Bricks And Mortar Essay Research Paper Bricks free essay sample

Bricks And Mortar Essay, Research Paper Bricks and Mortar And so they traveled until they reached Uruk. There Gilgamesh the male monarch said to the boater: # 8220 ; Study the brickwork, analyze the munition ; ascent the great ancient stairway to the patio ; analyze how it is made ; from the patio see the planted and fallow Fieldss, the pools and groves. One conference is the interior metropolis, another conference is groves ; still another the Fieldss beyond ; over there is the precinct of the temple. Three conferences and the temple precinct of Ishtar step Uruk, the metropolis of Gilgamesh. # 8211 ; Gilgamesh, Tablet XI, lines 366-376 Apollo # 8217 ; s temple was built of antediluvian stone, And there I prayed: # 8216 ; Grant us a place, Apollo, Give walls to weary work forces, a race, a metropolis That will stay ; continue Troy # 8217 ; s other fortress, The leftover left by the Greeks and difficult Achilles. Whom do we follow? where are we bidden to travel To happen our colony? An portent, male parent! # 8217 ; # 8211 ; The Aeneid, Book III, lines 83-89 They protect, shelter, defend, preserve, guard, house, and outlast us. To a rolling adult male without a place, hardy walls are a boom, able to further future coevalss of vanquishers. To a ungratified adult male seeking for immortality, walls may be the lone things that outlive him. Gilgamesh and Aeneas came from similar backgrounds, but lived really different lives. Both were portion adult male and portion God, and both were respected by their followings. However, Gilgamesh was the male monarch of a stable land ; drowsy with power, he searched for escapade and exhilaration to stave off the ennui of the Crown. Aeneas was driven from place, a leader of a set of expatriates who had escapade apparently drop into their laps. For both Gilgamesh and Aeneas walls had a really particular significance ; walls were stableness in an unstable universe and more # 8211 ; they were a connexion to the Gods. In some signifier or another, both work forces longed to hold their celebrity live on. Gilgamesh chose to seek the How-the-Old-Man-Once-Again-Becomes-a-Young-Man works, because it would allow him immortality. When he lost the works, he realized he was contending a losing conflict. He decided, alternatively, to take pride in the glorification of his metropolis, strong and sturdy: # 8220 ; # 8216 ; Study the brickwork, analyze the fortification. # 8221 ; He knew the quality of the brickwork and the munitions, that the walls of Uruk would stand for a long, long clip. After a life full of escapade and bad luck, and after holding lost a opportunity at immortality, the walls were one of the few things that could give him a sense of stableness, permanency. He invited the boater to see the admirations of his metropolis: # 8220 ; climb the great ancient stairway. . .. # 8221 ; The word # 8220 ; ancient # 8221 ; is besides soothing, because it implies the metropolis existed long earlier Gilgamesh, and would likely go on to be long after he was dead. Aeneas is besides looking for permanency: # 8220 ; Give walls to weary men.† The word â€Å"weary† suggests a changeless battle. After old ages of seeking for a place, the realisation of walls would be the material of dreams. He went on to state â€Å"a race, a metropolis that will abide.† He linked the endurance of his people, the â€Å"race, † with the length of service of the metropolis walls, so that the strength of the metropolis would reflect upon the strength of the people. When he said, â€Å"preserve Troy’s other fortress, the leftover left by the Greeks. . ..† He was mentioning to the Trojan refugees. But the word fortress evokes images of tall, strong walls, firm and able to defy any onslaught. By comparing his people to a fortress, Aeneas was reemphasizing the importance of endurance in the battle for endurance. Aeneas was spurned on by destiny, cognizing it was his responsibility to establish a line of work forces who would go the future vanquishers of the universe, constructing an imperium tha t would last for centuries. Gilgamesh and Aeneas relied upon the construction of walls for a sense of endurance and balance, but the metropolis walls besides provided a nexus to their Gods. Gilgamesh emphasized the importance of the temple in his description of Uruk: # 8220 ; Over there is the precinct of the temple. Three conferences and the temple precinct of Ishtar step Uruk, the metropolis of Gilgamesh. # 8221 ; The temple territory is associated and should be synonymous with the Gods. By singling out the temple territory, he created an country unique to all others in the metropolis, because it was the lone precinct worth adverting. The 2nd sentence made the temple precinct of Ishtar an built-in portion of the metropolis of Gilgamesh, as though it would non be Uruk without that peculiar precinct. It would hold sufficed to state, # 8220 ; Four conferences step Uruk. . . # 8221 ; , but calling the precinct brings the Gods into the metropolis, and doing the temple an indispensable portion of Uruk makes the Gods an indispensable portion of Uruk. The temple, as a bastioned brick construction, is an rock outcrop of the metropolis walls ; the stableness Gilgamesh feels from the metropolis walls is indistinguishable to the feeling from the temple, but more so because the temple houses the antediluvian, immortal ( and therefore unchanging ) Gods. For Aeneas, walls were a direct blessing from the Gods: # 8220 ; Apollo # 8217 ; s temple was built of antediluvian stone, and at that place I prayed: # 8216 ; Grant us a place, Apollo. . .. # 8221 ; It was of import to Aeneas that Apollo # 8217 ; s temple be built of antediluvian stone because # 8220 ; ancient # 8221 ; suggests immortality and # 8220 ; stone # 8221 ; is lasting, both of which can be features attributed to the Gods ; therefore it is suiting that Apollo # 8217 ; s temple be characteristic of Apollo himself. Aeneas so pleaded with Apollo to supply walls for the expatriates, and thereby carry through his fate. Therefore when Aeneas obtained his walls, they could be attributed to the good will of Apollo. The heroic poems of Gilgamesh and Aeneas are both about happening stableness in a rickety universe. The walls Gilgamesh and Aeneas built for themselves represent such stableness, and provided a agencies by which their celebrity could outlast them. But more than that, their walls provided stableness in their connexion to the Gods, the Gods being the prototype of permanency and immortality.