Anonymous · 2100 BCE · global
The oldest surviving journey story, written on clay in Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and his wild companion Enkidu march to the Cedar Forest to kill its guardian and make their names. When Enkidu dies for it, the king walks into the wilderness terrified of his own death, across the Waters of Death, to ask the one man who survived the flood how to live forever.
- 1Uruk
Gilgamesh rules Uruk of the great walls, two parts god and one part man, and rules it badly - until the gods raise Enkidu out of the wilderness to match him, and the two fight to a standstill and become inseparable.
- 2The Cedar Forest
Wanting a name that will outlast him, Gilgamesh leads Enkidu on the long march to the Cedar Forest to kill its guardian Humbaba - and they fell the great trees and raft them home, having offended the gods past forgiving.
- 3Mount Mashu
Enkidu dies as the price, and Gilgamesh, undone by grief and by the fact of his own death, goes into the wilderness in skins - through the tunnel beneath the twin-peaked mountain in darkness, running ahead of the sun.
- 4Dilmun
Beyond the tavern at the shore, the ferryman Urshanabi punts him across the Waters of Death to Dilmun, where Utnapishtim tells how the flood came - and shows that immortality cannot be given, or stayed awake to earn.
- 5Uruk
He loses even the rejuvenating plant to a snake on the road home, and comes back to Uruk with nothing - and stands at the foot of the walls he built, and understands that the walls are the answer he went looking for.