Who faced greater challenges, Achilles or Gilgamesh
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an important Middle Eastern literary work, written in cuneiform on 12 clay tablets about 2000BC. This heroic poem is named for its hero, Gilgamesh, a tyrannical Babylonian king who ruled the city of Uruk. Achilles, in The Iliad, is the greatest of the Greek warriors in the Trojan War . Both of these great warriors have one sole purpose in life: to die heroically in battle. These people lived with the Heroic or Warrior Code; they were very literal, very practical people. The way they thought is: you are going to die, that's a given; there are two ways to die, one is to die of old age or illness, but this is dying in shame as we have seen Enkidu depict to us. The other way to die is gloriously, as a hero; the only way to die a hero is to do something heroic, for that you need a war; so war is not only a fact of life, it's a necessity. Perhaps the idea of heroism comes
from making a virtue of a necessity; their motto is "we have to fight, so let's make the best of it; let's die like heroes." Before you die, they way you know you're doing a good job as a hero is from the respect of your peers; this respect is very literally, it comes in the form of treasure, like what Briseis means to Achilles, and Chryseis to Agamemnon. The Greeks would not have been happy with a slap on the back and a "Well done." No, treasure was the measure of your success as a hero until you died, of course, and then the mark of your heroism was to become the subject of legends and songs. Of course, these heroes would not be around hearing the stories of how great they were when Humbaba was slayed, but before they died, they could fantasize about how great their stories would be told. Achilles is a tragic figure who believes strongly in social order, but questions the idea of figh
Some common words found in the essay are:
Greeks Achilles, Warrior Code, Agamemnon Greeks, Middle Eastern, Trojan War, Aias Odysseus, Iliad Greek, code honor, hector's body,
Approximate Word count = 602
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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