Gilgamesh A Verse Narrative

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780451627186
• ISBN10: 0451627180
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1972-04-01
• Publisher: Signet

Summary

The origins of the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh extend back to the third millenium B.C., fifteen hundred years before Homer. This story of a great king and his doomed friend was passed on to the Babylonians, who made it their national epic, and its rediscovery in the 19th century sparked an interest that has steadily grown. A reading of Gilgamesh swiftly demonstrates the reasons for its time-defying vitality. Its themes are love and death and man's attempt to reconcile himself to tragedy, conveyed with a wealth of imagination and an intensity of felling unrivaled in the epic form. Now this work has been rendered into modern English by Herbert Mason. A triumph of scholarship, a masterpiece of style, a labor of love, this new version of Gilgamesh is one of the great experiences of literature. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Herbert Mason is the William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of History and Religious Thought at Boston University. His interpretation of Gilgamesh has been in print for more than thirty years and has been translated into at least six languages. He lives in Phillipston, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative	11	(95)
Names and Places Appearing in the Narrative	95	(2)
About the Gilgamesh	97	(10)
An Autobiographical Postscript	107	(10)
Afterword	117
John H. Marks