Customer Reviews

Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (World's Classics)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dalley presents many of the major myths of the Mesopotamian culture including "The Epic of Creation", "Atrahasis" (The Flood Myth), and "The Epic of Gilgamesh". Additionally, short essays are provided for most of the translations that help the modern reader to understand the stories. I thought Dalley's introduction did a good job of discussing structural markers and literary devices used in Mesopotamian poetry.

Since this book was published in 1990, more recent translations have become available. For example, Benjamin Foster's "From Distant Days" was published in 1995 and provides more complete translations of many of the same myths presented in Dalley. For example, the "Etana" myth in Foster includes a major portion of Tablet IV, which is completely missing in Dalley. Andrew George's "The Epic of Gilgamesh", which was published in 2003, contains a more complete translation of this story, along with Old Babylonian and Sumerian predecessors.

Despite these translation issues, general readers who want to sample a bit of Mesopotamian literature will most likely be pleased with Dalley's book. Dalley's translations are very accessible, despite the numerous gaps and ommissions present in the texts. For the person who wants a more complete anthology of Mesopotamian literature, I would recommend Foster's book, since he presents other types of literary genre, such as king legends, prayers, and love charms, in addition to more current translations of the major myths.

Dalley's book is perhaps the most recent compilation of Akkadian (the language of the Babylonian empire) myths in translation. The only rival for completeness here would be the Akkadian sections of James Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament - but Dalley trumps Pritchard in having more complete, more modern translations. Each tale is preceded by a brief introduction placing them in their historical context, and are followed by varying amounts of endnotes.

Dalley's translations include:
Atrahasis - one of the Mesopotamian flood stories which resonates with Noah in Genesis and Utnapishtim in Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh - the hero of the Sumerian King Lists, in his story's most complete form

The Old Babylonian version of Gilgamesh - This version is very incomplete and contains bits of Enkidu's introduction and the Humbaba episode, as well as a bit surrounding Gilgamesh's lament/quest for the deceased Enkidu.

The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld - This brief seasonal dying and rising god/goddess story is much more developed in the surviving Sumerian Inanna cycle than it is here.

Nergal and Ereshkigal - Dalley presents the Sulantepe and the Amarna versions of this tale of Nergal's visit to the Underworld.

Adapa - a brief story of the antediluvian king's loss of immortality could draw some parallels with the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis.

Etana - the story of the king of kish who flew to heaven on the back of an eagle.

Anzu(Standard and Old Babylonian versions) - the storm god Ninurta conquers the bird monster Anzu.

The Epic of Creation - Known elsewhere as Enuma Elish, this is the story of the chaos/water/mother goddess/dragon Tiamat and her defeat at the hands of the storm god Marduk, who uses her body to create the universe, and his conquest to take charge of the pantheon.

Theogony of Dunnu - a brief cosmology that shows that antimosity between cattle herders and shepherds goes back further than the Western.

Erra and Ishum - Erra (Nergal) and Marduk argue, while Isshum calms things down.

An excellent anthology of stories from ancient Mesopotamia presented with a high degree of scholarship. Some readers may find the stories difficult to read due to frequent gaps in the text that have resulted from damage to the original cuneiform clay tablets, but it is a small price to pay to ensure accuracy and authenticity in the translation of ancient texts over 4000 years old. While all the translations are based on the various Akkadian versions of the stories, it would have been nice to read the Sumerian versions of these stories where they are extant. Each story is preceded with an introduction and historical context followed by copious technical notes. A detailed glossary is also included to assist the reader. A chart showing a timeline of the stories would have been helpful especially when making comparisons to other ancient stories from biblical, Greek, Middle Eastern, and Arabian traditions.

Despite what you see in some other reader reviews, this book is written for intelligent laypeople with an interest in history, not for scholars. Either that, or I'm more of a scholar than I realized, but apparently not, since I don't read any of the original languages. While translating the myths into clear English, this book presents them as they are, instead of constructing a speculative theory of what they might have been. Yes, there are acknowledged gaps. The book also provides multiple versions of some of the tales, with different gaps in each version. This shows the reality of what we are dealing with and lets readers do some theorizing of their own.
For me, the book offered a fascinating glimpse into a part of history that was long suppressed and nearly forgotten and is now often distorted, especially by people who want to transform Mesopotamian literature into external confirmation of the historical truth of biblical stories. Instead, these myths, including the very different version of the flood story in Gilgamesh, open a separate window onto the primitive, very human mindset that produced the Old Testament. Readers who are not prepared to accept that, and who want Discovery Channel-style historical pabulum, undoubtedly feel a need to disparage this book.

Mesopotamia, now called Iraq, was the scene of a huge and prosperous society over 4000 years ago. This book contains translations of several of the greatest stories written by the Mesopotamians. I'm not a scholar, so can't comment on how accurate it is, however, I can recommend it as a very good read.

The book is written backwards, starting off with the Epic of Gilgamesh, a rollicking tale describing the adventures of a hero king who does not want to die and finishing off with the Creation myths, that describe how several generations of gods create the cosmos, earth and mankind. Feminists will be peeved to hear that after the goddess Tiamat made a mess of thing, Mesopotamians had no truck with female deities.

As the text is taken off ancient tablets, a few lines and words are missing. However, it doesn't in any way spoil the book. When reading translations of ancient texts, the fun is usually spoilt by academics who feel they ought to write in Chaucerian English just to show how old the real story is. In this book there is no such problem. The English is wonderfully modern which makes these tales accessible to anyone. Great stuff and well worth taking a look at.

Stephanie Dalley presents us an excellent translation of Ancient Babylonian cuneiform texts. This Akkadian translation includes all the essentials in Mesopotamian Mythology, from the Epic of Creation to The Story of Ishtar's Descent into the underworld and of course the Gilgamesh Epic (Standard and Old Babylonian versions). This book is well worth the purchase. However, I do also suggest adding two other Mesopotamian Myth anthologies to your library. "The Ancient Near East" Volumes 1 & 2 Edited by James Pritchard are enduring translations. Pritchard develops more Sumerian Myths in his book than Dally preceeds to in her anthology. All of these books are excellent sources into Mesopotamian literature and highly recommended.

A collection of the major Mesopotamian myths translated by a respected scholar. This is an excellent source for those desiring an authoritative translation. Even so, these myths can be somewhat awkward to read given Dalley's use of square brackets to indicate gaps in the text and omission dots to indicate an unknown word or phrase. No doubt these are accepted academic techniques for translating ancient texts, but I do hope someone will come along and render these myths in a more enthralling format. For just such an example of how ancient texts can be made to come alive for the modern reader, see "Gilgamesh: A New English Version" by Stephen Mitchell . Nonetheless, I give Dalley five stars, but also highly, highly recommend Mitchell's new version of Gilgamesh.

If you're interested in this remote region of literature and wonder what's behind the scholarly debates, this is a really good collection. Not only does it reflect recent advances in comprehending ancient Mesopotamian languages, the translation is clear, notes are abundant, and introductions are excellent. Just as important is the range of selections. This one volume contains "Gilgamesh", "Atrahasis", "Enuma Elish", "The Descent of Ishtar Into The Underworld" and several other myths. Both standard and alternative versions are given for "Gilgamesh" and some other works. A terrific value!

This is an excellent collection of several ancient Mesopotamian mythical stories. The original sources used for these translations were all written in Akkadian (which includes Semitic Babylonian and Assyrian dialects). Included in this collection are "Atrahasis", "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (standard and Old Babylonian versions), "The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld", "Nergal and Ereshkigal" (standard and Amarna versions), "Adapa", "Etana", "Anzu" (standard and Old Babylonian versions), "The Epic of Creation", "Theogony of Dunnu", and "Erra and Ishum".

This large collection of stories, along with the well written introductions and notes provided, enables the reader to put these epic stories into context, and recognize the parallels within the different stories. I prefer this book to those that concentrate only on the Gilgamesh epic.

Though many of you would already know this, I think it's important that lay readers realize that this book contains direct translations of these tablets--so chunks of text will be missing from the stories. This is not a transliteration, so you're not going to have a series of stories that read particularly easily.

However, if you need to do research on ancient Mesopotamian mythology this book is a true treasure to behold. I'm writing a novel that requires me to dig deep into everything we truly know about these ancient civilizations, and I feel very confident that the book makes the most truth-preserving claims as the author could make, regarding what we can say for certain. She puts relevant background information as well as brief histories on the studies of each myth, then tells the tales while preserving the poetic style that the mythical originators wrote with.