixed symbols, pictures, and wedge-shape characters. By cuneiform being the first writing system in Mesopotamia, it gave the Sumerian people the ability to engrave stories, messages, or religious beliefs on clay tablets and be able to pass it down in history to different societies to learn of their culture values or to either inform, teach, or entertain the in people in the city. The “Epic of Gilgamesh” was a clear example of history being passed down, engraved on clay tablets, which were heated to last. The epic shows the advancement in language and has influenced both ancient and modern literature and culture. Written system of Mesopotamia and tales from the epic were widely seen in different cultures that were portrayed different. For instance Egyptians written language was hieroglyphics, picture symbols that had similarity to Mesopotamian writing system, Cuneiform. Stories depicted in the Bible resemble ones in the Epic. The various themes in the bible familiar to ones in the epic are the garden of eve, and the genesis flood narrative. Mesopotamian language was a great innovation in which spread and was able to be shared with different civilizations and expand.
Mesopotamia was a civilization in which their belief system was polytheism. The construction of ziggurats, temples that were build tall in height and...