The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Anonymous (Author), Andrew George (Translator, Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: April 29, 2003

Translated with an Introduction by Andrew George.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Andrew George is Reader in Assyriology at SOAS (the School of Oriential and African Studies) in London, and is also an Honorary Lecturer at the University's Institute of Archaeology. His research has taken him many times to Iraq to visit Babylon and other ancient sites, and to museums in Baghdad, Europe and North America to read the original clay tablets on which the scribes of ancient Iraq wrote.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (April 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140449191
• ISBN-13: 978-0140449198
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,162 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptionally good verse translation, May 29, 2006

By 

Jordan M. Poss (Georgia, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

This was the first translation of Gilgamesh that ever really grabbed me. I had waded through plodding, tedious translations (mostly in prose) before, and been left feeling like Assyriologists must be the most bored people in the world.
George's translation, however, is in verse and adds vigor to what appeared to me, for years, to be a bland jumping off point for bigger and better epics of later eras. I flew through this translation, hanging on every word, and was almost sad to see it end.
The notes and critical bits were nice as well, and the numerous lacunae showed me just how little of the full story we really have. Heartbreaking, really, and it made appreciate those bored people I used to pity.
If you're new to The Epic of Gilgamesh and want an engaging, readable verse translation of it, this is the one to buy.
Highly recommended.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Search for Immortality and the Fear of Death, June 2, 2004

By 

Ray Farmer (Concord, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

I fully agree with the previous reviewers who praised the qualities of this book and the translations by Andrew George. The introduction and supplementary material that accompany the standard version of the Gilgamesh epic really help to put this story into the proper historical context.

This was my first reading of the Gilgamesh epic and what surprised me most about this story was its humanistic focus, especially considering that most of the literature at that time focused on the gods and how they created the universe and mankind. We learn about the superhuman heroes Gilgamesh and Enkidu, who openly spited the gods by performing deeds that ran counter to their interests. After Enkidu dies, however, Gilgamesh gets a reality check and attempts to avoid a similar fate by searching for the secret of immortality. Instead, he only discovers that even a powerful king like himself will never be able to escape death. But he also learns that instead of performing silly quests like searching for immortality, Gilgamesh should "seize the day" and actively use his time among the living to perform actions that will make a king great to his people. In this way, he will be able to ensure that his name lives on among future generations. Now this is great literature!

As other reviewers have commented, Andrew George's translation of the Gilgamesh epic is very approachable and makes for very entertaining reading, even for the general reader (like me) who is not a serious student of ancient history. However, if you want to study the history of the Western literary canon, you have to start here in Mesopotamia.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exhaustive, scholarly, for advanced readers, September 24, 2007

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

I recommend this Penguin Classic, but it offers more thorough scholarly apparatus than usual for the series. This is not meant as a criticism! But, a beginner may find a "version" such as Stephen Mitchell's easier to start with for an overview of the storyline, and a briefer introduction and helpful endnotes. The poem itself is not lengthy, but the ancillary texts and sources, as Andrew George shows us, do take up considerable space which may please enthusiasts but discourage newcomers to this epic poem.

George prepared for Oxford UP in 1999 a two-volume edition, and this Penguin adapts the core of the English translation for a wider audience. It appears ideal for a college classroom or the reader wanting to learn more about the lacunae, the gaps, the language, and the editorial decisions made by George and fellow translators. A fascinating appendix shows how out of grammatical markers, syllabic, and half-syllabic cuneiform incisions the sounds and rhythms and absences that fill this most ancient of narratives turn into what we can understand. To a point.

Terms such as "louvre-door," "glacis-slope," "hie to the forge," and notably Ishtar's exhortation to "stroke my quim" give a rather archaic diction to parts of the translation. George aims obviously for precision in such terminology, but this does clash with the more demotic vernacular chosen by Mitchell in his popularization. Mitchell's also considerably more erotic and develops passages that in their original state, reading George, remain terse. Again, George approaches the thousands of fragments that are still being assembled nearly 150 years after their discovery and observes that this epic is still, amazingly and poignantly, one in progress as we await trained Assyriologists able to decipher not only the later Akkadian but the considerably more challenging and often cryptic Sumerian sources. It's a shame that in a region where so many billions have been spent to destroy the area between the Tigris & Euphrates that a few thousands can not be provided for the study and restoration of the oldest story text we have ever found.