Two heroes, the gods who watch them, and the immortal at the end of the world.
The Epic of Gilgamesh has a smaller named cast than later epics. Two human protagonists carry the poem: Gilgamesh the king and Enkidu the wild man. Around them sits a Mesopotamian pantheon — the sky god Anu, the storm god Enlil, the wisdom god Ea, the sun god Shamash, the mother goddess Aruru, the love-and-war goddess Ishtar — and a small set of human figures encountered on the journey.
The cards below cover the figures the reader needs. Many minor characters appear once and vanish — a young man at a feast, a scorpion-man at the gate of the mountains, an old ferryman — and are noted in the chapter pages where they belong.
The two heroes and the people they meet.
The protagonist. Historical king of the Sumerian city of Uruk, possibly around 2700 BCE, mythologized into the figure the poem follows. Two-thirds divine through his mother Ninsun; one-third mortal through his father, the priest-king Lugalbanda. Begins as a tyrant the gods cannot tolerate; ends as a king who has seen everything and brought back nothing but his city.
Created by the goddess Aruru from clay, set down on the steppe to grow up among wild herds. Civilized by the temple woman Shamhat over seven days and seven nights. Brought to Uruk; fights Gilgamesh to a draw; becomes his inseparable companion. Dies on the seventh tablet of a wasting illness sent by the gods as punishment for the Bull of Heaven.
A priestess or temple woman from Uruk, sent to the steppe to bring Enkidu into civilization. She uses her body for it; the poem is matter-of-fact about this. Afterward she leads him to the city, teaches him to eat bread and drink beer, and brings him to Gilgamesh. Enkidu's deathbed responses to her — first a curse, then a blessing — are one of the poem's most carefully balanced passages.
The Mesopotamian Noah. Warned of the flood by the wisdom god Ea, he built a ship, brought aboard the seed of every living thing, and survived. The gods, after the flood, granted him and his wife immortality — once, as a single dispensation — and placed them beyond the waters of death. Gilgamesh crosses those waters to find him.
Granted immortality alongside her husband, she alone shows Gilgamesh kindness at the end of his journey. When her husband refuses to give the king any consolation, she persuades him to tell Gilgamesh about the plant of youth on the sea floor. The poem does not name her; the kindness is her name.
A divine barmaid in a vineyard at the rim of the known world. Gilgamesh meets her on his way to Utnapishtim. She tries to turn him back. Her speech to him — eat, drink, hold your wife, watch your children — is one of the poem's most-quoted passages and the alternative to the quest. The hero, at this point in the journey, refuses it.
Utnapishtim's boatman, the only one who can carry a passenger across the waters that separate the world of the living from the immortal. Gilgamesh, in his initial fury at the sight of him, smashes the magical stones that allow the crossing; Urshanabi, patiently, finds another way. He is the man Gilgamesh shows the walls of Uruk to at the end.
A demon appointed by the god Enlil to guard the sacred cedars in the mountains. The poem describes his face as a coil of intestines, his roar as a flood, his breath as fire. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, with the help of winds sent by Shamash, corner him. He pleads for his life. Enkidu argues against mercy. Gilgamesh strikes the killing blow. The gods do not forgive it.
A divine bull, kept by Ishtar's father Anu, released against Uruk after Gilgamesh refuses Ishtar's marriage proposal. With the bull's first snort the ground opens and a hundred men fall in; with the second, two hundred; with the third, three hundred. Enkidu seizes its tail. Gilgamesh stabs it between horns and shoulder. They tear out the heart and offer it to Shamash. The killing of the bull is what the gods sentence Enkidu to die for.
The Mesopotamian pantheon as it appears in the poem.
The sky god, head of the Mesopotamian pantheon. Father of Ishtar. Reluctantly hands over the Bull of Heaven when his daughter threatens to break the gates of the underworld unless he does. Distant, formal, only intervenes when summoned.
The Mesopotamian craftsman-god, sometimes called Enki. The cleverest of the pantheon. He warns Utnapishtim of the flood by whispering through the wall of his reed hut — technically not breaking his oath of secrecy. Defends Utnapishtim afterward when Enlil rages. The poem treats him with affection.
The sun god, who travels across the sky each day and through the underworld each night. Patron of Gilgamesh and his protector through the Cedar Forest expedition; he provides the thirteen winds that pin Humbaba. Intercedes with the gods on Enkidu's behalf — and is overruled. Honest about what he can and cannot do.
The most volatile god in the poem. Patron deity of Uruk. Proposes marriage to Gilgamesh after the Cedar Forest; is refused with a long catalogue of her previous lovers and what became of them; demands the Bull of Heaven from her father in revenge. After the bull is killed she leads the city's wailing women in a public lament. The poem treats her with both fear and contempt.
The mother goddess, who pinches off a piece of clay and throws it into the wilderness to create Enkidu — explicitly, on the gods' instructions, as a counterweight to Gilgamesh. Does not appear after the first tablet. Her single act sets the whole poem in motion.
The minor goddess Ninsun, "the Wild Cow," is Gilgamesh's mother. She interprets his early dreams of Enkidu, prays to Shamash for protection of the Cedar Forest expedition, and formally adopts Enkidu as a second son. The poem's most fully drawn divine mother before Thetis in the Iliad.