Product Description

The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic is the oldest long poem in the world, with a history going back four thousand years. It tells the fascinating and moving story of Gilgamesh's heroic deeds and lonely quest for immortality. This book collects for the first time all the known sources in the original cuneiform, including many fragments never published before. The author's personal study of every available fragment has produced a definitive edition and translation, complete with comprehensive introductory chapters that place the poem and its hero in context.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1493236 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 986 pages

Review
... monumental ... splendid book ... expect to see a revival of Gilgamesh studies in the next few years, renewed and invigorated by George's magnificent study. Bryn Mawr Classical Review ... exhaustive ... comprehensive ... George is an excellent cuneiformist and his edition is as complete as anyone might hope ... a great achievement. The Times Higher Education Supplement George will be thanked by Assyriologists for the labour of producing such a comprehensive edition of all known pieces of text, great and small. The Times Higher Education Supplement

About the Author

A. R. George is Professor of Babylonian at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Customer Reviews

Magisterial Ancient Semitic Old/Middle/Young/New Babylonian Scholarship at its Highest Standards!
Dr. A. R. George has given the rich post-modern Babylonian Cuneiform scholarly community a standard to be emulated in all ancient text scholarship, especially, the cuneiform tablet textual tradition.

Not only will the reader of this treatise learn mankind's fetish for immortality, male virility, and homoerotic warrior tanist love affairs (Gilgamesh and Enkidu), (s)he will learn the literary, historical and religious traditions that produced and preserved this oldest, long poetical treatise in human written record (40 centuries of production, dissemination and reception). You will also receive the standard insight of the ancient mind into the netherworld and the above-world of gods.

Dr. George has produced a 'masterpiece', if I made use that over-used, vulgar, trite term. But in Dr. George's case, it is more than a truthful attribution. This model scholarship will set the bar very high for future Babylonian cuneiform textual scholars to achieve. Dr. George's industry in ferreting out all the fragments of this Semitic epic composition in their Old Babylonian, Middle Babylonian & Assyrian editions is a feat of labor few scholars are capable of. Not only does he possess the mental power of tenacity, but also the artistic powers of beauty in presentation, love & passion for his field, and an extremely acute intelligence of the highest order. In short, he is a savant!

The price is a mere $564.00 for this brilliant work of scholarship. It is 1,176 pages in two volumes. One would expect to pay more for the publishing feat of reproducing ancient Babylonian cuneiform ligatures in written print on paper. Oxford University Press is to be congratulated for undertaking this great challenge.

If you are a young scholar or student, start saving your money to buy this treatise. It will change your life and ennoble your humanity! You will learn from this ancient corpus that not much has changed in the human condition! We have only learned to be more brutal, lethal and destructive towards our planet and our fellow man, since this great artistic composition was composed.

If you are thinking of pursuing a M.Phil. Degree from Oxford University, Oxford, England in its Babylonian Cuneiform Coarsework, you are blackmailed---you must purchase this learned, scholarly treatise!

John E.D.P. Malin,
Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer
Executive Division
P.O. Drawer 460
Cecilia, Louisiana 70521-0460

Contact: InformaticaMalin@gmail.com

The REAL Gilgamesh Epic
The best edition available. Not cheap, but worth the
price for those interested in the original.