Hello and welcome to Queer's Fiction where we talk about queer historical media.

My name is Eli.

I'm Jason.

And today we're talking about the ancient Mesopotamian poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Before we get started, we have some content warnings for this episode. There is going to be

a whole lot of sexual content, including brief mentions of sex work and sexual abuse, but not

too explicit or in depth with those. There will also be some violence, but it's sort of like

storybook or fairy tale violence, and I expect most people

will be fine. So we're going to start off by recounting the story of the Epic of Gilgamesh

in brief. I am pleased with that, because it is quite a confusing read. Yeah, it's interesting.

We'll talk about why it's a bit of a confusing read later on just in terms of like what we actually

have of it. It's interesting. I'd be interested to hear like what you knew of this beforehand,

if anything, and what the general public knew of this story beforehand because it's not one

that's really entered public consciousness the same way that say like a lot of Greek myths have.

I'd heard the name Gilgamesh,

and that is basically the extent to which I knew what this was. I could not have told you

where this myth came from. I could not have told you what it was about. So I think that probably

sums up the, I mean, I guess maybe I am the lay person in this situation,

but like, maybe, maybe not, maybe we'll find out that all of Alison's have heard of this.

Oh yeah, obviously, you know, when they fight him Baba, obviously.

But yeah, I assume that'll be generally people's exposure to Gilgamesh's, which is why I'm going to tell the story in a bit

more depth than we would normally go. So without further ado, the story begins in the city-state

...