Gilgamesh

Rating:
Summary: Great translation of a beautiful epic
Review: This is one of the oldest known heroic poems, with some versions dating back to the Old Babylonian age about 2000 BC. What survives of the twelve tablets that make up the Gilgamesh epic tells a story about a king of Uruk, named Gilgamesh, who goes on an epic search for immortality with his companion Enkidu which leads him through many adventures and eventually takes him to a Noah-like sage who tells him the story of the flood.
Much of the twelve tablets on which the poem were written has been lost, but enough survives (through various copies and versions of the work) to be able to piece it together into a fairly coherent form. Gardner and Maier do an excellent job here of presenting the text, of translating it in a reliable and enjoyable manner, and of providing sufficient notes (actually, over half this book is notes!) to give the reader a very good feel for this beautiful poem.
This is an epic in many senses of the word, but it differs somewhat in scope from the Greek and Medieval heroic poems that we have. Still, for fans of the epic, for those interested in Homer, Virgil, Dante, or Milton, Gilgamesh provides an interesting look at an early Babylonian/Sumerian text.