One Big Happy Near Eastern Family

Reading these three poems reminded me a great deal of other stories I have read before from proximal regions. Not just in the plots stories themselves, but also in the imagery and the way the gods behave both towards each other and towards us lowly humans. Practically all of the major stories we have read have ties with neighboring mythology.
The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer has many parallels to the biblical parable of Job, both being stories of a man with nice things and enjoyable life being put through awful trials and having everything taken away from him. While the stories have different lessons and take-aways, both in a way show how unpredictable and incomprehensible the will of the gods can be, and also extol the virtues of maintaining faith despite seemingly being forsaken.
The imagery of the Elegy for a Woman Dead in Childbirth reminds me a great deal of Greek mythology. Talk of boats, crossing the river, and having moorings cut, etc. remind me of crossing the river Styx, where the boatman Charon would take the dead to the gates of the underworld. This woman speaks of being taken to a land from which she cannot return, just how the Greeks saw the underworld to be as well. Continuing with the common underworld theme, the story of Innana’s Descent explaining the seasons has many similarities to the story of Persephone, who needs to stay in the underworld for half the year and as a result we have the colder seasons.
It seems stories, most likely originally told by word of mouth, had found their way all over the region we now refer to as the Near East. It will be no surprise if stories we continue reading have similarities to ones I have come across before.