Myths, Dreams and the Epic of Gilgamesh :: Epic of Gilgamesh Essays

The Epic of Gilgamesh, a masterpiece of world literature, is considered to be nonp atomic number 18il of the oldest epics in the world. It is called an epic, but it is really a myth. In format to be able to derive a myth, it is necessary to have an diachronic point of view from two perspectives, so to speak, an outside and an home(a) one. The outer one concerns the necessity to understand the diachronic form in which the archetypes appear, the historical background to which the myth is related - in our case, the Babylonian culture and religion. The inner aspect concerns the essential problems of the time, with which that particular epoch struggled consciously, or in which it was unconsciously involved. Although this is primarily a scientific task, I believe that it is nevertheless a matter of immediate necessity for us to understand such documents humains in relation to our own life, for all the ages live in us, and we cannot really understand ourselves unless we know our spi ritual roots. What particular age and what spiritual contents are evoked in us by the unconscious is, to a authorized extent, a question of individual fate. Since Western culture is based to a great extent on Judaism and Christianity, Babylonian culture as one of their roots may be looked upon as of immediate psychological disport to us all. The archetypes live in their realm, beyond time and space. This builds the bridge of mind between men of all ages, and makes it possible to realize that we ourselves with our essential problems are bound up in the continuity of the eternal problems of mankind, as they are mirrored in myths. But the form in which the archetypes appear, their garments so to speak, depends on the historical conditions the symbols in which they appear change. In the human being these changes go to the victimization of human consciousness. Thus the myths, in my opinion, represent not further eternal archetypal events, but a certain level of the development of human consciousness. During my work on this remarkably rich material this link thrust itself more and more into my mind, so that I should like to furbish up it as the basic idea, as the starting point of my attempt to inform this myth. It was only in 1872 that scholars first became aware of this myth, when the English Assyriologist George Smith do public The Chaldean Account of the Deluge, as he titled his interlingual rendition of the eleventh tablet of the epic.