🎧 Emma's Library Audiobook cover: Gilgamesh and Enkidu

Gilgamesh and Enkidu

Classical Stories · No. 16 — The oldest story ever written down.

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About this audiobook

Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is two-thirds god and entirely exhausting: strongest of men, builder of walls, and so restless that his own city prays for relief. The gods' answer is not a punishment but a mirror — Enkidu, a wild man shaped from clay, who runs with gazelles and frees animals from hunters' traps. When the wild man finally strides into Uruk and blocks the king's way, the wrestling match shakes the doorposts; and when neither can throw the other, something happens that neither expected. The two become inseparable — and together they go looking for adventures big enough for the both of them.

Why it's worth a listen

Before Greece, before Rome, before nearly everything: a story pressed into clay four thousand years ago — and it turns out to be about friendship. The gods build a wild man to humble a king who is too strong, and instead of enemies the two become brothers. Listen to the oldest story humans thought worth keeping, and hear how little we have changed.

A question to keep

Can one true friend change what kind of person you are?

Based on the book by A tale from Mesopotamia, published by Emma's Library original retelling

Chapters

  1. The King Who Was Too Loud
  2. The Wild Man of the Grasslands
  3. When Two Mountains Collide
  4. Into the Whispering Cedars
  5. The Bull and the Sentence
  6. The Long Grief of the King
  7. A Question to Keep