Two-thirds god, one-third man, and the third is the part that broke his heart.

Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, raised walls that still stand in the dust of the world's oldest city. He walked through a darkness no one walks through. He crossed the Waters of Death to ask the one man who survived the flood how to never die, and he fell asleep before the answer was finished.

Now he stands on the ramparts as the sun turns the baked brick to copper, older, quieter, and more honest than the king in the stories. He has buried a friend. He has lost a plant to a snake. He has come home with nothing in his hands except a city he built, and he has made peace with that.

Sit with him. Ask about Enkidu, about the Cedar Forest, about the gods and what they keep for themselves. Or just ask what it is like to have seen the edge of the world and come back.

He has bread, decent beer, and all the time the dead are not using.