The Epic of Gilgamesh · Siduri’s counsel

Siduri at the edge of the sea.

A king wanders beyond the human world in search of deathlessness. The woman at the shore answers him with the limits—and the fullness—of a mortal life.

Read the counsel

At the tavern by the cosmic sea

The counsel.

At the edge of the sea, the alewife answers the impossible life Gilgamesh seeks with the mortal life already within reach.

O Gilgamesh, where are you wandering?

The life that you seek you never will find:

when the gods created mankind,

death they dispensed to mankind,

life they kept for themselves.

But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,

enjoy yourself always by day and by night!

Make merry each day,

dance and play day and night!

Let your clothes be clean,

let your head be washed, may you bathe in water!

Gaze on the child who holds your hand,

let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace!

For such is the destiny of mortal men.

After the passage

The mortal measure.

The message of the Gilgamesh epic is the vanity of the hero's quest. Pursuit of immortality is folly. The proper duty of men is to accept the mortal life that is his lot and enjoy it to the full.

— Grant L. Voth, “The Epic of Gilgamesh”

Textual note

A parallel beside Tablet X.

This counsel survives on an Old Babylonian tablet assembled from fragments associated with Sippar. It parallels Siduri’s encounter with Gilgamesh in the Standard Babylonian Tablet X, but the familiar “make merry” speech is not preserved there in this form.

The distinction matters: the scene belongs to the epic’s long textual history, while this particular counsel reaches us through an older witness.

Speaker: The alewife; named Siduri in the later Tablet X recension
Witness: Old Babylonian Sippar tablet
Parallel: Standard Babylonian Tablet X
Theme: Mortality, joy, and human measure

Primary record and reading trail

Follow the tablet upstream.

The passage follows Andrew George’s translation as heard in Grant L. Voth’s Great Courses lecture. The linked records document the edition, lecture context, cuneiform witness, museum object, and underlying Akkadian text.