Can I read Gilgamesh : a New Translation of the Ancient Epic with Essays on the Poem, Its Past, and Its Passion on EtoBox?

Gilgamesh : a New Translation of the Ancient Epic with Essays on the Poem, Its Past, and Its Passion by Sophus Helle is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Gilgamesh : a New Translation of the Ancient Epic with Essays on the Poem, Its Past, and Its Passion about?

Although the Mesopotamian epic about the adventures of a 17-foot-tall ancient king is one of the oldest written narratives in existence, we haven’t been reading it for very long. The first cuneiform tablets were translated in the late 19th century, and the text continues to change as researchers decipher new fragments. In 2018, researchers discovered that Gilgamesh’s buddy Enkidu, a wild man who becomes civilized after a marathon sex fest with a woman named Shamhat, had actually been going at it for twice as long as previously believed. (Two weeks, not seven nights.) The edition I read, a 2021 translation by Helle that was recommended by Defector, had long sections that were left blank—placeholders for the passages we haven’t found yet, and might never. But there is an echo between the story in Gilgamesh and the story of Gilgamesh, that I find deeply moving. The epic is, in part, about the power of knowledge. Gilgamesh, we are told, traveled to the end of the Earth following the death of his friend, and “brought home a story, from before the Flood.” (Yes, that flood.) He found some ancient kernel of knowledge—a lesson, incidentally, about immortality, from Utnapishtim, the Flood’s

Who reads Gilgamesh : a New Translation of the Ancient Epic with Essays on the Poem, Its Past, and Its Passion?

Author

Sophus Helle

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published

2021

Language

EN

ISBN

9780300251180

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Literary Criticism, Fiction, Poetry

Updated

2026-03-24