Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Beyond Gilgamesh

Following up on Patrick Flynn's excellent presentation during tonight's discussion of The Epic of Gilgamesh, he offers the following suggestions for additional reading:


Gilgamesh’s literary qualities are the focus of classicist Charles Rowan Beye’s Ancient Epic Poetry: Homer, Apollonius, Virgil, which devotes a chapter to the Gilgamesh poems.  Story coherence and Mesopotamian literary tradition are the strengths of Benjamin R. Foster’s edition of The Epic of Gilgamesh (available from DC’s Public Library). For those of you interested in technology, Steve Honley will attach a PDF copy of “The Origins of Writing in Mesopotamia" by Christopher Woods (The Oriental Institute, News & Notes, Fall 2010) to his next group message. (The first page is reproduced below.) And for pre-history and history surrounding the poem, the DVD “Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization” from the Great Courses learning series is also available from DCPL. 


Finally, Patrick says: "Let me leave you with a sample of the evocative poetry of Foster’s translation: the last lines of Tablet I: 'Even while [Gilgamesh] was having his dreams, Shamhat was telling the dreams of Gilgamesh to Enkidu, as the pair of them were making love together.'”




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