http://warlockasylum.wordpress.com/inner-meanings-of-the-simon-necronomicon-part-mountains-of-masshu/

I have read quite a lot about Gilgamesh, yet I am not certain as to why some consider him a hero. Thanks for posting this though

Blessed Be!

I suppose I became mired in the language and romanticized the grandeur of Gilgamesh as a character and failed to even mention that possibility. I find it so easy to get caught up in these old stories, letters and texts, especially when you consider the underlying meanings.

Thanks for adding the comment above since it grounds the letter in a bit of necessary reality. In fact, it’s equally fascinating that this letter was used in a scribal school.

Thanks for the very kind comments and the link. At one level, I think your interpretation is dead on. But, I’m 99.9% certain that this letter is a wonderful work of fiction. All examples of the text, three badly broken tablets, are from Sultantepein Turkey. There are no examples from anywhere else. That does not mean that it wasn’t copied elsewhere but it at least contains a suggestion of local origin. The language is neo-Babylonian with neo-Assyrian intrusions or the other way around. It is more or less the same dialect found in other locally produced tablets from Sultantepe. And then there are the unbelievable numbers and the weird requirements (“100 thousand mares whose bodies are marked with the face of the mountain kanaktu, 40 thousand young calves which never stop frolicking, 50 thousand teams of piebald mules, 50 thousands [???] calves with sound hooves and intact horns . .” ). There is also quite strong evidence that a scribal school at Sultantepe used this text as a training exercise for novice scribes. Among other things, on the only tablet where we learn anything about the scribe, the colophon tells us that he or she is an apprentice. Unfortunately, we don’t know the first part of the scribe’s name nor can we read the determinative. If we could read either, we would know the gender of the scribe. Female scribes were uncommon but not unknown in antiquity. What better way to learn to write a letter for a king than to practice with a letter from the KING, Gilgamesh.