Gilgamesh

The slaying of the monster Humbaba and the killing of the Bull of Heaven by Gilgamesh and Enkidu are the two identified visual representations corresponding to the narrative of the Gilgamesh Epic, first written in the Ur III period as parts of five separate Sumerian stories. These two scenes convey a similar compositional arrangement consisting of a symmetrical display of two heroes subduing a central victim. It seems that this specific rendering of a combat scene was especially common in displaying mythological and epic contests as exemplified on Akkadian cylinder seals representing the killing of the Anzu bird or a multi-headed monster. This visual formula of two heroes slaying one enemy continued into first-millennium monumental art, as demonstrated in Carchemish and Tell Halaf. Depictions of similar scenes on Akkadian cylinder seals, in which the central victim is a bull, although not a human-headed one, raises the possibility that both episodes of the Gilgamesh cycle were visually known in the Akkadian period, even before they were articulated in writing. The modification apparent in some of the representations of the two episodes may echo written sources that have not reached us; alternatively, they may suggest an independent visual tradition of the tale(s) that was not restricted by the written one. The two episodes of the killing of Humbaba and the slaying of the Bull of Heaven have a different status and play different roles within the first part of the complete Standard Babylonian Version (tablets I-VI), compiled and rewritten by Sin-leqi-unninni