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    Gilgamesh: A New English Version
    Gilgamesh: A New English Version
    Gilgamesh: A New English Version
    Ebook223 pages3 hours

    Gilgamesh: A New English Version

    By Stephen Mitchell

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, and although previously there have been competent scholarly translations of it, until now there has not been a version that is a superlative literary text in its own right. Acclaimed translator Stephen Mitchell's lithe, muscular rendering allows us to enter an ancient masterpiece as if for the first time, to see how startlingly beautiful, intelligent, and alive it is. His insightful introduction provides a historical, spiritual, and cultural context for this ancient epic, showing that Gilgamesh is more potent and fascinating than ever.

    Gilgamesh dates from as early as 1700 BCE -- a thousand years before the Iliad. Lost for almost two millennia, the eleven clay tablets on which the epic was inscribed were discovered in 1853 in the ruins of Nineveh, and the text was not deciphered and fully translated until the end of the century. When the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke first read Gilgamesh in 1916, he was awestruck. "Gilgamesh is stupendous," he wrote. "I consider it to be among the greatest things that can happen to a person."

    The epic is the story of literature's first hero -- the king of Uruk in what is present-day Iraq -- and his journey of self-discovery. Along the way, Gilgamesh discovers that friendship can bring peace to a whole city, that a preemptive attack on a monster can have dire consequences, and that wisdom can be found only when the quest for it is abandoned. In giving voice to grief and the fear of death -- perhaps more powerfully than any book written after it -- in portraying love and vulnerability and the ego's hopeless striving for immortality, the epic has become a personal testimony for millions of readers in dozens of languages.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtria Books
    Release dateMay 11, 2010
    ISBN9781439104743
    Author

    Stephen Mitchell

    Stephen Mitchell's many books include the bestselling Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, and The Second Book of the Tao, as well as The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, The Gospel According to Jesus, Bhagavad Gita, The Book of Job, and Meetings with the Archangel.

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    Reviews for Gilgamesh

    4/5

    1,536 ratings72 reviews

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    • 4/5
      It was ok. good for an essay.
    • 5/5
      As a history buff, I proudly rated the Epic of Gilgamesh a 5/5. Since the author(s) is long dead and unknown, I don’t expect much blowback. This story is really timeless and while it has a niche audience, I do recommend everyone reads at least part. It is, after all, the first poem in recorded history. It provided great insight into the human mind and society as it has been for thousands of years.
    • 3/5
      It is rather confusing that this page displays reviews of multiple renderings and translations of the eipic. This review is of the version by David Ferry. It is hard to judge when I have not read any actual translations that do not attempt to reahape the text, only another interpretation by Stephen Mitchell.
    • 5/5
      I was intrigued to read a "closer to the source" edition of Gilgamesh after my recent discovery of Stephen Mitchell's "Gilgamesh: A New English Version" which is considered controversial as Mitchell was not translating it but simply adapting it based on the translations of others and fills in any missing sections with his own poetic extrapolations on the text. Mitchell does use this present 1999/2003 edition by A.R. George as his primary source.Andrew George has done a spectacular job assembling here as complete an edition with all variant sources as existed 20 years ago. It is evident from the missing sections and the continued discoveries that even further reconstruction is possible in the future. The notes and the pictures (some photos, some drawings) are a bonus enhancement of the experience.It is fascinating to know how this has all been assembled from thousands of clay tablet fragments found throughout mostly present-day Iraq. The work and its variants was so popular that it was a standard text used in scribe schools for reproduction, thus increasing the likelihood of 4,000+ year old fragments being discovered in recent centuries.
    • 3/5
      Zeer interessante inleiding. Prozavertaling, bewerkt, van het gedicht, zowat het oudste fictiegeschrift dat bewaard is gebleven.
    • 4/5
      This is the grandmama of all written epic stories. Its influence can be read in Judeo-Christian and Roman stories. The Flood story is of particular interest to many since the bible story very nearly mirrors every detail as found in Gilgamesh.Gilgamesh goes on a quest to find eternal life and commits heroic deeds, only to discover there is no such thing as eternal life to those not fully gods.Worth reading if you really like epic stories. Also worth reading for the historical influence on literature through the ages.
    • 5/5
      I am taking on the subject of Babylonian Civilization this summer. To get started, I'm rereading the oldest story ever written by humans. How old? Try 4000 years old. Not only is it the oldest, but it is written in a dead language and it was buried for a couple thousand years before some British archaeologists dug it up in the Iraqi desert in the mid 1800's. It took another 50 years before it was translated into English. I've read an adaptation of Gilgamesh before but never a scholarly translation that was directly translated from the cuneiform tablets. Andrew George's translation is considered one of the standards and I found it very readable even though there are gaps here and there to represent where the tablets are broken. In a sense, this made the work of translation more apparent and interesting. In fact, there is a whole system in place that emphasizes when and where certainty and speculation are used in the story. Italics and brackets are all over the place, but once you figure out the code, it adds a lot to the reading experience. In addition to the standard Gilgamesh tablets, there are older Sumerian tablets that are translated and included in this Penguin edition. The Sumerian tablets are older but translated from Sumerian and not Akkadian. They tend to be less standardized, with characters switching names or roles here and there. The notes help sort all this out. The introduction is also very interesting and helps lay some crucial groundwork for placing this story in context to the history of the Babylonian Empire. If you are like me and love Homer and all the other early epics you will want to familiarize yourself with this most excellent story. Just as interesting is the story of its discovery. Check out The Buried Book by David Damrosch to learn more about that. If you want to learn more about the ancient history of the area in audio format, check out Dan Carlin's podcast "Hardcore History -King of Kings" series.
    • 3/5
      Zeer interessante inleiding. Prozavertaling, bewerkt, van het gedicht, zowat het oudste fictiegeschrift dat bewaard is gebleven.
    • 5/5
      This was my first experience of Gilgamesh, the ancient Sumerian epic that predates Homer's Odyssey by about 1500 years. What a brilliant, simple story; no wonder it has survived. I found Herbert Mason's verse narrative brief and easy to read, but deeply impactful. Gilgamesh is a king of Uruk (historically, fifth in line after the Great Flood, which the poem mentions). He lives a self-absorbed life, driving his people harshly or neglecting them, using the women, building the walls, but mostly just being idle. He awakens from this life when he meets Enkidu, a man from the wild who has been tamed by a prostitute. Enkidu and Gilgamesh become friends in the most inseparable sense, equals in all. When Gilgamash is possessed by a desire to destroy the brutish god Humbaba, Enkidu is seized with fear. He knows from his time in the forest of Humbaba's dark power, and pleads with his friend not to go. But Gilgamesh is resolved, and Enkidu accompanies him. Enkidu is killed, and Gilgamesh finally discovers what human sorrow is. Spent with grief, he embarks on a winding quest to bring his friend back to life. What will be the end?I love the prayer of Ninsun, Gilgamesh's mother who was a minor goddess. She says to the god Shamash, ...Why did you give my sonA restless heart, and now you touch himWith this passion to destroy Humbaba,And you send him on a journey to a battleHe may never understand, to a doorHe cannot open. You inspire him to endThe evil of the world which you abhorAnd yet he is a man for all his powerAnd cannot do your work. You must protectMy son from danger. (33)It captures the futility of humanity in our quest for transcendence, our spiritual discontent which we cannot remedy. All our good deeds come to nothing, and the last appeal is always to the deity. Striking also to me was the monotheism of Utnapishtim, the wise man Gilgamesh seeks out to save his friend. Mason hints in the afterword that this expression of monotheism may cause some controversy among scholars... interesting. Casual readers like me always wonder, when we pick up a work like this of which there are so many versions and translations, if we have chosen The Right One. If we have maximized our reading experience, if we have latched on to something of which those who know would approve. I have to let worries like this go and simply enjoy the book, whichever version it is, that has fallen to me. I don't know what other translations are like, but I found this one intensely human and accessible. Strangely powerful, from across thousands of years Gilgamesh draws us into its story and remains with us. It is, of course, the universality of loss, the desperation of sorrow, and the long road home of acceptance that make Gilgamesh's journey ours. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      The story of Gilgamesh is the oldest in the Western world, it is also (perhaps especially in Stephen Mitchell's translation?) remarkably easy to read - simple, short and to the point. Gilgamesh is a part-god warrior/king/superhero who terrorizes his people to the point where they pray for divine intervention. The gods create a partner for Gilgamesh in the form of Enkidu, a wild man who runs with the animals and is also superhumanly powerful and awesome. After civilizing the wild man Enkidu with the powers of Shamhat, one of the goddess Ishtar's sacred prostitute-presitesses, Enkidu journeys to the city of Uruk and, after having a very intimate battle with King Gilgamesh, becomes his inseparable companion. The relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu far surpasses platonic friendship - that's right, the first epic story of gods and warriors is also an epic gay romance:[Gilgamesh] went to his mother, the goddess Ninsun,and asked her to interpret the dream."I saw a bright star, it shot acrossthe morning sky, it fell at my feetand lay before me like a huge boulder.I tried to lift it, but it was too heavy.I tried to move it, but it would not budge....This boulder, this star that had fallen to earth -I took it in my arms, I embraced it and caressed itthe way a man caresses his wife."...The mother of Gilgamesh, Lady Ninsun,the wise, the all-knowing, said to her son,"Dearest child, this bright star from heaven,this huge boulder that you could not lift - it stands for a dear friend, a mighty hero.You will take him in your arms, embrace and caress himthe way a man caresses his wife.He will be your double, your second self,a man who is loyal, who will stand at your sidethrough the greatest dangers. Soon you will meet him,the companion of your heart. Your dream has said so." (p. 82-84)Together, Gilgamesh and Enkidu go on a couple of great adventures, slaying powerful monsters and tormenting a goddess who tries to seduce Gilgamesh. Things are going well until Enkidu falls ill and dies. Gilgamesh is inconsolable in his grief and the anguish and terror he feels when faced with death transforms him into a suddenly frail, human character. Gilgamesh goes on a quest to find immortality, and in doing so encounters some interesting pre-Biblical flood and evil snake stories. Also interesting is that Gilgamesh is the story of a hero who ultimately fails, but he does return to his city of Uruk a transformed character, one with a sense of beauty and appreciation for the city and its inhabitants. Gilgamesh is interesting for several reasons - the very fact that it is the oldest story, the glimpse it offers at ancient religious rites and ways of life, and the fact that it provides a motif for many adventures, myths and legends that follow it, including the Old Testament. The title character is also more interesting and complex than one might expect from a warrior-king-slays-monsters epic - he is an openly flawed, vulnerable hero, one who experiences the anguish of heartbreak and the terror of death and is forced to come to terms with the fact that not even a superpowered warrior king can gain immortality. Stephen Mitchell's detailed introduction is fascinating, and his notes at the end, which provide alternate text and translations for certain passages, are wonderful. This is a story that is well worth reading and entertaining to boot (and hey, it's short, too!)
    • 4/5
      The first time I read this book, I felt that it was a bit repetitive throughout the story, repeating some of the tale over and over again. But I found it much more interesting the second time through. Gilgamesh, the protagonist, can almost be compared to Achilles. Both have their flaws and suffer great sorrow when their friend dies. Gilgamesh undertakes a journey to obtain eternal life, but eventually accepts his fate, and proceeds to change from a man who thinks only of himself, to one who begins to think of the welfare of others in his kingdom. The Epic of Gilgamesh is not only important because it is one of our earliest books, and one of the earliest forms of tragedy, but also for its historic significance. It mentions the Great Flood or Deluge, and it gives some details of the history of the the ancient Middle East.
    • 5/5
      amazing book, gives us a great insight about the life customs and ideas from the bronze age. And is also another great book to make fun of believers from any religion ir sacred book whatever
    • 5/5
      I mean yeah, the author took some liberties with the story, but I think it's pretty amazing what he did to fill the gaps and the contradictions between the different versions. The Notes part, really helps to understand some of the discrepancies in the text.
    • 4/5
      When I was a student teacher, I actually taught my students the Gilgamesh Epic. I used it to then go into the various creation and flood stories of various world religions. In fact, when I was in high school, my tenth grade English teacher also taught Gilgamesh, which is probably why I decided to follow his lead. Of course, every version I've ever seen is a simple breakdown of each section of the story, not the actual translation of the poem that this is (or, at least, the translation of what has been found of it so far). So, this particular version was a first time read for me.The Epic of Gilgamesh presents one of the earliest recorded tales. It includes the first known example of a written creation story, a flood story, and even a version of the temptation of man by woman and a betrayal by a serpent. The Biblical parallels are so many that it can't be mere coincidence, especially when you learn that the early Semites (who would become the Jewish people) were at one time indoctrinated by Babylonian religion, which copied many of their stories from the Sumerian, including Gilgamesh, already an historical figure turned mythic hero by the time Babylon became a power.To me though, the most important element of the Gilgamesh epic, is that it's not only the first "on the road" story, but also the first buddy story. Gilgamesh literally has a best friend made for him by the gods, and the two go on amazing adventures together. As a fan of the road movie and the buddy picture, this is something that always stayed with me about Gilgamesh and Enkidu. This brand of buddy adventure has always been around and has always been popular, since the literal beginnings of civilization.
    • 2/5
      I need to reread this - last time I read this I was in 5th grade and didn't really understand it.
    • 3/5
      It was interesting, but not my thing. I liked that it dealt a lot with dreams and how they are interpreted (or misinterpreted), because I know a lot of cultures hold dreams as a sort of communication power.
    • 5/5
      Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. Epic.
    • 4/5
      A classic tale of a hero in ancient Akkad. Perhaps not all tablets have been found, yet its a story worth reading for anyone interested in the stories of thousands of years ago.
    • 4/5
      Different than I remember. It was an actual translation, rather than a literary interpretation, which was both good and bad:Good, because it was faithful and does away with flowery embellishments.Bad, because the original is in fragments, and what does remain is awfully repetitive.On the whole, the story was pleasant and a prototypical hero myth - a foundation of literature, if you will.
    • 4/5
      I read this only for the sake of saying I did, but it's on par with Greek mythology for entertainment and has actual plot twists that surprise. Not bad for a story that went missing for more than two millenia until it was rediscovered in the 19th century. Gilgamesh has the strength of a god but the mortality of a man. This anguish leads him to unjustly lord it over his people until a friend almost equal to him in strength is sent to correct his ways. Adventures ensue, and Gilgamesh learns more bitter lessons about loss and death. There's some intriguing parallels to stories from the Bible and echoes of Homer. I took the epic as a whole to be the story of human grappling with mortality: we feel like gods in our youth, strive to make names for ourselves, then endure the humbling of our pride and the hollows of tragedy that weather us, leading to maturity and eventually an acceptance of death.
    • 3/5
      What I learned from this ancient epic is how much The Bible and Homer cribbed from it. The entire flood story is here in its original Sumerian form, complete with the cubits and the ark and the animals and the dove.

      Also, the storytelling style we later came to associate with Homer is here. I'm thinking about the way Homer would have a character deliver some paragraph-long pronouncement to someone, who delivers it to someone else using the exact same spiel, and so on.

      And epic? It's only a bit longer than an ambitiously extended short story! I thought an epic was supposed to be long! I guess back then, when you had to carve all those cuneiform letters out longhand (and by that I mean on stone tablets), anything seemed long.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Read it. A lot of later epics, fables, stories have found their source here. The tale of the Great Flood is here hundreds of years before its mention in Genesis.
    • 3/5
      Gilgamesh is a real illustration of progress. It's the world's oldest story--about a thousand years before The Iliad and even longer before the Bible. Which makes it a fascinating historical document. But, to me, much of it read like immature nonsense. Sure there were neat parts, battles, floods, etc. And sure it was interesting that the mind thousands of years ago went through many of the same emotions and issues that we go through today. And sure it is an interesting historical document. But much of it is also a slog. It's possible the experience would have been different if, like Greek Mythology or the Bible, one had a grounding and came into it knowing who Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim and Enkidu. But I didn't.
    • 4/5
      I finished The Epic of Gilgamesh. The hardest thing I had to deal with was picking a translation! The library had two choices: a translation by N. K. Sandars or one by Maureen Gallery Kovacs. I chose the Sandars one which translated the text into prose. I wish it were translated into poetic form, but with this one I got a real sense of the story.The Kovac version was great as a reference because there were pictures from the British Museum with the Epic of Gilgamesh in art form from Ancient Assyria. There was also a map. Also, Kovac translated it into poetic verse with line numbers. However, the translator used ellipses whenever there was a break in the tablet or missing lines, so it made the translation more jagged.This epic has it all: a creation by the Ancient Assyrian gods, an epic battle against the evil monster Humbaba, long journeys, an ancient flood story, and the search for eternal life. The flood story is similar to the Biblical account, except the ark is square and seven stories high which doesn't make sense because it would tip over. Also, it only rains for 7 days instead of 40. But, it is interesting to read the parallels.
    • 3/5
      It's the ultimate story, filled with everything: battles, friendship, hubris, shame, loss, joy, gods, human-gods, creation, sacrifice, love, hate, quests, sex.
      It's mostly about men, of course.
      Cos we women basically ran about and tempted men to ruin them. Poor Enkidu, once mighty until he slept with a woman.
      Regular theme, methinks.
      However, it's the first story in the Western tradition, and worth exploring as a view of the world in which we once lived.
      I urge you to read the story before the introduction - I didn't and nearly gave up on the book before I got to the actual story. This would have been a mistake. It was worth the reading.
      I can't help but think of Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ when I read it. There are such similarities in creation stories that sometimes I wonder if our brains have a specific synapse devoted to them.
    • 3/5
      Epic literature. Interesting because of its origin on Babylonian clay tablets and its biblical flood story.
    • 5/5
      Part of the fascination of this book lies simply with reading one of the oldest surviving stories that goes back to the very beginning of civilization. I got these dates and comments regarding some of the earliest surviving written works from the Wiki:800 BCE Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey1440-1400 BCE Hebrew Torah, also called the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses with a final redaction between 900-450 BC. Some give an alternate date of 1320-1280. [And others think the Bible is much younger--dating from the time of the Babylonian Exile circa 600 BC]1550 BCE Egyptian Book of the Dead1700-1100 BCE Approximate date of the composition of the Hindu Veda Rigveda in Sanskrit. 1780 BCE Akkadian Code of Hammurabi stele1900 Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh2250-2000 BCE Sumerian Earliest stories in the Epic of Gilgamesh.This, folks, is a work older than the Bible by a thousand years--and has a global flood story complete with ark. Compared to the The Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer is a green newcomer: Gilgamesh is a millennium and a half older. Only a few surviving Egyptian and Sumerian texts are older. And amazingly, this isn't just one of the oldest works of literature, but a great work of literature. Timeless in the way it speaks of grief and friendship and mortality. It's incredible this work was lost for so many centuries and only gained a wide audience after World War II. The poem itself is a short work, only taking up about 60 pages of the paperback book. The Penguin edition I have translated by Sandars has a fascinating account of their rediscovery.
    • 4/5
      I love how relevant the themes remain to today's world. I love seeing the obvious influence this story had on the Bible and other ancient works (but not as ancient as Gilgamesh ). I love the gorgeous lines like "You will be left alone, unable to understand in a world where nothing lives anymore as you thought it did" (Enkidu telling Gilgamesh what will happen upon his death) and "The only nourishment he knew was grief, endless in its hidden source yet never ending hunger." Worth a reread for its beautiful simplicity.
    • 5/5
      This book reignited my nostalgia for ziggurats and reminded me of how much I actually enjoy the deities of Mesopotamia. They really don't make gods like they used to.I found it amazingly readable, for a 4,000 year old item. The first portion, with it's fun and hi-jinks, slaying of the ogre Humbaba and all that, had me giggling merrily away in Starbucks. Then something terrible happened, but by then I was invested. Funfact not included in this book: According to my mythological dictionary, Humbaba had a beard made of entrails.
    • 5/5
      I knew very little about Gilgamesh before I picked up this book in the library. I knew I wanted to read it, and I had a vague idea it was one of the oldest works of literature, but other than that, I was relatively ignorant. This edition helped a lot with that, since it has an informative introduction. It's not exactly a new translation, being based on (if I remember rightly) seven earlier literal translations, but it is lovely and clear and also, where the story needs it, tender and touching.

      I really love the poem itself. The relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is touching and heart-rending, and the descriptions of Gilgamesh's grief feel so real. It's amazing how readable and relevant it is -- partly due to the translation, I'm sure, but in general it seems closer to a modern reader's interests than other ancient stories, even ones a lot closer to us in time.

    Book preview

    Gilgamesh - Stephen Mitchell

    BY STEPHEN MITCHELL

    POETRY

    Parables and Portraits

    FICTION

    The Frog Prince

    Meetings with the Archangel

    NONFICTION

    Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life (with Byron Katie)

    The Gospel According to Jesus

    TRANSLATIONS AND ADAPTATIONS

    Gilgamesh

    Bhagavad Gita

    Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching (with James A. Autry)

    Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda

    Genesis

    Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke

    A Book of Psalms

    The Selected Poetry of Dan Pagis

    Tao Te Ching

    The Book of Job

    The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (with Chana Bloch)

    The Sonnets to Orpheus

    The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke

    Letters to a Young Poet

    The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

    The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

    EDITED BY STEPHEN MITCHELL

    The Essence of Wisdom: Words from the Masters to Illuminate the Spiritual Path

    Bestiary: An Anthology of Poems about Animals

    Song of Myself

    Into the Garden: A Wedding Anthology (with Robert Hass)

    The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose

    The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry

    Dropping Ashes on the Buddha:

    The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn

    FOR CHILDREN

    The Wishing Bone and Other Poems (illustrated by Tom Pohrt)

    The Nightingale, by Hans Christian Andersen (illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline)

    Jesus: What He Really Said and Did

    The Creation (illustrated by Ori Sherman)

    BOOKS ON TAPE

    Gilgamesh

    Loving What Is

    Bhagavad Gita

    Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon

    The Frog Prince

    Meetings with the Archangel

    Bestiary

    Genesis

    Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus

    The Gospel According to Jesus

    The Enlightened Mind

    The Enlightened Heart

    Letters to a Young Poet

    Parables and Portraits

    Tao Te Ching

    The Book of Job

    Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

    GILGAMESH

    STEPHEN MITCHELL

    ATRIA BOOKS

    New York London Toronto Sydney New Dehli

    ATRIA PAPERBACK

    A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

    1230 Avenue of the Americas

    New York, NY 10020

    www.SimonandSchuster.com

    Copyright © 2004 by Stephen Mitchell

    All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

    ATRIA PAPERBACK and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

    For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales: 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com

    Design by Joel Avirom and Jason Snyder

    Illustrations by Jason Snyder

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    5 7 9 10 8 6

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Gilgamesh. English.

    Gilgamesh / a new English version [by] Stephen Mitchell.

    p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references.

    1. Epic poetry, Assyro-Babylonian-Translations into English. I. Mitchell, Stephen, 1943-II. Title.

    PJ3771.5.G5E5 2004

    892′.1—dc22

    2004050072

    ISBN-13:978-0-7432-6164-7

    ISBN-13:978-1-4391-047-4-3

    ISBN-10:   0-7432-6164-X

    CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    ABOUT THIS VERSION

    GILGAMESH

    NOTES

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    GLOSSARY

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    THE OLDEST STORY IN THE WORLD

    In Iraq, when the dust blows, stopping men and tanks, it brings with it memories of an ancient world, much older than Islam or Christianity. Western civilization originated from that place between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where Hammurabi created his legal code and where Gilgamesh was written-the oldest story in the world, a thousand years older than the Iliad or the Bible. Its hero was a historical king who reigned in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk in about 2750 BCE. In the epic, he has an intimate friend, Enkidu, a naked wild man who has been civilized through the erotic arts of a temple priestess. With him Gilgamesh battles monsters, and when Enkidu dies, he is inconsolable. He sets out on a desperate journey to find the one man who can tell him how to escape death.

    Part of the fascination of Gilgamesh is that, like any great work of literature, it has much to tell us about ourselves. In giving voice to grief and the fear of death, perhaps more powerfully than any book written after it, in portraying love and vulnerability and the quest for wisdom, it has become a personal testimony for millions of readers in dozens of languages. But it also has a particular relevance in today’s world, with its polarized fundamentalisms, each side fervently believing in its own righteousness, each on a crusade, or jihad, against what it perceives as an evil enemy. The hero of this epic is an antihero, a superman (a superpower, one might say) who doesn’t know the difference between strength and arrogance. By preemptively attacking a monster, he brings on himself a disaster that can only be overcome by an agonizing journey, a quest that results in wisdom by proving its own futility. The epic has an extraordinarily sophisticated moral intelligence. In its emphasis on balance and in its refusal to side with either hero or monster, it leads us to question our dangerous certainties about good and evil.

    I began this version of Gilgamesh because I had never been convinced by the language of any translation of it that I’d read. I wanted to find a genuine voice for the poem: words that were lithe and muscular enough to match the power of the story. If I have succeeded, readers will discover that, rather than standing before an antiquity in a glass case, they have entered a literary masterpiece that is as startlingly alive today as it was three and a half millennia ago.

    ORIGINS

    Gilgamesh is a work that in the intensity of its imagination stands beside the great stories of Homer and the Bible. Yet for two thousand years, all traces of it were lost. The baked clay tablets on which it was inscribed in cuneiform characters lay buried in the rubble of cities across the ancient Near East, waiting for people from another world to read them. It wasn’t until 1850 that the first fragments were discovered among the ruins of Nineveh, and the text wasn’t deciphered and translated for several decades afterward. The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke may have been the first reader discerning enough to recognize its true literary stature. "Gilgamesh is stupendous! he wrote at the end of 1916. I … consider it to be among the greatest things that can happen to a person. I have immersed myself in [it], and in these truly gigantic fragments I have experienced measures and forms that belong with the supreme works that the conjuring Word has ever produced." In Rilke’s consciousness, Gilgamesh, like a magnificent Aladdin’s palace that has instantly materialized out of nowhere, makes its first appearance as a masterpiece of world literature.

    The story of its discovery and decipherment is itself as fabulous as a tale from The Thousand and One Nights. A young English traveler named Austen Henry Layard, who was passing through the Middle East on his way to Ceylon, heard that there were antiquities buried in the mounds of what is now the city of Mosul, halted his journey, and began excavations in 1844. These mounds turned out to contain the ruined palaces of Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria, including what was left of the library of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE). In amazement Layard and his assistant Hormuzd Rassam found room after room lined with carved stone bas-reliefs of demons and deities, scenes of battle, royal hunts and ceremonies; doorways flanked by enormous winged bulls and lions; and, inside some of the chambers, tens of thousands of clay tablets inscribed with the curious, and then undeciphered, cuneiform (‘wedge-shaped’) script. Over twenty-five thousand of these tablets were shipped back to the British Museum.

    When cuneiform was officially deciphered in 1857, scholars discovered that the tablets were written in Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language cognate with Hebrew and Arabic. Fifteen years went by before anyone noticed the tablets on which Gilgamesh was inscribed. Then, in 1872, a young British Museum curator named George Smith realized that one of the fragments told the story of a Babylonian Noah, who survived a great flood sent by the gods. On looking down the third column, Smith wrote, my eye caught the statement that the ship rested on the mountains of Nizir, followed by the account of the sending forth of the dove, and its finding no resting-place and returning. I saw at once that I had here discovered a portion at least of the Chaldean account of the Deluge. To a Victorian this was a spectacular discovery, because it seemed to be independent corroboration of the historicity of the biblical Flood (Victorians believed that the Genesis story was much older than it is). When Smith saw these lines, according to a later account, he said, ‘I am the first man to read that after more than two thousand years of oblivion!’ Setting the tablet on the table, the account continues, he jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself. We aren’t told if he took off just his coat or if he continued to strip down further. I like to imagine him in his euphoria going all the way and running stark naked, like Enkidu, among the astonished black-clad Victorian scholars.

    Smith’s announcement, made on December 3, 1872 to the newly formed Society of Biblical Archaeology, that he had discovered an account of the Flood on one of the Assyrian tablets caused a major stir, and soon more fragments of Gilgamesh were unearthed at Nineveh and in the ruins of other ancient cities. His translation of the fragments that had been discovered up to then was published in 1876. Though to a modern reader it seems quaint and almost surrealistic in its many mistaken guesses, and is often fragmentary to the point of incoherence, it was an important pioneering effort.

    Today, more than a century and a quarter later, many more fragments have surfaced, the language is much better understood, and scholars can trace the history of the text with some degree of confidence. Briefly, here is the consensus.

    Legends about Gilgamesh probably began to arise shortly after the death of the historical king. The earliest texts that have survived, which date from about 2100 BCE, are five separate and independent poems in Sumerian, entitled Gilgamesh and Aga, Gilgamesh and Huwawa, Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, Gilgamesh and the Underworld, and The Death of Gilgamesh. (Sumerian is a non Semitic language unrelated to any other that we know, and is as distant from Akkadian as Chinese is from English. It became the learned language of ancient Mesopotamia and was part of the scribal curriculum.) These five poems-written in a leisurely, repetitive, hieratic style, much less condensed and vivid than the Akkadian epic-would have been familiar to later poets and editors.

    The direct ancestor of the eleven clay tablets dug up at Nineveh is called the Old Babylonian version. It was written in Akka-dian (of which Babylonian is a dialect) and dates from about 1700 BCE; eleven fragments have survived, including three tablets that are almost complete. This version, though it paraphrases a few episodes in the Sumerian Gilgamesh texts, is an original poem, the first Epic of Gilgamesh. In its themes and its form, it is essentially the same poem as its Ninevite descendent: a story about friendship, the death of the beloved, and the quest for immortality.

    Some five hundred years after the Old Babylonian version was written, a scholar-priest named Sîn-lēqi-unninni revised and elaborated on it. His epic, which scholars call the Standard Version, is the basis for all modern translations. As of now, with seventy-three fragments discovered, slightly fewer than two thousand of the three thousand lines of the original text exist in readable, continuous form; the rest is damaged or missing, and there are many gaps in the sections that have survived.

    We don’t know exactly what Sîn-lēqi-unninni’s contribution to the Standard Version was, since so few fragments of the Old Babylonian version have survived for comparison. From what we can see, he is often a conservative editor, following the older version line for line, with few if any changes in vocabulary and word order. Sometimes, though, he expands or contracts, drops passages or adds them, and functions not as an editor but as an original poet. The two major passages that we know he added, the Prologue and the priestess Shamhat’s speech inviting Enkidu to Uruk, have the vividness and density of great art.

    The Gilgamesh that you are about to read is a sometimes free, sometimes close adaptation into English verse of Sîn-lēqi-unninni’s Standard Version.*Even scholars making literal translations don’t simply translate the Standard Version; they fill in some of the textual gaps with passages from other versions, the Old Babylonian being the most important. I have taken this practice further: occasionally, when the Standard Version is particularly fragmentary, I have supplemented it with passages from the Sumerian Gilgamesh poems. I have also added lines or short passages to bridge the gaps or to clarify the story. My intention throughout has been to re-create the ancient epic, as a contemporary poem, in the parallel universe of the English language.

    CIVILIZING THE WILD MAN

    Gilgamesh is the story of a hero’s journey; one might say that it is the mother of all heroes’ journeys, with its huge uninhibited mythic presences moving through a landscape of dream. It is also the story of how a man becomes civilized, how he learns to rule himself and therefore his people, and to act with temperance, wisdom, and piety. The poem begins with the city and ends with it.

    In the first lines of his Prologue, Sîn-lēqi-unninni states the breadth and depth of what his hero had endured: He had seen everything, had experienced all emotions. The next seven lines tell us the essential details, not even bothering to mention the hero’s name. Gilgamesh had traveled to the edge of the world and been granted knowledge of the primeval days of humanity; he had survived the journey and returned to restore the great temple of Ishtar and Uruk’s then famous six-mile-long wall.

    And now, after this summary, something fascinating happens. Sîn-lēqi-unninni turns to his readers and invites them to survey the great city for themselves:

    See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun.

    Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can imagine, approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar, a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty, walk on the wall of Uruk, follow its course around the city, inspect its mighty foundations, examine its brickwork, how masterfully it is built, observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens, the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares.

    It is a very strange and touching moment. The poet is ostensibly addressing an audience of ancient Babylonians in 1200 BCE, directing them to admire a city that was built in time immemorial. But the readers, as it turns out, are you and I. We are the ones who are being invited, more than three thousand years later, to walk on the wall of Uruk and observe the splendor and bustling life of the great city. The invitation is touching not because the city is in ruins and the civilization has been destroyed-this is not an ironic Ozymandias moment-but because in our imagination we can climb the ancient stone staircase and observe the lush gardens and orchards, the palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares, and share the poet’s amazement and pride in his city.

    Then Sîn-lēqi-unninni’s invitation becomes more intimate.

    Find the cornerstone, he tells us,

    and under it the copper box that is marked with his name. Unlock it. Open the lid. Take out the tablet of lapis lazuli. Read how Gilgamesh suffered all and accomplished all.

    I doubt whether even in 1200 BCE this was meant to be taken literally. Even to an ancient Babylonian reader, the lines would have been vivid enough to make the physical act unnecessary. As we read the instructions, we can see ourselves finding the cornerstone, taking out the copper box, unlocking it, opening its lid, and taking out the priceless tablet of lapis lazuli, which turns out, in the end, to be the very poem we are about to read. We are looking beneath the surface of things, into the hidden places, the locked repositories of human experience. The trials that Gilgamesh himself is supposed to have written down long ago are now being revealed to us in words that, whether carved on stone tablets or printed on paper, create their own sense of authenticity. They issue directly from the source: if not from the historical Gilgamesh, then from a poet who has imagined that hero’s experience intensely enough for it to be true.

    The Old Babylonian poem that Sîn-lēqi-unninni inherited begins with the phrase Surpassing all kings. It describes Gilgamesh as a gigantic and manic young man (his name may mean The Old Man is a Young Man), a warrior, and, after his return, as a good king and benefactor to his people: a combination of Goliath and David. But to begin with he is a tyrant. When we first enter the poem, there is an essential imbalance in the city; something has gone drastically wrong. The man of unsurpassable courage and inexhaustible energy has become a monster of selfishness; the shepherd has become a wolf. He oppresses the young men, perhaps with forced labor, and oppresses the young women, perhaps with his ravenous sexual appetite. Because he is an absolute monarch

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