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Gilgamesh Is A Hero

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What is a hero to you? Is it just someone you admire and look up to or does it have to be someone who has made a difference in the world. According to Merriam Webster, a hero is “a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability”. While this is true in some cases the idea of what a hero can differ from person to person. A hero doesn’t always have some magical power that helps them in a quest. Sometimes a hero comes in a less obvious package and have been alive in the past 100 years or so. So what makes a hero? Not all heroes are from a mythical story or legend. Some heroes are real people who have greatly impacted the world. Therefore, slaying a beast is a way to be a hero, but making a difference and/or inspiring someone can make you a hero too. When most people think of a hero think instinctively think of your typical warrior or knight in shining armor. One example of this idyllic hero is Gilgamesh from the Epic of Gilgamesh. To illustrate, Gilgamesh is the perfect hero “Two-thirds of him were god, and only one-third was human. He was the mightiest warrior in the whole East..”(Gilgamesh, 21). He was the warrior-king of Erech and no man was more powerful than him. When following the Merriam Webster definition Gilgamesh checks all the boxes. He is a legendary character who was given great strength and god-like abilities. Gilgamesh possessed such strength that he was able to defeat the great monster, Humbaba. While he
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