Eat, drink and rejoice, for death is certain

Did other ancient peoples answer mortality with advice to enjoy food, clean clothes and family?

What the relationship labels mean

Possible historical contact: The cultures were in contact, so one tradition could have known the other.
Shared literary world: The stories appear to share older roots or a common cultural setting.
Similar human experience: Different peoples responding to similar realities, such as river floods.
Resemblance only: A real similarity worth noticing; no historical connection has been established.
Modern speculative theory: A modern interpretation, not an ancient source. Not supported by authenticated evidence.

Babylonian · Mesopotamia

Gilgamesh, Old Babylonian version: Siduri's advice

Shared literary world

Composed: Early 2nd millennium BC
Earliest surviving copy: The Old Babylonian "Sippar tablet" (Meissner fragment), now divided between Berlin and London

Siduri tells Gilgamesh that the gods kept life for themselves and allotted death to humankind; so let him fill his belly, make merry day and night, wear clean garments, wash and bathe, cherish the child at his hand and the wife in his embrace (paraphrased). The later Standard Babylonian version does not contain this advice.

Similar

Food and festivity, clean clothes, washing, a wife
Given in view of death's certainty

Different

Spoken by a tavern-keeper to a hero seeking immortality
No reference to a god who gives the enjoyment or judges it

Read it: A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (2003); exact lines a C check (EC-C08)

Egyptian · Egypt

The Harper's Songs ("Song from the tomb of King Intef")

Resemblance only

Composed: Middle Kingdom (attributed); New Kingdom copies
Earliest surviving copy: Papyrus Harris 500 (New Kingdom) and tomb inscriptions

Banquet songs urge the hearer to follow the heart while living: myrrh on the head, fine linen, make holiday, for no one takes goods along and no one returns (paraphrased).

Similar

Perfume and fine clothes
Death as the reason to enjoy

Different

Doubt about the value of tombs and funerary provision
No divine gift or judgment

Greek · Aegean

Drinking songs and Epicurean maxims

Resemblance only

Composed: 6th–3rd century BC
Earliest surviving copy: Medieval manuscripts of Greek lyric and of Diogenes Laertius

Greek lyric poets and later Epicureans commend present pleasure because life is short and death is nothing to us.

Similar

Pleasure in view of brevity

Different

Epicurean physics and the denial of divine involvement

Full investigations

Did Qoheleth Know Gilgamesh? →Ecclesiastes 9:7–9 reads like an echo of Siduri's advice in the Old Babylonian Gilgamesh. Could a Judean sage of the Persian or Hellenistic period have known a passage that the later standard version of the epic leaves out?

Back to the story

Ecclesiastes 9: Eat Your Bread with Joy →The righteous and the wise are in God's hand, but no one knows from events whether love or hatred awaits (9:1). One fate comes to all, righteous and wicked, clean and unclean (vv. 2–3). Yet "a living dog is better than a dead lion": the living know they will die, the dead know nothing and their memory is forgotten (vv. 4–6). So: eat your bread with joy, drink your wine with a merry heart, wear white, anoint your head, enjoy life with the wife you love, and work with all your might, for there is no work in Sheol (vv. 7–10). The race is not to the swift: "time and chance happeneth to them all" (vv. 11–12). A poor wise man saved a little city from a great king, and no one remembered him; still, wisdom is better than strength and weapons, though one sinner destroys much good (vv. 13–18).
Investigation: The Gilgamesh Connection →Two passages of Ecclesiastes have strikingly close parallels in the Gilgamesh tradition: Siduri's advice to enjoy food, festivity, clean clothes and family in the face of death (Old Babylonian version) beside Ecclesiastes 9:7–9, and the saying about a three-ply rope (Sumerian Bilgamesh and Huwawa) beside 4:12. This investigation identifies which versions contain them, how old they are, and what can and cannot be concluded.
Investigation: The Gift of Enjoyment →Seven times Ecclesiastes says there is nothing better than to eat, drink and find joy in one's work, and it calls this "the gift of God" and a person's "portion" (heleq). Some have read these passages as resignation ("since nothing lasts, grab what you can"), others as editorial patches, others as the book's positive message. This investigation reads all seven together.
Investigation: Egypt, Greece and Qoheleth →Scholars have compared Ecclesiastes with Egyptian harpers' songs and instructions, with Babylonian dialogues, and with Greek thinkers (Theognis, Epicurus, the Stoics, the Cynics). Some argued for direct Greek influence; others see a thoroughly Hebrew book using international wisdom themes. This investigation sets out the main comparisons and why caution is needed.