The Epic of Gilgamesh

by Sandars, N. K.
ISBN: 9780141026282
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Overview

A great king, strong as the stars in Heaven. Enkidu, a wild and mighty hero, is created by the gods to challenge the arrogant King Gilgamesh. But instead of killing each other, the two become friends. Travelling together to the Cedar Forest, they fight and slay the evil monster Humbaba. But when Enkidu is killed, his death haunts and breaks the mighty Gilgamesh. Terrified of mortality, he resolves to find the secret of eternal life...


  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: Sandars, N. K.
  • ISBN: 9780141026282
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 7.13 x 0.21
  • Number Of Pages: 71
  • Publication Year: 2006

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  • Thank You Assurbanipal

    Keenan S. - 8 months ago

    In the 7th Century BC, the Assyrian king Assurbanipal sent servants to search the ancient centers of learning in Babylon, Uruk and Nippur. Among the texts they found and translated into 'contemporary' Akkadian Semitic was the epic poem known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Eventually, the Assyrian empire fell, and the clay tablets containing the Epic were lost to time. In 1853, archaeologists recovered those tablets. In 1872 the Society of Biblical Archaeology learned that the tablets contained an account of the Deluge, and interest in further excavation and translation was piqued. Our intrepid translator for this volume, N.K. Sandars guides us through the history of this ancient and timeless tale for the first 60 pages. She describes the myriad challenges of recreating a story from fragmented tablets, chiseled in languages as diverse as Old Babylonian, Akkadian Semitic, and Sumerian cuneiform. On page 61, she drops the Epic itself. "When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body," the Epic reads. "Two-thirds they made him god and one-third man." So we are introduced to the king of ancient Uruk-- a mighty warrior and protector, builder of the city walls and the temple-- and something of a menace to his people. "No son is left with his father, for Gilgamesh takes them all," the Epic reads, and "His lust leaves no virgin to her lover, neither the warrior's daughter nor the wife of the noble." So great are his appetites that the gods themselves petition the goddess of creation to produce his equal. "Let them contend together and leave Uruk in quiet." And so the goddess Aruru creates the noble Enkidu in the wilderness. "There was virtue in him of the god of war," and he "lurked with wild beasts at the water holes." When Enkidu runs afoul of a local trapper, our story is set in motion. When Enkidu confronts Gilgamesh on his way to claim another man's bride for himself, the lives of both warriors are changed forever. "The gods, who do not die, cannot be tragic," writes Sandars in her introduction. In the course of their adventures, our heroes, for all their prowess and might, are forced to confront their own mortality and the mortality of the people they love.

    HPB Staff Review