May 01, 2003

Story became legend, legend became myth

Archaeologists working in Iraq (yeah, that place) may have uncovered the actual tomb of Gilgamesh. Go to the article to read more about the fabulous ruined city they have found in an area the Euphrates used to flow through.

(Via Spinsters.com -- post of April 30th.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at May 1, 2003 12:35 AM
Comments

You see, it's not about the oil, it's not about American hegemony, it's not about stroking the egos of white males.

It's about the damn archaeologists. No blood for artifacts!

Posted by: Ken Summers at May 1, 2003 at 09:08 AM

[INDY] Fortune and glory, Ken, fortune and glory. [/INDY]

[CONNERY] This is not about archaeology...it's a race against evil! [/CONNERY]

Posted by: David Jaroslav at May 1, 2003 at 10:10 AM

Link doesn't work but I'm familiar with the Assyrian Gilgamesh who's story claimes his relative was Noah-like (Assyrian name not Hebrew) and built the arc. This must be a very significant find. Supposedly there is no way Gilgamesh could have known about the Hebrew version.

Posted by: Hal at May 1, 2003 at 11:59 AM

The link works fine for me. I use IE on a WinXP machine, so I don't know if the BBC's website is proprietary. I just checked -- it also works in Mozilla and Opera 7.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at May 1, 2003 at 12:25 PM

Sorry kids. The article contains errors, not the least of which is that the accompanying photo is not that of Gilgamesh, but of the Akkadian king Sargon the Great. you might want to check it out at my site http://babylonianmusings.blogspot.com/2003_04_27_babylonianmusings_archive.html.
One more thing. Gilgamesh was not Assyrian, but was the king of Uruk, not even close.

Posted by: Marduk at May 2, 2003 at 12:03 AM

Well, I did say "may have." I didn't take the article as holy writ any more than you did. I just threw up a quick link to something I thought was interesting. I went to your post on your site but you only say the same thing as you do here: that the photograph was wrongly identified. What are the other errors in the article? I'd like to know. We like to make fun of the BBC over here too.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at May 2, 2003 at 02:06 AM