Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid
speaker
840 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 12 Jun
Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Like many of you, I bear witness daily to the destruction of a once thriving world, to line the pockets of a handful of people with already full pockets.
It has helped me understand the mythology of Khumbaba.
But the Gilgamesh who slayed Khumbaba and chopped down trees as tall as the sky was not the same broken man who clawed his way to Utanapishti, the oldest man in the world.
He was looking for the key to eternal life, but he found instead a lesson in how to live.
I think the crux of Utanapishti's message is this.
Instead of trying to live impossibly long lives, let us do more with the short time that we have.
For Gilgamesh, this means acting as a shepherd to the people in his care, and by extension, the places they rely on.
When he returns to Uruk and surveys the city, he sees people's homes, the date orchards, the clay pits, and the temple, which represent domestic life, agriculture, crafts, and religion.
This is worth fighting for, he realizes.
The survival of each successive generation confers immortality on the whole.
Our well-being is tied to the well-being of those around us, and to the places that sustain us, to the waters that give us life, to the trees that give us air, the land that Khumbaba gave his life to guard.
I think there is a timeless lesson in these 12 tablets and their unexpectedly flawed hero.
Selfish, cowardly, violent, vulnerable, relentless, and eventually enlightened.
What are the chances that this story has survived from its earliest oral tellings to a fragmentary translation over 4,000 years later?
And what are the chances that it might contain just the call to survival, community, and care that we need?
Thank you.
You're Dead to Me · Epic of Gilgamesh: myths and heroes in ancient Mesopotamia · 13 Mar 2026
podcast
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
It's awesome to be back.
So it's a long poem from ancient Mesopotamia that tells a transformative journey of a king called Gilgamesh who ruled the city of Uruk.
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