![]() He was famously credited with building a number of magnificent infrastructures in Uruk, including the wall built around Uruk to keep off invaders. Gilgamesh, a being who was two-thirds god and one-third man, was considered a just and wise ruler. According to the Sumerian King List, Gilgamesh ruled Uruk for 126 years in the 27 th century BC. ![]() This Mesopotamian epic poem recounts the heroic exploits of King Gilgamesh, the ruler of the Sumerian city of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu. The widely accepted view is that it was written in Sumerian language on a clay tablet between 2100 BC and 1200 BC (during the Third Dynasty of UR or the Neo Sumerian Empire). Owing to how ancient the Epic of Gilgamesh is, historians struggle to pinpoint the year it was first written. | Image: Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh It comes in second on the list of oldest religious texts, just behind the Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt. ![]() This epic poem from the ancient Sumer people is considered the oldest known epic of all time. The former, a phrase used to depict the most vulnerable part of an individual or a system, was the body part Achilles’ mother failed at making invincible, hence the hero dying after an arrow was short into his heels by Trojan Prince Paris. The Iliad is famed for introducing literary phrases and concepts such as “Achilles’ Heel” and “the Trojan horse”. For example, Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty and love, took the side of the Trojans. It also tells about how a number of Greek gods and goddesses took sides during the war. It follows the events of the ten-year siege of Troy by a fierce alliance of Greek city-states. The Iliad explores the characters of many warriors on both sides, particularly the famous Greek warrior and demigod Achilles and Trojan commander Hector. The epic narrates the events that occurred during the Trojan War – a legendary war in Greek mythology that saw the city of Troy pitted against the Greeks.Īccording to the story, tensions boiled over to an all-time high when a Trojan prince by the name of Paris eloped with Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Homer’s Iliad, along with the Homeric poem Odyssey, is considered one of the cornerstones of the Western literature. And often times, those heroes are based partly on actual historical events and figures.įrom ancient Indian epics such as Mahabharata and Rāmāyaṇa to the Greek Odyssey, World History Edu present the most famous epic poems of all time. The goal of an epic poem is to show how lessons can be taken from those heroic activities that more often than not influenced the world or universe.Ī quick look at the ancient texts and one immediately realizes that almost all societies have some form of either written or oral epic traditions that talk about the exploits of their heroes. Epic poems come in the form of lengthy stories, usually in metered verses, about an astonishing event in a time that called on a heroic individual or group of individuals to exhibit steel of courage and wits in the face superhuman forces.
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