Footnote 2 – Gilgamesh—Like You’ve Never Seen Him Before

Mitchell chooses to omit Tablet 12, in which Gilgamesh is deified as a god of the underworld, and end the tale with Tablet 11, in which Gilgamesh returns to Uruk. Although this is a somewhat arbitrary decision, it does leave the question of mortality ambiguous—making Mitchell’s version of Gilgamesh a “this worldly” rather than an “other-worldly” quest narrative.