THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH — The World’s Oldest Story | Full Story

The Epic of Gilgamesh: the complete illustrated story of the king of Uruk, Enkidu, friendship, loss, and the search for immortality. Includes the poem's rediscovery by Layard, Rawlinson, and George Smith. A film by Lorewise Studio. Which ancient story should we tell next? CHAPTERS AND KEY EVENTS 00:00 Prologue 02:30 Chapter 1: The Tyrant and the Wild Man | Gilgamesh, King of Uruk 05:47 The Creation of Enkidu 08:01 Shamhat and the Taming of Enkidu 13:11 Chapter 2: The Clash and Hubris 14:17 Gilgamesh vs. Enkidu 15:57 Journey to the Cedar Forest 17:11 The Battle with Humbaba 19:39 Chapter 3: The Dread of Mortality | Ishtar's Proposal and Rejection 23:05 The Bull of Heaven 25:48 Enkidu's Illness and the Underworld 27:14 Enkidu's Death and Gilgamesh's Grief 29:06 Chapter 4: The Journey to the Edge | The Search for Immortality 30:20 Mount Mashu and the Scorpion-Men 33:04 The Garden of the Gods 35:35 Siduri's Advice to Gilgamesh 37:27 Urshanabi and the Waters of Death 41:32 Chapter 5: The Survivor of the Flood | Meeting Utnapishtim 42:11 The Great Flood 46:33 The Test of Sleep 50:06 The Plant of Youth 52:30 The Serpent Steals the Plant 54:27 Chapter 6: The Return to Uruk 56:41 Epilogue: The Voices Beneath the Sand | Layard and the Rediscovery of Gilgamesh 59:46 Rawlinson and the Cuneiform Code 1:01:40 George Smith and the Flood Tablet SOURCES Maureen Gallery Kovacs (trans.). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Stanford University Press, 1989. Andrew George (trans.). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Classics, 2000. Andrew R. George. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford University Press, 2003. Stephanie Dalley (trans.). Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford University Press, 2000. David Damrosch. The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. Henry Holt and Co., 2007. IMAGES AND HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS Flood Tablet: Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI. British Museum, London. Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net), CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Br... Changes: cropped and placed on a black background for this video. Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh (obverse). Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq. Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ta... Changes: cropped and placed on a black background for this video. Fragment of Tablet II of the Epic of Gilgamesh (obverse). Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraqi Kurdistan. Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fr... Changes: cropped and placed on a black background for this video. Portrait of Sir Austen Henry Layard. London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company / Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Au... Changes: cropped, framed, and upscaled for this video. Lamassu transported: frontispiece from Austen Henry Layard's Nineveh and Its Remains (1849). Wikimedia Commons file by Alemazzi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Underlying artwork: public domain. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La... Changes: cropped, reframed, and animated using AI image-to-video for this video. Behistun inscription. Photo: Mahdimanavimvi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Be... Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa), Qumran. Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Digitization: Google Art Project, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain reproduction (PD-Art). Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Th... Historical illustrations from Austen Henry Layard's A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh (1853). Assyrian reliefs, friezes, lion-hunt and horseman scenes, and the reconstruction of Nimrud, used throughout the historical sequences in this video. Scan: Internet Archive. Original illustrations: public domain. Source: https://archive.org/details/secondseriesof... Changes: cropped, reframed, arranged in montages, and animated for this video. CC BY-SA 4.0 applies to the images marked above and their adaptations: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa... CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MUSIC Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com): "Thunder Dreams" "Ibn Al-Noor" "Desert City" Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ #gilgamesh #mesopotamia #mythology #ancienthistory