The epic of Gilgamesh
by Benjamin R. Foster, Douglas Frayne, Gary M. Beckman · first published 2001
10% recommend83% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Gives readers direct access to a very old literary text and serves as a route into ancient Near Eastern literature. Pairs well with related podcasts or histories for context.
Common criticism: Translation is called wooden and fragmentary; hard to follow without background
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"The Epic of Gilgamesh is the world's oldest epic masterpiece. More than a thousand years before Homer or the Bible, Mesopotamian poets sang of the hero-king Gilgamesh, who sought to crown his superhuman exploits by finding eternal life. This Norton Critical Edition presents translations by Benjamin R. Foster, Douglas Frayne, and Gary Beckman of the entire Gilgamesh narrative tradition, with some texts now in English for the first time. In addition to the eleven tablets of the great Akkadian epic, written about 1700 B.C.E., the book includes seven Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, written before
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…literature, and especially the Bible (not the King James). Some of these texts are boring to a non-religious reader, but other are fantastic, like Job and Qohelet. To dive in an even older world, "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and a bit of Sumerian literature gave me a strong connection to people that disappeared milleniums ago.
on “Why Read the Classics? (1986)” ↗In addition to the book written by the author of this article, there is another fascinating study about the discovery of the Assyrian archives and the recovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh: David Damrosch (2007) Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh https://www.amazon.com/Buried-Book-Rediscovery-Great-Gilgame...
on “The Library of Ashurbanipal” ↗…Galbraith - The Predator State maybe a bit. Oh and Andrés Reséndez - A Land So Strange - The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca of course!! Robert Dallek - Nixon and Kissinger - Partners in Power (2007), Epic of Gilgamesh, Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene, Niel Strauss - The Game. That about covers it. It took me about an hour to compose the list, the main point it brings across is a very nuanced understanding of what…
on “US drone strike kills 15 civilians in Yemen by mistake” ↗I'll check that one out. John Harris' "Epic of Gilgamesh" podcast is also a good reading of the text, though it's probably not as dramatic.
on “How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)” ↗There is an episode on the Epic of Gilgamesh which is absolutely fascinating. Highly recommended.
on “Melvyn Bragg steps down from presenting In Our Time” ↗…reaction. There's no shortage of movies, cultural works, and tv shows that tell us that immortality is unwanted, unattainable, selfish, or somehow otherwise bad, starting with our oldest myths and stories, Epic of Gilgamesh. If the goal of medicine is to cure or prevent every diseases and dysfunction in the human body, then we must conclude that as an unavoidable side effect that being healthier will extend long life. If…
on “NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan” ↗…Jules Verne wrote steampunk a century before the term was even coined. Cervantes wrote a novel before novels were a thing (at least in the West), and thereby defined what a novel should look like. The Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Greek tradition of epic poetry by at least a millennium, but nobody denies that it's an epic poem.
on “Cyberpunk derivatives” ↗…ancient Near Eastern materials so fascinating. We're always discovering something long forgotten, and then it provides evidence roping it back into other surviving literature, stories, or mythologies (the Epic of Gilgamesh being one such work).
on “Babylon's Mystery Goddess” ↗…heritage. Third, there are books that are exceptionally enjoyable to read because of the quality of writing. What are you after? Things that were interesting to me for representing older times -- The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Battle of Maldon. Books that I didn't enjoy but I'm glad to know their contents -- all that old Greek and Latin stuff. Books that I enjoy rereading just for their quality -- things by Tolkien, Eco,…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite classic books?” ↗The Epic of Gilgamesh, in its tablet form, is both fragmentary and rather wooden in translation. It is very difficult to derive meaning from it when read in isolation: you practically have to be an Ancient Near Eastern scholar…
on “How to Read “Gilgamesh”” ↗…isn't some wacky crazy idea but a very common thing in the area. I might say the academic integrity of most non-religious disciplines is horrible and lazy. Academics will take text (for example The Epic of Gilgamesh) treat all the copies as one story and try to prove stupid things compared to the Old Testament that are just plain silly or they don't know how to read dates. Heck the way academics had treated the New…
on “I Would Rather Be Herod’s Pig: The History of a Taboo” ↗…the story is used to build the mythical story that we read now. Just enjoy reading it, but don't take it was written history or anything without solid backing. p.p.s A comparable mythological story is Epic of Gilgamesh. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh). There are several elements in that story that is said to have inspired the Old Testament.
on “Why Can’t Apes Talk?” ↗Ancient fiction does talk about feelings; the author evidently hasn't read any to any great degree. I mean, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Iliad to The Tale of the Heike to the Bible; plenty of emotion in all of them, and plenty of description of internal mental state. It's true the sagas don't so much; mostly because it was a spoken…
on “Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings? (2017)” ↗…said about our modern, ultra-connected existences, the omnipresence of entertainment and its influence on society. Super hero movies and Funko Pops though? That doesn't seem particularly new to me. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of "Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk". Most of Greek mythology is about Gods behaving very much…
on “Funko Pop became a $686M business” ↗…speak to us—and, not only that, but can tell us something about who we are, something that we would not have seen otherwise, or would have seen differently. I think other works such as the Bible, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Bhagavad Gita, and the Koran would have made the authors point much better about how books written a long time ago and in very different circumstances still can tell us who we are. Surely, these books…
on “The Slowness of Literature and the Shadow of Knowledge” ↗