Literature / The Epic of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh mourning the loss of his friend Enkidu.

"How, O how could I stay silent, how, O how could I keep quiet?
My friend whom I love has turned to clay:
Enkidu my friend whom I love has turned to clay.
Am I not like him? Must I lie down too, never to rise again?"

— Gilgamesh, Tablet X

A legend from Ancient Mesopotamia, the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest known works of literature, dating from around 2100-1200 BCE and inscribed on clay tablets.

The story follows the eponymous Gilgamesh, the Semi-Divine King of Uruk. Gilgamesh is far from an ideal king, spending most of his days partying, picking fights, and laying with brides and grooms on their wedding nights — sometimes all at once. Understandably upset, the people pray for the gods to give their king a companion who can temper his wrath.

Their prayers are answered in the form of Enkidu, a Beast Man who emerges from the woods to fight Gilgamesh. The two brawl in the streets of Uruk until neither can continue, and by the end the two have become the greatest of friends. For a while, they entertain themselves with grand adventures, but eventually their actions anger the gods, who strike Enkidu down.

Heartbroken by the loss of his friend and suddenly aware of death's inevitability, Gilgamesh sets out on one last adventure in search of immortality. He ultimately fails, but in the process learns a valuable lesson about arrogance and impatience, and returns to rule Uruk as a wiser, humbler king.

While not the first example of literature ever written (with Sumerian and Egyptian texts like the Instructions of Shuruppak the Kesh temple hymn, the Hymns of Enheduanna and the Pyramid Texts dating back even further) it is often considered to be the earliest surviving heroic epic, predating The Iliad and even the majority of The Bible by well over a thousand years. Naturally, any trope found in this work is Older Than Dirt, and is likely either Unbuilt or an Ur-Example.

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The Epic of Gilgamesh contains examples of:

• Absurdly Cool City: Uruk itself. A similar phrasing provides Book Ends for the story.
  Gilgamesh: Urshanabi, climb up on to the wall of Uruk, inspect its foundation terrace, and examine well the brickwork; see if it is not of burnt bricks, and did not seven wise men lay these foundations?
• The Ace: Gilgamesh was a peerless hunter, warrior and king. The only person who ever comes close to matching him is Enkidu.
• Actually, I Am Him: When Gilgamesh lands at the mouth of the rivers, he asks the first man he sees where to find Utnapishtim. Naturally it is Utnapishtim, but he interrogates Gilgamesh on his purpose before revealing his identity.
• Adaptational Friendship: In early Sumerian texts, Enkidu is Gilgamesh's servant. In the later Akkadian version, their relationship is incredibly close friends and perhaps lovers.
• An Aesop: Having a Mortality Phobia is immature, and the only way to actually "live" forever is to leave a legacy of great deeds.
• Afterlife Tour: Unbuilt Trope. Enkidu goes into the netherworld, almost gets stuck there but gets rescued, and afterwards gives Gilgamesh a detailed description of the different fates of the people he has seen. (The picture is extremely bleak even compared to what Aeneas sees: unless one has at least four sons left, one is quite miserable).
  • It is important to note that this isn't included in the original Gilgamesh epic, but in a separate Sumerian poem (where Gilgamesh is actually called Bilgamesh).
• Arc Number: 7, 10, 12, and 120 (10 × 12) come up a lot.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Gilgamesh's abuses of the people as King of Uruk include rape, forced conscription, and ringing the city bell because he thinks it's funny.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Humbaba offers Gilgamesh all the riches of the forest should Gilgamesh show mercy. Enkidu hacks his head off anyway.
• Applied Phlebotinum: In the third act, the "Stone Things" that power the ferryman's boat. Gilgamesh destroys them in a temper tantrum.
• Arrogant God vs. Raging Monster: Unbuilt Trope, Shamhat was specifically sicced on Enkidu to prevent this from happening but when the man-monster is civilized he fights the tyrant Gilgamesh anyway because it is the right thing to do.
• Artificial Human: Gilgamesh, Depending on the Writer, although the stone tablets state that he wasn't as much born as he was "created". Enkidu as well.
• Artistic License – Space: A truly fascinating case. The text proposes that, upon setting in the west, the sun passes through a gigantic underground tunnel between two mountains (referred to in some translations as the "Twin Peaks") which takes it back around to where it rises in the east.
• Badass Boast: After Gilgamesh and Enkidu destroy the Bull of Heaven — the divine beast sent to destroy them for mocking the goddess Ishtar — Enkidu shakes the bull's torn off haunches at Ishtar, threatening to do the same to her if he catches her.
• Beast and Beauty: Enkidu is a wild man raised by animals who enters the world of man sleeping with the beautiful priestess, Shamhat.
• BFS:
  "They cast great daggers
  Their blades were 120 pounds each
  The cross guards of their handles thirty pounds each
  They carried daggers worked with thirty pounds of gold
  Gilgamesh and Enkidu bore ten times sixty pounds each."
• Bittersweet Ending: Gilgamesh is spared the gods' wrath and gains wisdom, but he has to cope with the death of Enkidu, and immortality is denied him.
• Bold Explorer: Gilgamesh explored many new lands, defeating monsters and bringing home their treasures. Any actual Trope Maker is probably lost to history, so this is likely as close as we'll ever get.
• Book Ends: The epic starts with an evocative description of the splendor of Uruk. It ends with Gilgamesh and Urshanabi arriving at Uruk, and Gilgamesh using the exact same words to describe it.
• Bullying a Dragon: After killing the Bull of Heaven, sent by Inanna to punish Gilgamesh without striking Uruk with her full wrath, he and Enkidu mock her. Enkidu falls ill the same day and soon dies from a divine curse.
• Character Development: The introduction implies that after his adventure, Gilgamesh became a decent king.
• Coming of Age Story: Although Gilgamesh is already an adult, the arc of the story is about him learning to act like one, particularly in the areas of impulse control and accepting death as an inevitable part of life.
• Dead Sidekick: Gilgamesh completely falls apart after Enkidu's death.
• Defeat Means Friendship: How Enkidu and Gilgamesh meet and become best buddies: by beating the crap out of each other.
• Determinator: Gilgamesh, which is why his name is on the story. First city ruler, first semi-mortal to survive Katabasis
• Deus ex Machina: At Ninsun's request, Shamash told Gilgamesh that he must trick Humbaba in removing his seven 'auras' which make him impossible for even them to defeat and gifted him with three weapons (a mighty axe, a great sword and a bow). Even then that wasn't enough, and Shamash had to resort to binding Humbaba in thirteen winds to so Enkidu and Gilgamesh can kill him.
• Diabolus ex Machina: A snake appears at the end to eat Gilgamesh's magic herb, just to deny him any kind of happy ending.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: After killing the Bull of Heaven, Enkidu throws its 'hindquarters' in Ishtar's face.
• Didn't Think This Through: In Utnapishtim's tale, the gods created the humanity so that they will work and feed the gods, allowing them to live in leisure. Then, the gods couldn't stand the noise people made, so they tried to exterminate them a few times, culminating with The Great Flood. It was apparently successful, but then they realized there is no one left to feed them, nor anything to eat...Whoops. Lucky for them, Utnapishtim managed to make it through and fed them, for which they granted him immortality. (One-time exception; sorry, Gilgamesh.)
• Dream Sequence: Several, deliberately invoked as divination. Every dream Gilgamesh has before coming to the Cedar Forest involves a mountain falling on top of him. Enkidu deduces that this is Reverse Psychology and predicts success.
• Droit du Seigneur: This got him into big trouble since it was not cool with anyone in his kingdom, and eventually led to Enkidu arriving after the Gods answered his people's prayers.
• Dual Wielding: Gilgamesh uses a sword and an axe, sometimes both at once.
• Eastward Endeavor: Gilgamesh travels to the earthly paradise of the gods at the easternmost edge of the Earth, and then goes even farther east, across the sea, to the island where the mariner Utnapishtim lives and where he can find a plant that grants back youth. He fails in getting this plant, but in the uttermost east he learns to accept his mortality and overcomes the fear of death that has hounded him since Enkidu died, returning home a wiser man (at least by the standards of the ancient Middle Eastern societies) and at peace with himself.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Ishtar may look down on humans and enjoy wreaking havoc in their lives, but even she was horrified when Enlil attempted to wipe out the human race in its entirety just because their noise was making it hard for him to sleep.
• Exact Words: Ea warns Utnapistim of the coming flood even though the gods vow not to tell any human—but Ea didn't tell anyone. He just happened to be talking about it next to a fence that Utnapishtim happened to be standing behind.
• Excessive Mourning: When Enkidu dies from a sickness sent by the gods, Gilgamesh refuses to let him be buried for seven days, hoping he can call him back to life by his mourning. Only when maggots appear in Enkidu's face, Gilgamesh allows the corpse to be buried, and then goes off into the steppe alone to cry for Enkidu, leaving his kingdom behind.
• Femme Fatale: The goddess Ishtar. All of her lovers were known to come to bad ends, as Gilgamesh not-so-delicately points out to her.
• Feral Villain: Unbuilt. Enkidu is all set up to be this in an Arrogant God vs. Raging Monster situation but Shamhat's in depth education civilizes him and he becomes a Hero Antagonist for Gilgamesh.
• The Ferry Man: Urshanabi, as he transports Gilgamesh to where Utnapishtim is staying.
• Flowery Insults: When Enkidu curses Shamhat for indirectly leading to his death, he lets off a whole string of these, which (in at least one translation) ends with the... memorable "May the drunkard soil with his vomit any place you enjoy."
• Gainax Ending: The Epic is composed of twelve tablets. The first eleven tell the coherent story people are familiar with and the eleventh even Book Ends the beginning of the first tablet. The twelfth tablet then features a completely different story where Enkidu is alive, works as Gilgamesh's servant and then gets literally trapped in the Netherworld instead of dying of disease like in the main story. The tablet even ends by saying that it's the twelfth tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, as if it's trying to ensure the reader that it really is part of the same epic. The tablet is actually an adaptation of a much earlier story, similar to the stories that were used as inspiration for the first eleven tablets. It is believed that it was included with the other tablets due to its long descriptions of the nature of the Netherworld and the afterlife, thus showcasing the wisdom that Gilgamesh gained in the eleven main tablets.
• God-Emperor: Gilgamesh again (well, they did name it after him). It also points out how the Sumerian kings are specifically not this.
• Going to See the Elephant: Why did Gilgamesh drag Enkidu on a mission to defeat Humbaba and cut down the giant cedar? Because it was there^note It's entirely possible that the reason is in one of the missing sections. According to Bilgames and Ḫuwawa, the Sumerian original, it's for glory and by Utu's suggestion.
• The Great Flood: Mentioned in retrospect. The biblical Noah was an Expy for Utnapishtim (or vice-versa). The prologue reveals that Gilgamesh later in his life used the information he gained from Utnapishtim to preserve the knowledge of the world before the flood.
• Grumpy Old Man: Utnapistim doesn't have much time for Gilgamesh. Not surprising, given what he went through to get immortality.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Gilgamesh. He has a habit of throwing really destructive hissy fits.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Enkidu's death knocks Gilgamesh flat. He has to watch him die over the course of twelve days, is utterly shellshocked when it happens, and by his own account refused to start the funeral rites until Enkidu's corpse was visibly rotting, because Gilgamesh has really hoped the violence of his grief could bring his friend back.
  • He could have gone back for more of the Flower of Youth, but turns out having everyone say something is impossible and reckless, going out and doing it, then having it snatched away at the last second can change your outlook on things a bit.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: There's a King Gilgamesh in the Sumerian King List — though it's probably safe to assume that the Mythological Gilgamesh was merely inspired by the Historical one.
• Homoerotic Subtext: There's no question that the deep love between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is central to the story. It's not explicitly sexual, but there's some subtext:
  • Gilgamesh's dreams about Enkidu are a Double Entendre. While Lost in Translation, the Assyrian word for meteor "kisru" sounds like the word for male prostitute "kezru," while axe sounds like the word for eunuchs who take on the sexual role of women.
  • Before they meet, Ninsun says of Gilgamesh and Enkidu: "Like a wife you'll love him, caress and embrace him." When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh covers his face "like a bride."
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Shamhat, maybe. She is a harimtu, a priestess associated with Ishtar. Ishtar is the goddess of, among other things, sex. Harimtu were definitely seen as sexy. Some scholars have argued that harimtu were temple prostitutes, but the evidence for this is inconclusive.
• Hourglass Plot: In an inversion of Enkidu's transformation from a Beast Man to a civilized human, Gilgamesh starts wearing animal skins and lets his hair become tangled and matted after Enkidu's death drives him into a depression.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Ishtar runs crying to her father after Gilgamesh spurns her, so he gives her the Bull of Heaven to terrorize Uruk in revenge. He only does it because Ishtar was being a Bratty Teenage Daughter about it, even after he warned her that making the Bull will cause a seven-year drought.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Ishtar towards Gilgamesh.
• IKEA Erotica: Sexual descriptions in this poem are neither flowery nor euphemistic. To introduce Enkidu to the joys of being human, Shamhat is asked to "Use your love arts; strip off your robes and lie there naked with your legs apart." She later "touches his penis and puts him inside her." He also stays erect for seven days (which is much longer than four hours, but that's another trope).
• Immortality Seeker: Gilgamesh spends a good chunk of the story trying to win immortality.
• Immortality Through Memory: An Aesop of the story. After having his final chance at immortality stolen from him, Gilgamesh comes to the realization that the true path to immortality comes not from living forever, but by leaving behind a great legacy that will allow you to be remembered long after you're gone. It's this revelation that marks Gilgamesh's final step in his Character Development from an arrogant and selfish man to a wise king.
• Jerkass Gods:
  • Ishtar. Accept her advances and she will kill you. Reject them and she will kill you along with hundreds of others.
  • Enlil, the god who brought the great flood in an attempt to destroy humanity. Even Ishtar was horrified by this.
• Jumped at the Call: Gilgamesh has a craving for adventure.
• Kill Him Already!: After Gilgamesh defeats the demon Humbaba and has him at knife-point, Humbaba begs for mercy. Gilgamesh seems ready to grant it, but his friend Enkidu persuades him to get on with it.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Gilgamesh doesn't.
• Lost Episode: Thanks to the very old age of the work, the story had to be reconstructed from various fragments on tablets. Not all of them have been found.
• Making a Splash: Gilgamesh goes to find the survivors of the flood, who were granted immortality.
• Manchild: In a separate, Sumerian poem, Bilgamesh and the Netherworld, Bilgamesh loses his wooden ball and mallet when it falls into the Netherworld. He can't stop crying until his beloved (in this poem he is a servant) Enkidu brings it back for him.
• Manly Tears: Unbuilt. Gilgamesh sheds these at the death of Enkidu, but "manly tears" would actually have been a redundant concept to the Sumerians, who considered crying to already be inherently manly.
• Mood-Swinger: Ishtar. At least Gilgamesh was smart enough to know not to sleep with someone who is a goddess of love by night, but goddess of war by day.
• More Expendable Than You: Ushitar towards Gilgamesh.
• Mortality Phobia: This is possibly the oldest example of this trope. It chronicles the life of Gilgamesh as a seeks a way to avert death following an act that angered the Sumerian gods. The title character goes to great lengths to gain immortality, including trying to stay awake for seven days, and swimming to the bottom of the ocean to get a magical weed. His quest for immortality ultimately ends in him having to accept that death cannot be subverted.
• Morton's Fork:
  • Gilgamesh declines Ishtar's advances, because she kills or curses her targets of affection once she gets bored of them. So she invokes the Bull of Heaven on Uruk.
  • Enkidu can either a) get killed by the Bull of Heaven or b) be slain by a Bolt of Divine Retribution for killing the Bull of Heaven.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • This was Ishtar's reaction after the Great Flood.
    Alas the days of old are turned to dust because I commanded evil; why did I command thus evil in the council of all the gods? I commanded wars to destroy the people, but are they not my people, for I brought them forth? Now like the spawn of fish they float in the ocean.
  • In the 2011 tablet, this is Enkidu's reaction after killing Humbaba.
    Enkidu opened his mouth to speak, saying to Gilgamesh: 'My friend, we have reduced the forest to a wasteland. In your might you slew the guardian, what was this wrath of yours that you went trampling the forest?'
• Narrative Poem: The Ur-Example.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's well-known that Humbaba was put there by Enlil because he didn't want anyone cutting down the cedars. Enkidu insists on killing him anyway. Then Gilgamesh destroys a bunch of stone men hanging out by the ferry and asks Urnashabi for a ride, only to be informed that the stone men are how Urshanabi was able to cross the waters of death. They punt themselves across with poles instead, but Urshanabi can never cross again.
• Noah's Story Arc: Utnapishtim is the Ur-Example and Trope Maker, pre-dating Noah's story from The Bible. Similarly to his biblical counterpart, he built a giant ship called The Preserver of Life to save his family, friends and all the animals from a flood. He was granted immortality afterwards.
• Nominal Hero: Gilgamesh starts off as an outright Villain Protagonist, but even after his Heel–Face Turn, his heroic deeds are motivated less by any real benevolence and more by a desire for personal glory.
• The Nothing After Death: There is something, but Irkalla (the underworld) isn't fun.
• Oh, Crap!: Enkidu and then Gilgamesh have this reaction to Humbaba and have to encourage the other to keep going.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Humbaba — "His maw is fire, his breath is death... Who, even among gods, could attack him?"
• Outrun the Fireball: Possibly the last trope in the world you'd expect to be Older Than Dirt, but there it is — on his journey to Dilmun, Gilgamesh had to pass through the tunnel through which the sun goes at night. The tunnel was long, and before he could get to the other end, the sun god entered from the other side... if that's not a fireball to outrun, we don't know what is.
• The Outsider Befriends the Best: Quite possibly the Ur-Example: Enkidu the wild man is created by the gods to balance out king Gilgamesh, who otherwise spends his days drinking, feasting and exercising Droit du Seigneur. After a wrestling match ends in a draw, they become best friends and Gilgamesh a better king.
• Overly Long Gag: The part where the darkness was thick and there was no light, he could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him. It's repeated 6 times, all in a row.
• Parrot Exposition: Several times a character will say something only to have it repeated back to them with only a little extra as a response. As the story probably originated from oral sources, it's likely the repetitive elements were deliberate, to help people remember them.
• Pun: When Utnapishtim warns the ruler of his city about the flood, he does so by saying that the sky will rain "kibtu (corn)" and "kukku (sound of kernels hitting the ground)" as a pun on "kibitu (misery)" and "kukkû (suffering)" in the original language. This means that Utnapishtim delivered the first recorded corny pun.
• Radish Cure: Inanna/Ishtar asks Gilgamesh to be her consort, but he refuses, citing what happened to pretty much all of her other boyfriends and husbands. Enraged, she runs to her daddy, Nanna the moon god, and asks for Gugalana, the Bull of Heaven. (Actually, the first husband of her older twin Ereshkigal. This becomes important later.) Nanna warns her that giving her the Bull of Heaven will cause a drought and says no, but Inanna/Ishtar pitches a fit, threatening to cause what we today would call a Zombie Apocalypse if Gugalana is not given to her. Nanna gives in, and Enkidu and Gilgamesh destroy Gugalana.
• Raised by Wolves: Enkidu was created by the gods, but then released in the wilds where he was raised by a herd of gazelles.
• Rated M for Manly: Manly tears, testosterone poisoning, and Call to Adventure all in one.
• Redundant Department of Redundancy: Every major plot point is written out at least twice, as a vestige of oral tradition. For instance the people complain about Gilgamesh's bad behavior as king by saying:
  Gilgamesh sounds the bell for his amusement, his arrogance has no bounds by day or night. No son is left with his father, for Gilgamesh takes them all, even the children; yet the king should be a shepherd to his people. His lust leaves no virgin to her lover, neither the warrior's daughter nor the wife of the noble; yet this is the shepherd of the city, wise, comely, and resolute.

This is redundant enough on its own but it is then immediately repeated word for word by the gods.

• Scenery Porn: Uruk's famous Book Ends description at the beginning and the ends of the tale.
  The outer wall shines in the sun like the brightest copper; the inner wall is beyond the imagining of kings. Study the brickwork, study the fortification; climb the great ancient staircase to the terrace; study how it is made; from the terrace see the planted and fallow fields, the ponds, and orchards. One league is the inner city, another league is orchards; still another the fields beyond; over there is the precinct of the temple.
  Three leagues and the temple precinct of Ishtar measure Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh.
• Scorpion People: A pair of gigantic scorpion-men guards the gates to the tunnel the sun passes through each night, and tries to convince Gilgamesh to give up on his quest for immortality and go back home.
• Semi-Divine: Gilgamesh is two-thirds god. For those scratching their heads at the genetics, this is due to an ancient belief that all of a woman's male sexual partners during pregnancy contribute to the resulting baby; Gilgamesh therefore is the son of the goddess Ninsun and then two men, one god and one mortal.
• Serpent of Immortality: The magical plant which grants eternal life and youth is stolen by a snake, making it immortal. Gilgamesh didn't get a chance to eat the plant and had to go home mortal.
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: Shamhat's two-week long sex session with Enkidu (with an interim educational conversation) is the first step in making him a civilized man.
• Sex Signals Death:
  • Enkidu blames Shamhat for leading him to an early death by seducing him, but then he's reminded that Shamhat led him to civilization and his friendship with Gilgamesh, so he repents and wishes blessings on her instead.
  • Ishtar's lovers all meet ironic ends.
• Shining City: Uruk is visually beautiful, even if Gilgamesh runs rampant as a tyrant in the beginning.
• Soap Opera Disease: The ailment that kills Enkidu.
• Spanner in the Works: That darn snake who stole the herb of immortality.
• Super-Strength: Gilgamesh has to have it to achieve some of his feats. In real time his extreme feats were written thousands of years before Superman was even thought up.
• Threshold Guardians: Downplayed: The Scorpion Men guard the tunnel that the sun rolls through at night, which leads to the realm of the gods. Gilgamesh gets through them by just explaining his situation, and they let him go.
• The Time of Myths: Even when the story was written, it was set in the distant past. So for example, when Gilgamesh does Droit du Seigneur, this does not mean this is how a Mesopotamian would've actually behaved historically.
• Too Clever by Half: Gilgamesh decides not to act on impulse and plans to test the effects of the youth-restoring plant before he tries it himself, so he's going to bring it all the way back to Uruk. He loses it entirely through a moment's inattention.
• Too Dumb to Live: In the seemingly unrelated twelfth tablet Gilgamesh gives Enkidu a long list of things not to do when he's visiting the Netherworld to make sure he doesn't get noticed and caught. It basically boils down to "don't wear clothes that make you stand out, don't make any noise, don't throw things at people, and don't kiss and beat up the people you loved and hated in life". Enkidu doesn't listen to what Gilgamesh says and manages to break every single piece of advice that Gilgamesh gave him. Needless to say, he doesn't make it out.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Gilgamesh becomes a good deal nicer as a ruler and a person after his fight with Enkidu.
• Tragic Bromance: Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
• Unbuilt Trope:
  • A lot of the wish-fulfillment elements embodied in Gilgamesh are portrayed as immature character flaws that needs to be overcome (consider how later Classical Mythology might have treated the same subjects), his heroic adventures only sets off a chain of events leading to the death of his best friend and when going on the most important quest of his life what does he do? He fails.
  • More recent stories attempting to tread the same path typically feature a man going on an Epic Quest to achieve literal immortality, only to realize along the way that it is better to achieve figurative immortality by leaving a legacy of mighty deeds. Gilgamesh however does it the other way around: He attempts to make a legacy for himself first, and it's only later when he discovers that literal immortality is even possible that he redirects his efforts towards it, with the actual Aesop he learns at the end being that trying to fight death at all is an immature and fruitless endeavor.
• Uneven Hybrid: Gilgamesh is two-thirds god, one-third man. The ancient Sumerians thought that if a woman got pregnant after having sex with two different men, then the baby had two fathers.
• Unexplained Recovery: The twelfth tablet has Enkidu alive with no explanation. However, the lack of context makes the situation unclear. There might have been an explanation that has yet to be found, or maybe the twelfth tablet was actually part of a different story. Still other scholars believe that it's an "inorganic appendage" to the epic.
• Ur-Example: Due to the sheer age of the work, most of it's tropes are either this or Unbuilt examples. In particular Gilgamesh provides the current page image for the Ur-Example article, by using his Super-Strength to bend an Ox in half (in accordance with the "first usage ever" interpretation of what an Ur-Example is, though the story provides plenty of both versions).
• Walking the Earth: Gilgamesh after Enkidu's death.
• We Are as Mayflies: At first Gilgamesh uses this as a flippant reply when Enkidu has reservations about the Humbaba hunt. It later becomes his obsession.
• We Can Rule Together: Ishtar claims that if Gilgamesh marries her, lords and kings will bow before him and distant lands will pay tribute to him, implying this trope.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Gilgamesh shows up on his doorstep asking how to gain immortality, Utnapishtim recounts the Deluge and his role in rescuing terrestrial life from it in full, terrifying detail. Then he follows up with "so what did you do to earn immortality lately?"
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Gilgamesh does. The story is largely about him learning that it's too hard to achieve, even for a badass of his caliber, and that it's more mature to accept your own mortality.
• Wild Hair: Enkidu has it when he's first "born" and gets it cut when he's civilized. Gilgamesh later gains it after he goes wild-man in the aftermath of Enkidu's death.
• Womanliness as Pathos: There is a wide variety of examples of the trope, beginning with Gilgamesh himself being a despotic tyrant who raped any woman he wanted, whether or not they were married or a relative to his allies. As part of the gods' plan to stop him, a wild man named Enkidu encounters a priestess and has sex with her, which (to the animal spirits) now made Enkidu "domesticated" and no longer wild. This civility causes Enkidu to become outraged when he learns of Gilgamesh's action, and so he goes to challenge him. The two fight and become Best Friends. During their adventures, the Love Goddess Ishtar becomes enraptured with Gilgamesh, but he spurns her. The gods see this as a great insult and punish the two by having Enkidu fall fatally ill. Enkidu's death causes Gilgamesh to become an Immortality Seeker, and this becomes his primary motive throughout the rest of the tale.
• Woman Scorned: Ishtar. Then again, Woman Accepted isn't much better with her.
• World's Strongest Man: Gilgamesh. If it had a name and could fight, Gilgamesh defeated it.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Enkidu and Gilgamesh. It's the foundation of their friendship.
  • A copy of the Epic discovered in Iraq in 2011 contained additional lines that hadn't been seen before, depicting Gilgamesh and Enkidu referring to Humbaba as a worthy opponent after his death, and expressing some remorse at having destroyed the beautiful Cedar Forest in their battle.
• Yandere: Ishtar throws a tantrum when Gilgamesh rejects her and tries to destroy the whole city of Uruk. This is possibly one of the most extreme variants on the notion that "If I can't have you, then no one can!" ever committed to paper (or clay, rather).
• You Can't Fight Fate: You can't escape your own mortality (unless you're Utnapishtim and his wife).
• Zombie Apocalypse: Ur-Example. Ishtar threatens to knock down the doors of the underworld to bring the dead up, who will eat the living.^note May not be the ur-example, as the stanza is repeated verbatim in the story of Ishtar's descent into the underworld, where, it must be said, it makes far more sense.

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