The Epic of Gilgamesh is an important Middle Eastern literary work, written in cuneiform on 12 clay tablets about 2000BC. This heroic poem is named for its hero, Gilgamesh, a tyrannical Babylonian king who ruled the city of Uruk. Achilles, in The Iliad, is the greatest of the Greek warriors in the Trojan War . Both of these great warriors have one sole purpose in life: to die heroically in battle. These people lived with the Heroic …showed first 75 words of 599 total…

…showed last 75 words of 599 total…a proper burial, and it is against the code of honor to perform acts of excessive cruelty. Achilles is so distraught by his friends' death that he contradicts both of these conditions. First, he refuses to return Hector's body to the Trojans, and then proceeds to drag it behind his carriage by the ankles. Achilles' deliberate mutilation of Hector's body shows the reader that he does not hold the code of honor in high regard.