The pieces of the jigsaw are mixed in with pieces of other puzzles, themselves spread across many centuries and several languages.” It is now a jigsaw puzzle with pieces scattered across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. “No one institution possesses a full text of Gilgamesh in Standard Babylonian. Moreover, new fragments regularly surface, which almost always force a reinterpretation. So, there is quite a lot of room for interpretation. At the same time, there are several older versions of certain story parts, so that some gaps can be filled up to a certain point. After all, we know only well 2/3 of the text of what is called the 'Standard version', composed somewhere at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE there are even passages where we only have a few words per line. If you follow Schmidt, reading Gilgamesh, the first great epic that we know, is an illustration of a postmodernist take on life. I think Schmidt strikes the right note: he knows perfectly how to present the historical background of both the story and the cuneiform tablets it was written on, as well as highlighting the poetic and dramatic power of the story. Nothing but praise for this beautiful little book. Anyway, this is a great little book, about a great story! More extensive review in my History account on Goodreads. Scmidt’s preference clearly is for the rather extensive, very academic translation by Andrew George (versions in 1999, 20), although I suspect that it will be too detailed for the average reader.

Sandars, dating from 1960 but still popular, is the culprit: she deliberately distorted the story to give it more dramatic power, and she couldn’t even read Sumerian nor Akkadia. Quite a few of them take great liberty with the historical and textual reality of the story. Another strong point of this book is that Schmidt zooms in on the different and often very diverging translations (in English). Schmidt convinced me of the enormous value and the unique quality of the Gilgamesh story., especially in its more coherent ‘Standard Babylonian’ version, composed at the end of the 2nd millennium. But the past five months I read a great amount of studies on ancient Mesopotamian history, and a few of the ancient stories of that time, and that made me reconsider.

I read the Gilgamesh story for the first time 25 years ago in a heavily edited version and then it didn't mean much to me, it seemed like a hero story like there are dime a dozen. What a fantastic book this is, the perfect introduction to that strange text, one of the oldest narratives we know (imagine, the oldest fragments date from the end of the 3rd millennium BCE).

Michael schmidt gilgamesh