Lugalbanda
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According to the Sumerian king list, Lugalbanda was the third king of Uruk, father of Gilgamesh, the most famous king of that ancient City. Legend has it that his wife was Ninsun, a goddess.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, not only did Lugalbanda procreate with the goddess Ninsun to give birth to Gilgamesh, but in the sixth tablet, it states that "he (Gilgamesh) gave as ointment to his god Lugalbanda", deifying him.
Thanks to Archaeology, we have two epic texts that have Lugalbanda as the main character, called by scholars Lugalbanda I (or Lugalbanda in Mountain Cave) and Lugalbanda II.
Both the epic texts do not talk about Lugalbanda as a king, but we can read about him in the middle of his military and politic career that, as we can understand from the other texts we have, brought him, several years later, to be chosen as Enmerkar's successors on Uruk's throne.
It is very interesting to notice that, in both poems, we never read about any military fight in which Lugalbanda is directly involved, although our hero is one of the generals of Enmerkar's army. Thus, we can consider Lugalbanda's epic, which is one of the very first epic tales of humanity, as an epic of peace.
See also
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