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The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Verison with an Introduction (Penguin Classics)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 892.1
EAN: 9780140441000
ISBN: 014044100X
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: December 30, 1960
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Sales Rank: 3477
Studio: Penguin Classics

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu are the only heroes to have survived from the ancient literature of Babylon, immortalized in this epic poem that dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. Together they journey to the Spring of Youth, defeat the Bull of Heaven and slay the monster Humbaba. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh's grief and fear of death are such that they lead him to undertake a quest for eternal life. A timeless tale of morality, tragedy and pure adventure, 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' is a landmark literary exploration of man's search for immortality.

Amazon.com Review:
This edition provides a prose rendering of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the cycle of poems preserved on clay tablets surviving from ancient Mesopotamia of the third mi llennium B.C. One of the best and most important pieces of epic poetry from human history, predating even Homer's Iliad by roughly 1,500 years, the Gilgamesh epic tells of the various adventures of that hero-king, including his quest for immortality, and an account of a great flood similar in many details to the Old Testament's story of Noah. The translator also provides an interesting and useful introduction explaining much about the historical context of the poem and the archeological discovery of th e tablets.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- A tale worthy of Homer....
The introduction to this book consists, like all Penguin classics, of an essay by a prominent scholar in the field (and in this case the translator). It provides a very good introduction and background to the historical period as well as the epic itself. As the introduction is a bit dated (having been written orginally in 1960 and having been updated in 1967) it does not incorporate any scholarly advances made since then. Hence four stars out of five.

With respect to the translation itself, it is a narrative translation as opposed to a poetic (the way the tablets are acutally written). If one is interested in the poetic translation a much better book to read would be Stephne Mitchell's "Gilgamesh: A New English Version". The author's translation provides is a little rough in places and is not smooth in that there are one or two gaps in the story. For example, the narration on how Gilgamesh found/was ... Read More

Rating:

- Eye Opening Epic
It will be obvious that plagerism is not a recent phenomenon. When you are aware of Gilgamesh, the supposed wise sages of books like the Torah, Bible, what ever the Arabs call their drivel, you will realize that you have been duped as the authors of those works merely ripped-off the Greeks, Egyptians and other cultures that pre-dated them. I, for one, have no wish to perpetuate the supposed divinity of Middle-Eastern religions. I never quite got the vengeful God only to later take anger management classes and become a loving God thing! There is definitely something more to the Universe than random chance, but Mankind does not yet have a handle on that knowledge, certainly not the rediculous, violent, crimes against Humanity, Middle East.

Rating:

- Great epic poem
Gilgamesh is a great epic poem, particularly for me as a "theology hobbyist" it is pretty interesting to understand how other semitic cultures lived in the days before and after Noah, befor Abraham. It's also thought provoking in respect to how much it relates to various biblical accounts. The author does discuss this briefly in the introduction. Essentially, it has expanded my horizons...

Rating:

- The tale of the evolution of storytelling that reveals shared mythology in religions
This version is a very popular adaptation of the Gilgamesh story because it contains N. K. Sandars' crucial introduction which is just as important as the translation itself because it includes information about the discovery of the tablets in Assyria dating back to the third millennium BC and then goes on to explain the difficulties that scholars have had in rediscovering the story from these artifacts and how during this long laborious translation process found themselves actively engaged in evolving the story, and thus the mythology, which had developed from other sources and had certainly influenced ancient hero epics that proceeded it. There is no one version of Gilgamesh. There are very many. Having a good introduction like this makes reading the story even better because we understand its significance beyond being just a very old fable.

The story of the translation of the epic of Gilgamesh is ... Read More

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