All writers draw from their own experience and from the social milieu in which they live. Much literature addresses the role of the hero, and what is a hero is subject to different definitions by different writers and at different times in history. An examination of several works shows how the idea of the hero and his or her role changed through time.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a cycle of poems preserved on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets found at Nineveh in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, with the tablets being found in the nineteenth century. The tablets date from the seventh century B.C. The time of the tale is one in which human beings felt close to the gods and believed that the gods intervened in their lives. Gilgamesh is a ruler who is seen as too devoted to war, and the gods hear the lament of the people and send their own created hero, Enkidu, to do battle with Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh defeats Enkidu, after which they are friends. They set out together against Humbaba to do battle. When Gilgamesh refuses the marriage proposal of the goddess of love, Ishtar, she sends a divine bull against him, and he and Enkidu kill it. Enkidu dreams that he must die for his role in killing the bull, and he does die. Gilgamesh seeks a way to see that his friend is granted eternal life and sets out on a journey to meet the one man who survived the Great Flood.
Many of the elements in this epic can be found in other heroic epics, from the journey as a quest for some advantage to the slaying of a creature sent to do destruction. The epic also echoes certain social values in its celebration of the hero, its reverence for the gods, and its belief in the ruler-hero as a god himself. The people of this time also believe in fate and place their fate in the hands of the gods. Gilgamesh lives in a way that is ordained by the gods: "The destiny was fulfilled which the father of the gods, Enlil of the mountain, had d...