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How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

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Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#31
post #3

How appropriate! I have recently (4 months?) started studying Akkadian. Just an intellectual curiosity. I don't really expect to get far. But it has been fascinating. Let me tell you the factoid that got me started down this road: More writings survive in Akkadian than from the classical Latin world. The entire output in Latin from c. 400 BC - 300 AD pales in comparison to what we've dug up out of burned royal librar…

I've always wondered, how certain is our understanding of Akkadian? Could the dirge singer have been a tap dancer?

My very small awareness of the history made it sound fairly speculative.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#32
post #20

I read Stephen Mitchell's translation, which isnt the most academic but certainly the most readable. It was the 1st time I actually finished the book. My only problem is: It looks like parts of the story are missing. Certainly, the ending is very downer. Spoilers: Gilamesh fails to save his friend, loses the immortality herbs, and comes home empty handed and humiliated. Certainly, one of the lessons is that Gilgamesh…

I find the ending a poignant, even beautiful, testament to the universality of the human condition. Even kings struggle with having to deal with loss and mortality, and it has always been thus, an unbroken thread through the thousands of years that connect us with those who originally developed the text. I also love the restaurant at the end of the universe element to the text. Without giving anything away to those w…

I've never seen anyone compare Gilgamesh to the the Restaurant at the end of the universe! :D :D

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#33

I had a class in college that focused in large part on Gilgamesh. It was one of the few classes I enjoyed in college. I loved that my very religious teacher said the flood story in Gilgamesh added to the validity of the Bible since it is another historical account of a large flood. I thought it did the opposite and showed that the Bible is just another book of myths with some historical events peppered in, like Gilga…

Because it’s a bad take and conveys a shallow, simplistic understanding of literature as either fact or myth. Viewing literary artifacts in such a way is too black and white, overly modern and just not very useful when it comes to serious study.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#34
post #17
post #8

I'm not an expert but I've probably read a whole lot more Near East literature than, considered over a population of billions, nearly everyone. In English translation, but still. A half dozen volumes, I think, cover to cover? Maybe seven? Gilgamesh is the only work out of all of that, that I'd recommend to pretty much anyone who likes literature. Egypt has a couple promising, if relatively late, tales, but both are o…

It depends a lot on the translation I suppose, because my experience with the old testament was rather unpleasant - reading it in centuries-old language brought me no joy at all.

AFAIK there's no reason to favor English translations of the Old Testament (or anything else) that use now-archaic English, except maybe for passages which are themselves written, in the original, in a kind of archaic or very formal mode, relative to the rest. It can be accurate enough (for whatever purpose—poetic, literal accuracy, et c.) without being stuffy or outdated.

Another factor in my naming it the probably #2, after Gilgamesh, though, is that everything else is just that bad to a modern reader, so the OT looks pretty damn good compared to all that, even if you're stuck with the King James Version. My favorite story from ancient Egypt[0], I wouldn't recommend to many readers, because damn, it's a slog, and it's still an easier read than some of the others, or than anything I've seen in Sumerian or Akkadian (Gilgamesh excepted). It probably tells better, as a joke (it's a comedic story), than it reads, if you had someone really talented telling it.

That's typical for other Near Eastern literatures, too. Lots and lots of repetition, is the main problem for a modern reader, as far as the prose goes. Much of it also doesn't really relate a story, exactly, and the cultural and religious references are obscure at best. You don't even get mythology, really, for the most part. Prayers or incantations, sure, but there's no Hesiod or Ovid of Sumerian religion. There's a little of that, sure, but it's very fragmentary and you have to bring a lot of context from outside of it to make much sense of what you're reading.

For the millennia(!) of texts we have from Egypt, for instance, there are only a few short (and often fragmentary) works that we'd recognize as stories. You have to settle for reading a variety of non-fiction or semi-fictional genres to get much more out of it—"mirrors for princes" and scribal didactic texts, which are probably the most interesting of the lot, plus endless formulaic and not-especially-illuminating funerary texts, and a good deal of historical propaganda about military victories, mostly from monumental inscriptions, almost all of which are intensely boring even if you're really into military history. And that's probably the richest literature we have from that region in the pre-classical period, at least as far as what's available in English translation.

[0] The Eloquent Peasant

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#35

I read Stephen Mitchell's translation, which isnt the most academic but certainly the most readable. It was the 1st time I actually finished the book. My only problem is: It looks like parts of the story are missing. Certainly, the ending is very downer. Spoilers: Gilamesh fails to save his friend, loses the immortality herbs, and comes home empty handed and humiliated. Certainly, one of the lessons is that Gilgamesh…

The ending feels complete, and ever-relevant, to me. I think of it every time rich people freezing their heads or getting blood transfusions from kids or talking about brain-to-computer transfers comes up, which is pretty often on this site.

[deleted]

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#36
post #8

I'm not an expert but I've probably read a whole lot more Near East literature than, considered over a population of billions, nearly everyone. In English translation, but still. A half dozen volumes, I think, cover to cover? Maybe seven? Gilgamesh is the only work out of all of that, that I'd recommend to pretty much anyone who likes literature. Egypt has a couple promising, if relatively late, tales, but both are o…

What are the promising Egyptian tales?

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#37

I had a class in college that focused in large part on Gilgamesh. It was one of the few classes I enjoyed in college. I loved that my very religious teacher said the flood story in Gilgamesh added to the validity of the Bible since it is another historical account of a large flood. I thought it did the opposite and showed that the Bible is just another book of myths with some historical events peppered in, like Gilga…

Or maybe the Bible and Gilgamesh comes from the need to pass on important lessons and facts to the next chunk of humans i.e. this is why it's important to learn how to make boats, sometimes climate changes and you need a backup plan, don't eat pork because God says so -- and also because if not properly cooked you'll get trichinosis (they didn't know this but throwing a label of pork = evil is good enough). If you read the bible at face value it has pretty basic rules of society.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ending feels complete, and ever-relevant, to me. I think of it every time rich people freezing their heads or getting blood transfusions from kids or talking about brain-to-computer transfers comes up, which is pretty often on this site.

ha! Yes, the book does teach us the dangers of arrogance, of thinking we can become immortal by some trick or "magic" or technology-- and I suppose it does teach that lesson very well

I like how it shows people've been worried about that, and working on the problem, for about as long as we've had writing, at least. Seems we've pretty much never not worried about death, which makes sense, but it's comforting to have confirmation that it's such an enduring part of the human condition, I guess. Egyptian literature backs that up, as do practices in China—in fact, it seems like almost anywhere there were rich kings, they were very concerned with attaining immortality.

And hey, sooner or later, maybe someone will manage it. But most of these rich folks freezing their heads are just Gilgamesh. Same shit as 4000+ years ago.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#39
post #22

I read Stephen Mitchell's translation, which isnt the most academic but certainly the most readable. It was the 1st time I actually finished the book. My only problem is: It looks like parts of the story are missing. Certainly, the ending is very downer. Spoilers: Gilamesh fails to save his friend, loses the immortality herbs, and comes home empty handed and humiliated. Certainly, one of the lessons is that Gilgamesh…

I rather like how the story is bookended. After everything that happens, it ends with Gilgamesh reciting an excerpt from the beginning to Ur-Shanabi the boatman: Go up, Ur-Shanabi, pace out the walls of Uruk. Study the foundation terrace and examine the brickwork. Is not its masonry kiln-fired brick? And did not seven masters lay its foundations? One square mile of city, one square mile of gardens, One square mile of…

This was after Gilgamesh, fearing death, tried to gain immortality and failed. He's back to his town, but he's not afraid any more. I loved this poignant ending: he's not bitter; cities are there to stay through buildings (walls) and society (agricultural production, religion); meaning we cannot gain immortality as individuals, but what we achieve as a collective outlasts us.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#40
post #36
post #8

I'm not an expert but I've probably read a whole lot more Near East literature than, considered over a population of billions, nearly everyone. In English translation, but still. A half dozen volumes, I think, cover to cover? Maybe seven? Gilgamesh is the only work out of all of that, that I'd recommend to pretty much anyone who likes literature. Egypt has a couple promising, if relatively late, tales, but both are o…

What are the promising Egyptian tales?

It's probably not what GP was thinking of because it's not relatively late and reasonably complete, but Sinuhe is probably the greatest surviving work of Middle Egyptian fiction.
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