West Routt Library District

While striving to kill Humbaba, the monster who has attacked the city of Uruk, Gilgamesh spurns the advances of the goddess Ishtar, prompting her revenge, in a retelling of an episode from the story of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest legend.

A retelling, based on seventh-century B.C. Assyrian clay tablets, of the wanderings and adventures of the god king, Gilgamesh, who ruled in ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in about 2700 B.C., and of his faithful companion, Enkidu.

"The Epic of Gilgamesh is the Ur epic--the hero's journey, quest, and education--inscribed onto damp clay tablets several millennia before Odysseus or the priest of Ecclesiastes found their voices. Sumerian versions of the epic date back almost 5000 years. It is a Bildungsroman of a bad king learning to become a proper human being and therefore a wise king, and to do so, besides defeating lions and monsters and surviving great physical and emotional...