Epic of Gilgamesh
Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Format: E-book
Number of pages: 372
ISBN-13: 9780241289907
Copyright date: 1999
First sentence: Prologue and paean. King Gilgamesh tyrannizes the people of Uruk, who complain to the gods. To divert his superhuman energies the gods create his counterpart, the wild man Enkidu, who is brought up by the animals of the wild. Enkidu is spotted by a trapper, who lures him away from the herd with a prostitute. The prostitute shows him her arts and proposes to take him to Uruk, where Gilgamesh has been seeing him in dreams.

He who saw the Deep, the country’s foundation,

[who] knew …, was wise in all matters!

[Gilgamesh, who] saw the Deep, the country’s foundation,

[who] knew …, was wise in all matters!

[He] … everywhere …

and [learnt] of everything the sum of wisdom.

He saw what was secret, discovered what was hidden,

he brought back a tale of before the Deluge.
Description: The ancient Sumerian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest written stories in existence, translated with an introduction by Andrew George in Penguin Classics. 

Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world's oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, The Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind's eternal struggle with the fear of death. 

The Babylonian version has been known for over a century, but linguists are still deciphering new fragments in Akkadian and Sumerian. Andrew George's gripping translation brilliantly combines these into a fluid narrative and will long rank as the definitive English Gilgamesh. If you enjoyed The Epic of Gilgamesh, you might like Homer's Iliad, also available in Penguin Classics.'A masterly new verse translation'The Times'Andrew George has skilfully bridged the gap between a scholarly re-edition and a popular work'