Gilgamesh

Sumerian ruler and protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Appears in 5 videos · 5 passages.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani brings up the epic of Gilgamesh in connection with a specific question: what can a form of thought achieve if it is not philosophy? In a session devoted to Plato, he gives it as an example of profound thought that arose outside philosophy1. He is chiefly interested in the flood narrative the epic already contains. He sees it as evidence of a continuity between the Orient and Greece2, and he goes so far as to say that Deucalion's flood is Gilgamesh's flood3. He also presents Gilgamesh as an Eastern hero who predates Ulysses, which traces the Greek epic back to an older source4. Finally, he counts the epic among the great narrative cycles and compares it with Wagner's Ring5. The mentions are brief and spread out between 2015 and 2024. They all point the same way: for him, Gilgamesh is an Eastern origin of Greek culture and an early model of a great epic form.

Summary produced automatically from 5 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Who is this?

Gilgamesh (, ; Akkadian: 𒀭𒄑𒂆𒈦, romanized: Gilgāmeš; originally Sumerian: 𒀭𒄑𒉋𒂵𒎌, romanized: Bilgames) was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BC. He was possibly a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who was posthumously deified. His rule probably would have taken place sometime in the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period, c. 2900–2350 BC, though he became a major figure in Sumerian legend during the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BC). […]

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Text: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0, excerpt · Portrait: Urban at French Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0