The Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh is an excellent achievement. It makes this great work accessible to college and general readers. --Kevin Herbert, Professor of Classics, Washington UniversityI welcome this edition of The Epic of Gilgamesh for making accessible to modern readers the poetry and the drama, presented in heroic terms of life, love, friendship and, finally the recognition and acceptance of the ultimate reality of human existence. It is one of the great epic tales surviving from the ancient world of 'The Land Between-the-Two-Rivers,' Mesopotamia, and though incomplete, reflects an ancient range of human experience and emotion not so far removed from our own...The epic states, 'When the gods created mankind, they allotted death to mankind, keeping life eternal for themselves.'? Yet while death is inevitable, Jackson's lyrical and moving presentation gives renewed life to this wonderful tale of Gilgamesh. --Robert D. Biggs, The Oriental Institute, The University of ChicagoThe Great Books Foundation has declared The Epic of Gilgamesh a classic...The Bolchazy-Carducci edition has been adopted by Great Books Foundation.Gilgamesh permits us to tie the ancient Near East and the ancient Mediterranean together like nothing else: no other document makes so clear the symbolism of the snake or the divine bull, or the situation of temple prostitution, or even the background of Plato's Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Ourania. They are all here in Gilgamesh, plain as day. These unifying tie-ins make it logical to use Gilgamesh as a lead-off text in a classical mythology course.The Bolchazy-Carducci edition, more readable than its predecessors, makes it practicable. Students liked it, and for the professor it is one light bulb after another. --Thomas N. Winter, University of NebraskaThe text is excellent in its clarity of story line and motif. --Jim Caputo, Instructor of English, Latin, Humanities, Regis UniversityWith Kapheim's remarkable woodcuts that go so well with Jackson's powerful poetry, and with Biggs' excellent introduction, including those fascinating photos of cuneiform tablets, ziggurats, and cylinder seals, the paperback is a steal... It should be an ideal textbook for a college (or high school) course in mythology or epic literature... --Anne Groton and Jim May, St. Olaf's College