| |||||||||||||||
The Penguin English Library features the best novels in the English language. Get lost in the amazing stories, browse the Penguin English Library. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Product Description
Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world's oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, the Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind's eternal struggle with the fear of death.
About the Author
Andrew George is Reader in Assyriology at SOAS (the School of Oriential and African Studies) in London, and is also an Honorary Lecturer at the University's Institute of Archaeology. His research has taken him many times to Iraq to visit Babylon and other ancient sites, and to museums in Baghdad, Europe and North America to read the original clay tablets on which the scribes of ancient Iraq wrote.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Prologue and paean. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Prologue and paean. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
66 of 66 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Penguin Classics have produced here a wonderful new edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh. A lucid translation brings the epic to life, and it is backed up by a wealth of extra material that add depth and understanding to a reading of the text. There is an extensive introduction to the historical, literary and archaeological background: the Babylonian, Akkadian and Sumerian contexts are explored clearly and succinctly, and there is also a fascinating history of how the text itself has been pieced together. In addition, and making this new edition even more worthy, the translator collects together fragments from variant traditions - some of them for the first time in English - which expand or give slightly different perspectives upon the core text. This rounds out the picture perfectly, giving an intriguing glimpse into how the story and image of Gilgamesh evolved over time and in different contexts.
Finally, the text is peppered with line drawings of contemporary tablet illustrations. All this, and pictures too! Highly recommended.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This translation of Gilgamesh is one of the best things I have read in a while. It takes a quite academic route to giving the reader the many goods of the epic in that the narrative is slightly broken up by sorting the information by tablet, and by not neglecting any relevant Sumerian or Akkadian version of the epic. That is to say, the reader should be aware that this is not like simply reading a book of prose; the text is verse (verse with repeating lines and ideas, as in much epic poetry, a style I find readable and enjoyable, but others can find less so) and is frequently broken by lacunae coming from the source material; and the text is divided into three major parts. Part one is the Standard Version, or He Who Saw the Deep, in 11 tablets; part two is Surpassing All Other Kings, beginning with the Pennsylvania tablet; and part three is a selection of Sumerian poems of Bilgames (the Sumerian version of the Akkadian name Gilgamesh). All parts are well translated - beautifully so, so that even the fairly frequent lacunae (it is, after all, several thousand years old) do not interrupt the understanding or enjoyment.
The introduction to the book is excellent - a brilliant summary of some general ideas about life in the time it was written in ancient Mesopotamia. The introductions to each part, tablet and poem are also lucid, helpful and personable. Even the few illustrations - copies of original pictures from Mesopotamia describing the epic - are lively and expressive. If it had been the first translation of the epic that I had read, and it assuredly is not, then it would have been a perfect introduction. There is even an appendix on how a translator works with the 3,000 year old source material to produce something readable, which was a nice little finisher for the wonderful text. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. If you have even the scantiest interest in the ancient near east, you should purchase this text - not only the epic, but this translation of it. It really provides the thrill of the past in an elegant way.
The introduction to the book is excellent - a brilliant summary of some general ideas about life in the time it was written in ancient Mesopotamia. The introductions to each part, tablet and poem are also lucid, helpful and personable. Even the few illustrations - copies of original pictures from Mesopotamia describing the epic - are lively and expressive. If it had been the first translation of the epic that I had read, and it assuredly is not, then it would have been a perfect introduction. There is even an appendix on how a translator works with the 3,000 year old source material to produce something readable, which was a nice little finisher for the wonderful text. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. If you have even the scantiest interest in the ancient near east, you should purchase this text - not only the epic, but this translation of it. It really provides the thrill of the past in an elegant way.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It may be a matter of taste, but I find that it's worth having this edition as well as the 1972 Sandars Penguin Classic, rather than as a replacement. The styles are completely different - Sandars is prose, this is verse. This translation may be closer to the original flavour of the verse epic, and it is longer than Sandars because more material has become available over the years since Sandars worked, but the narrative is pretty confusing because it retains some of the neutrality of a diplomatic transcript (i.e. it's a replica of the fragmentaryness of what remains rather than an attempt at a reconstructed whole) and it includes multiple versions of passages where they have been found in the tablets. Sandars' more coherent prose version only gives an illusion of completeness, but I think you'd have to be pretty sensitive to object to its illusoriness.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
An important piece of world literature
I read a more modern translation of the Epic a few years ago, but saw that this was recommended by the author of Complete Bablyonian. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Oygen
Masculine epic friendship
The first textual story we have, written on clay tablets and only translated in the C19th, Gilgamesh is 1500-2000 years older than Homer therefore dated to around the 10th century... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Roman Clodia
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
