The Epic of Gilgamesh (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393975169 ISBN 13: 9780393975161

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001

Synopsis

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 around 1700 B.C.E., the book includes seven Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, written before 2000 B.C.E., as well as the later Hittite version and other related sources, among them a Babylonian parody of the epic.

"Criticism" provides interpretive essays by William Moran, Thorkild Jacobsen, and Rivkah Harris and concludes with a modern poetic response to the Gilgamesh epic by Hillary Major.

A Glossary of Proper Names and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin R. Foster is Professor of Assyriology at Yale University, where he has taught since 1975. His books include Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia, Sargonic Tablets from Telloh in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, and Administration and Use of Institutional Land in Sargonic Sumer, and Umma in the Sargonic Period.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393975169
• ISBN 13: 9780393975161
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Foster Benjamin R.