User:Faeha/sandbox

Gilgamesh was a man, king, god and hero, a man who had an internal battle; a battle with death. Despite being ever so powerful and god-like Gilgamesh realised that he has no power over death, death is inevitable despite how accomplished and powerful you are. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a story about the value of friendship, the greed for power, a sense of accomplishment and achievement, the emotional price of loss and the reality of death (Abusch, 2001). Gilgamesh thought himself to be god, a proud and arrogant being who believed he was a powerful, assertively dominate man. Due to his dominant nature Gilgamesh was punished by the gods for thinking he was equal to them and so the gods sent him Enkidu in an attempt to make him humble. Following a battle Enkidu and Gilgamesh become friends and embarked on journeys together, one day Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh is emotionally affected by his sudden passing. His friend’s death makes Gilgamesh realise that he is just as vulnerable to death as any other person and he starts to doubt his views on life. With this, Gilgamesh decides to go on a journey to discover the meaning of life and how to be immortal. On this journey he realises the importance of being compassionate, caring and courageous and that no matter how much power you have immorality is impossible to achieve. The story concludes with Gilgamesh’s realisation of the fact that it is not immorality that keeps you alive but in fact it is your deeds that leave a mark and live on even after you pass away (Mark, 2010).

The text I analysed was a copper statue of Gilgamesh that is located in The University of Sydney, 2006, NSW behind the Old Teachers College building near the sports complex building, it is accessible to the general public and they can view it at any time they desire. The context of the structure is the depiction of an Assyrian king in the third millennium BC. The rhetorical situation in this text is The Epic of Gilgamesh. The purpose of this alphabetical and visual text is to educate and inform the audience about the epic of Gilgamesh, his reign and power, his search for immorality and in turn a change in his perspective on life. The author of this visual text is unknown by me, but the text is able to portray how powerful Gilgamesh was. This is done through the depiction of enlarged hands, the way he is ‘refraining’ the lion in his arms and by the way the hair on his beard was braided. All these little details in the statue emphasise Gilgamesh’s powerful and ruling nature. I also detected fiction in this text; this is through the portrayal of Gilgamesh as a ‘god’, how can a god face death, isn’t god immortal? This god claim makes me believe that this epic of Gilgamesh was more a myth than reality. The author’s use of detail, words and the formality and tone of the text adds to the author’s ethos as it shows how knowledgeable and well educated the author is about the topic and increases their creditability. The use of text also allows the author to speak to the auxiliary and unintended audience in an effective manner and at the same time educates the audience about the topic by offering them information that might or might not already be known by them. The audience of both the texts and the visual structure would be people like me, university students, historians and ‏those wanting to delve deeper into the world of Gilgamesh, his powerful reign and how he managed to overcome the selfishness in his character and accept that immorality is not achievable.

Furthermore, the text added to the bottom of the statue is impersonal and shows that the author does not assume the audience knows things about Gilgamesh. The text lets the audience better understand the meaning of the structure and puts the various ‘power alluding’ aspects of the statue into perspective especially for those who have no historical background about the epic of Gilgamesh, such as myself. This shows that the author had knowledge that the text may have some additional audiences. The ideology that the author is appealing to is the ideology of death, and how death is inevitable, but through “compassion, friendship, courage, love and peace” we are able to leave a stronger more memorable mark on the world than if we were to be immortal. The text also includes supporting evidence to add to the credibility of the author by referring to the discovery of clay tablets that recount “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and how this story is used as a basis for many ancient and modern myths, legends and stories. Overall I believe this alphabetical and visual text is very educational, even with my limited knowledge on The Epic of Gilgamesh I was able to figure out the basis of the story and myth surrounding Gilgamesh by merely reading the text and focusing on the detail the text provided. I also felt that I could relate to Gilgamesh’s want for power and immortality. I often find myself pondering about the meaning of life and how life would be if I were immortal, and although power is enticing I find that courage, compassion and emotions often seem to leave a greater mark on the people I meet than my excretion of power ever will. It is better to be remembered for good things rather than bad things.

References:

Mark, J. J. (2010, October 13). Gilgamesh. Retrieved April 3, 2015, from http://www.ancient.eu/gilgamesh/

Abusch, T. (2001). The development and meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh: an interpretive essay. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 614-622.