The epic of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and the Iliad, with its focus on the menis of Achilles, provide a look at heroic life and its relationship with death and immortality. ... The stories concerning Gilgamesh in Sumerian are short and episodic and present no unifying theme, but in the Akkadian versions it appears that the poet has unified these traditional stories into one larger eleven or twelve tablet epic with more unified themes (West 65, Noegel 240). ... Enkidu does develop more than Patroclus, and this may mean that he is a more complex character, or it may mean that the background a...

• Word Count: 4256
• Approx Pages: 17
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate