The quest for eternal life

               As a whole humanity has always had fear of dying, not necessarily of the act of dying, but of the unknown, of what comes after and the fear of being forgotten. So we make up stories, religions and go on futile quests in search of holy, mysterious and magical objects and we create monuments to survive the ages, the stories themselves becoming a sort of testament to mankind.All in an effort to say "I was here..................".

         
                                                                                                                                                                               Stories, yes there's lots of stories about searching for immortality, or at least an extension on life. From the    text we have "epic" of Gilgamesh. He befriends a wildman Enkidu, battles Humbaba and a bull from heaven and visits an old sage seeking wisdom. From just a couple of the things he does in the story(let's not forget the writer that wrote this, whoever it was) he has left his own mark on the world. He befriends a wildman, the concept of befriending the crazy/savage/unknown/different person and becoming brothers after fighting them is extremely prevalent throughout literature and roleplaying videogames(which I consider literature) via the Defeat Means Friendship , Worthy opponent , Fire Forge Friendship as well as other related tropes including Heterosexual life partners. He battles Humbaba, some kind of fire breathing winged lion beast/monster. Humbaba exists in numerous video games and takes a variety of forms, a dragon, golems, manticores and giant winged bull creatures. It's important to note, that even if humbaba isn't an elite insanely powerful boss level monster existing in its own dungeon at the very least it is an elite difficult to defeat creature type that requires special care to avoid dying against. Just type "humbaba in video games" under Google images and you will see page after page of actual game screen shots or fan art. Wanting to bring his friend back to life, he goes on a quest to find the "Hermit Guru" known as Utnapishtim. I would argue that even though we don't know who wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh, that person has obtained a literal(related to literature) level immortality rivaling that of biblical figures.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu without Enkidu dying

A version of Humbaba

                 The search for eternal life or ability to bring back people from the dead gives us lots of ideas and objects to work with. You have movies and novels which involve a search for a fountain of youth, the latest involving Pirates of the Caribbean, earlier ones including Gulliver's travels where he trades the giant wasp sting to gain access to one. You have the philosophers stone, people have actually been trying to make this as crazy as it sounds or maybe I'm crazy for not believing. The first Harry Potter book was actually called the philosophers stone but changed to the sorcerers stone, either way the concept is the same. Among the deathly hallows was a stone that was believed to bring people back to life but in the end only allowed conversation with the dead, which drove the living mad. There is the anime Full Metal Alchemist in which 2 brothers become disfigured, one's soul actually having to be implanted into a suit of armor, after a failed attempt to resurrect their mother using alchemy. The story is their miscellaneous adventures on the search/quest for the philosophers stone.
              You have your Holy Grail cup believed to have been used by Christ in the last supper, somehow blessed with residual traces of his divinity. In Fiction such as in Indiana Jones, and perhaps to some people in real life, drinking water blessed by its touch is supposed to grant extended life or healing properties similar to that of the philosophers stone and increased physical ability.
              You also have blessed/magic locations including Shambala or Shangri-la, a special location where people are able to meditate and reach immortality via enlightenment or ascension type methods. A recent game I just completed Uncharted 2 started out as finding the lost fleet of Marco Polo and culminated in finding Shambala and stopping a military leader from creating an army of super soldiers via the healing/enhancing/maddening properties of the blue tree sap of the Tree of life which grows in the center of Shambala.

Shambala in Uncharted 2

             Sap which is, of course, tree blood, and blood of magical beings/people and those of the "pure" are supposed to confer protection, power or even immortality. In fiction becoming a vampire usually involves a blood exchange of some type or amount. Orcs in the Warcraft series were driven crazy, filled with battle lust and given additional strength via drinking from springs tainted with the blood of the Demon Mannoroth. Christians/Catholics believe that when they take sacrament the wine turns into Jesus' blood as you drink it which is required for entrance into heaven. You have the Hebrews painting blood of a pure unblemished lamb over their doors during the First Passover in the Bible so that way the Angel of Death would pass them over as he continued his task of killing everything first born in the Country.

Blood of Christ

Serious business

It's okay to laugh

           

                                                                                                                                                                                                 You also have your man made monuments such as pyramids and temples. Places like stone henge and the great wall of China. We preserve documents such as the Declaration of independence and the Bill of rights in an attempt to immortalize our origins. You even have phrases like "diamonds last forever", "take a picture it'll last longer" and even grocery stores selling "forever stamps". The list of immortality objects/concepts and locales both fiction and non fiction ironically do not end.       

How many licks does it take?

Just like diamonds? hmm....