Gilgamesh Tablets X, XI

On tablet X, Gilgamesh starts various journeys. He first gets to the sea where he is todl that if he seeked Urshanabi, He must sail to a distant island. After he gets ther and destroys the Stone Things which makes everything harder. He has to cut down 120 trees to use in the deadly waters. After he gets these, he and Urshanabi sailed to the shore where the old man was waiting. This old man was astonished that someone had made it that far besides Urshanabi.

On the next tablet, which is the longest so far, Gilgamesh finally gets to what he is looking for, Utnepishitim. The old man in the shore was him who knew hoy to avoid the death. He tells Gilgamesh a story. This story I thought I had already heardd, and it is the same as the story in the Bible about Noah and his boat. In both cases, Utnepishitim and Noah were told by a God to build a boat and to put in it every living species for there wold be a flood. In both stories after the flood, they let free the birds. The the story of Utnepishitim change, the gods find out ther are humans who escaped the flood and get mad. This is how he avoided death. Gilgamesh says he wants to avoid death by puting himself th test of not sleeping for a week, which he does not accomplish. At the end they tell Gilgamesh there is a plant that grows at the bottom of the sea that makes you younger. Gilgamesh gets this plant but looses it to a serpent. Gilgamesh after this returns to Uruk empty handed.

Of course I was impactd with the similarities of this story and the story in the Bible. If thee are two different persons that say the exact same story, it means it might be true. This I think is very curious and i want to compare the two stories more closely. In these tablets we see that Gilgamesh has become less Enkidu-dependant, he doesn't mention him so much even though he still mourns for him.