Thousands of demonstrators march through downtown Birmingham, Ala., during the “No Kings” protest on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. The protests against the Trump administration drew thousands of people around Alabama. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)
A few weeks ago, I read “Gilgamesh” and “Beowulf.”
I hadn’t read either before. But I knew the broad strokes of the stories. Gilgamesh is the tale of a Mesopotamian king and demigod who befriends a wild man; sees and grieves the wild man’s death and begins a quest for immortality. The surprise for a modern reader (in Sophus Helle’s translation) is that Gilgamesh is clearly a tyrant and sexual abuser, even by the standards of the third millennium B.C…