The search for a historical Gilgamesh is filled with red herrings. As Mesopotamia’s best loved epic hero images of Gilgamesh are littered throughout the ruins of the ancient cities of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Kings looking to bolster their image would claim that Gilgamesh was their “friend and brother”. But despite these bits of historical misdirection, there is some evidence hinting at a real man behind the myth. Tune-in and find out how distant radio stations, arty metaphors, Saddam Hussein’s novel all play a role in the story.

Works Cited

Bengio, Ofra. “Saddam Husayn’s Novel of Fear.” Middle East Forum, Middle East Forum, www.meforum.org/125/saddam-husayns-novel-of-fear.

Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Damrosch, David. The Buried Book: the Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. H. Holt, 2010.

Katz, Dina. Gilgamesh and Akka. STYX Publications, 1993.

Kramer, S. N. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character. U. Of Chicago P., 1963.

Schmidt, Michael. Gilgamesh: the Life of a Poem. Princeton University Press, 2019.