Uruk

Uruk is an ancient Sumerian city in southern Iraq. In Sapiens it supplies one of the earliest written tablets and the Gilgamesh story about accepting death.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind	Yuval Noah Harari	subject	City of the earliest written records and of Gilgamesh, the king who failed to defeat death.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari (2014)

Source: Original · Readwise highlight

Its hero is the strongest and most capable man in the world, King Gilgamesh of Uruk, who could defeat anyone in battle.

• Role: subject
• In the book: A clay tablet from Uruk, c.3400–3000 BC, records barley accounts signed by Kushim, perhaps the first named person in history. Near the end of the book Uruk returns as the city of King Gilgamesh, who sits by his dead friend Enkidu until a worm falls from the body, searches the ends of the world for immortality, fails and comes home.
• Why it matters: It frames two arguments: that writing began as bookkeeping, and that the modern project to defeat death breaks with the Gilgamesh myth’s acceptance of it. The city itself is barely described.