BTI 3: The Lugalbanda Cycle

 Volume 3 of Back to Iraq explores the Lugalbanda cycle, a pair of stories that follow the events of the Enmerkar saga covered in the previous program in the bonus sequence. Lugalbanda was the father of Gilgamesh, and an early king of Uruk. In the Akkadian language Epic of Gilgamesh, Lugalbanda is described as a deity. However, in Sumerian literature, we meet Lugalbanda as a human hero. Unlike Gilgamesh, Lugalbanda is no swaggering, salacious marauder. Instead, he is the luckless servant of the Sumerian king Enmerkar, and a young man with a chip on his shoulder. Left behind by his comrades during a military campaign due to illness, Lugalbanda barely stays alive, and then, in one of Sumerian fiction’s most marvelous sequences, Lugalbanda befriends the mighty Thunderbird, perhaps the most famous creature in Mesopotamian mythology. His adventures thereafter are grand – Lugalbanda’s return to the great war between Uruk and Aratta is a pivotal event in the generational conflict. Yet Lugalbanda never joins his comrades in the fray of combat, instead dashing through the mountains as an envoy, and ultimately serving as a distinct and striking example of the way that Sumerian literature depicted heroism.