The Epic of Gilgamish A Fragment of the Gilgamish Legend in Old-Babylonian Cuneiform

by Stephen Langdon

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Mythology, Classics, Poetry, Fiction, Historical Fiction, School, Audiobook

34 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1917

About the author

Stephen Herbert Langdon was an American-born British Assyriologist. Born to George Knowles and Abigail Hassinger Langdon in Monroe, Michigan, Langdon studied at the University of Michigan, participating in Phi Beta Kappa and earning an A. B. in 1898 and an A. M. in 1899. Following this he went to New York's Union Theological Seminary, graduating in 1903, and then on to Columbia University to obtain a Ph.D. in 1904. Langdon then became a fellow of Columbia in France (1904-1906), during which time he was ordained as a deacon of the Church of England (1905) in Paris. Subsequently he moved to Oxford University in England, becoming a Shillito reader in Assyriology in 1908, a British citizen in 1913, and after the retirement of Archibald Sayce, a Professor of Assyriology in 1919. However, in 1916, when World War I had diminished the size of his classes in England, he spent some time at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, serving as the curator of its Babylonian section.

Reviews

[D. Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the Project Gutenberg edition, linked at the bottom.

My low rating is not actually a judgement of the book itself, but rather an expression of disappointment at the misleading title. This is not an attempt to present the complete epic of Gilgamesh. Rather, it is a scholarly work analyzing two newly-discovered (at the time) tablets, giving the transliteration of the cuneiform, and then an English translation, along with images of the tablets. As such it is very brief, and as a reading experience, wholly unsatisfying.

As a work of scholarship and documentation, it may be excellent. However, I was looking to read the actual Epic, not the homework that lead to piecing it together. As such, the title is false advertising.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18897

[Joe Maffa · Rating 3 out of 5]

unexpectedly freaky

[Illiterate · Rating 1 out of 5]

An unsatisfying morsel of archaeology.

[Ariella Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good redaction of this ancient epic. Perhaps it’s a little worrisome how amusing I found it?

[Gareth Norris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The particular translation that I found by Langdon (which admittedly was free on Apple Books) was very short, only a fragment of the full story and even then, still containing gaps. It did include a transliteration which I thought was cool, though. I recently started another later translation that appears to be much longer so hopefully it is a more complete story.

[Mckenzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this for my World Lit class, and it was okay. Considering the text was put in English after being translated from many other languages and read really awkward, the story was enjoyable enough.

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gilgamesh--our first attempt at the novel, carved in cuneiform into clay tablets as a first draft, and then workshopped for a thousand years--nails everything we'll come to treasure centuries later when we look back at heroic epics, tragedies, and even more recent absurdist existential tomes. The core of what humans could do with complex storytelling, was there right from the start. Thank you 'easy life' in the Fertile Crescent.

Gilgamesh is the king of Uruk. He's raised incredible walls, and continued his father's work, pushing civilization forward, advancing agriculture, saying goodbye to the wilderness and the hunter-gatherer life. Every day there are festivals in his Uruk. Every day is a party. But King Gilgamesh is bored. He is a great young man--son of a goddess, no less, albeit still mortal--no one can challenge him in battle, yet he spends his free time antagonizing his subjects, fighting men who cannot defend themselves and stealing their brand new brides on their wedding nights to deflower them. The Gods see how much pain Gilgamesh is causing his own people and they ask Gilgamesh's goddess mother to intervene on behalf of the people of Uruk. She builds a 'primitive man' named Enkidu and casts into the wilderness where he is given time to develop a powerful spirit. He is a man covered with long hair who runs with the wild beasts. He drinks at the watering hole with gazelles. He fights and kills lions with his bare hands. He masters what has been lost in the lives of the 'city folk' of the Uruk. One day a hunter comes and traps Enkidu. A 'harlot' named Shamhat ventures into the wilderness and has sex with Enkidu for seven days, and then convinces him to come with her to the city. There in Uruk, Enkidu is taught to relish the taste of bread and ale and he becomes a 'modern man'. When he sees Gilgamesh attempting to steal away a bride on her wedding night, Enkidu, the only equal of Gilgamesh on earth, picks a fight. A great battle ensues, just like Roddy Piper and Keith David in John Carpenter's They Live. Walls shake as they DDT, and throw devastating haymakers. What results is what always happens when two badasses of equal merit engage in a knock down drag out fist fight, they become best buddies. The first best buddies in literature.

What can two new best friends do in a boring town that they're too macho for? Nothing really. They go on a series of perilous quests, first fighting a troll in a forest of cedar and then, when Ishtar tries to seduce Gilagamesh but is denied, they battle her Bull of Heaven (the constellation Taurus) and defeat it. There is a punishment for all of this questing though. The gods decree that Enkidu must die. He would have loved to have died in battle (as all heroes in the epics will wish to--becoming part of the songs) but instead he dies sick in bed, after the fighting is long over. Lamenting his fate in the epic, I came to an incredible break in the text that read:

"The description of Enkidu's final death throes, which no doubt filled the remaining thirty or so lines of Tablet VII, is still to be recovered"

How about that--you cry tears to your friend because you didn't get to do the honorable thing and die in battle and then your death itself happens to be on a clay tablet that is broken and lost to time as well? Does anything say more about the plight of being a mortal, everyman, than that? Possibly. At the end of Enkidu's funeral itself there is this message from the translator again:

"The rest of the description of Enkidu's funeral, which would have occupied the remaining thirty or so lines, is yet to come to light"


... After six days of mourning, Gilgamesh sees a maggot crawl out his friend's nose and he realizes he too will one day die. Then of course we have further wanderings by Gilgamesh in an attempt to complete impossible tasks alone in an attempt to learn the secrets of immortality from a man who is basically, Noah surviving the Flood (Deluge) but Gilgamesh fails these tests and eventually returns to his people, a humbler, older, wiser man, no longer so bored with life because he has actually lived it. No longer causing pain to his people. His immortality denied, he is literatures first loser, in a string of losers who will teach us what it means to be alive and to wait to die and to make the most of the limited time we have here.


Did Homer know this story? Did the Hebrews who wrote the books that became the Old Testament know this story? My answer is: The call is coming from inside the house and the house is the modern man who left the wilderness and first brewed some beer and then needed couldn't stop their tongue from wagging out a story that would thrill, that would perplex, that would break your heart forever.

[whoknowswhynot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not so much the Epic of Gilgamesh as the scholarly interpretation of one fragment of it. Brief and concise.

I read it for class, not leisure, but I do plan on seeking out a more in depth translation of the full tale.

[mule64 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really fair to even rate this as it's only some small fractions of a bigger writing work. However, it just was a bit of a dissapointment.

[RetroHaven5976 · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amazing first epic given by the first civilization and is the first epic revolving around a character of any form.
The biblical connections to Christian literature are undeniable and amazing in the totality of history combined.
However years of the story being lost to time have given it a lot less substance and a lot of parts are lost as a whole that take away the story away partially, or some cases, entirely.
I still highly recommend it to any history buffs or anyone else open to read a story thousands of years old.

[Tyron van Geest · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking for a captivating piece of literature, you're in the wrong place. This was made 4000 years ago in the Babylonian period. This is a scholar investigation of how from the earliest time of writing, men had already been preoccupied and struggles with the concept of creation and mortality. Must be seen in bigger pictures and certainly cannot be understood independently from its historical context and its psychological and philosophical implications.

[Liam Malone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This brief book focuses on a newly found tablet. It is a decent intro, then transliteration with a translation and notes/index. It ends with pics of the tablet. This portion of the epic is on tablet 2 with dreams, Gilgamesh's Mom, Enkidu becoming civilized by the harlot. They men battle in the doorway which they destroy. If you feel like spending the money, then buy this as it does add some new material.

[Kristina · Rating 1 out of 5]

The version of this “book” that I found through the library was really just a translation of the first tablet. If you know anything about the story, it stops right as Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight and become friends, which is basically the beginning. This was part of Project Gutenberg. Considering I cannot find any other digital versions through my library, I am afraid the remaining tablets have not been translated by the project. Don’t read this version. Find the full version somewhere else.

[Michael Marpaung · Rating 3 out of 5]

This version is incomplete and misses a lot of the Gilgamesh story. This isn't a knock on Langdon, as he was one of the earliest to have translated this epic. So he was obviously working with incomplete information. That said, readers who wants to get into the Epic of Gilgamesh should be aware of this fact.

[Mehedi Shafi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well I don't really think I understood most of the book. All those broken explanations. But the story in the epic seemed quite a representation of the king gilgamesh as an oppressive one. Would like learn more about him though.

[Lililyanana · Rating 4 out of 5]

The text is partially Old-Babylonian and partially a literal translation to English. The introduction was informative. Of course because this is a translation of a fragment, a lot of the story and details are missing.

[Rory Wemyss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confusing version of the Poem, as someone else put it more of academic exercise in the finding of new tablets relating to Gilgamesh.

Do not read this as a first time reader of the poem, you will be left sorely disappointed.

[Lilly Pittman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am re-reading this book again 9 years after I first read it and wow. The first time I read it, I hyper fixated on the flood. Now I see how grief is a prinary motif and who the characters are. It’s a quick? Easy read. Very enjoyable.

[eclipsehour · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's not a bad translation per se, but it's very fragmentary compared to other translations/versions i've heard about like sophus helle and stephen mitchell. if you're looking for a version of the epic that's less scholarly, it's best to get a different and more recent translation

[Lola · Rating 2 out of 5]

This copy seems incomplete. After reading another review I found that to be correct. I’ll keep looking for a full translation as I’ve always wanted to read the epic.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only a fragment of the epic is here.

[Alvina Krishnan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not too sure about other translations but this version felt lacking, the poem/story felt ‘hanging’. Will definitely look up Andrew George’s translation

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a nice read. Many many references points. More than book to read. Nice story.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the historical info in the introduction but I was not as into the story itself.

[Joel Sudbury · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not an alternative to the paper edition.

This is not the same as the paper back book. It also skips several pages in the beginning of the book.

[Ollectro · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was not at all the great epic I was hoping for. Next!

[Ruben Dhondt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately this is not the full Epic. It's a scolars short analysis of two fragments.

[Pepijn van Duijn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ja ik heb 4 verschillende vertalingen gelezen van hetzelfde boek

[S M H · Rating 5 out of 5]

The original peak. Dare I say a 6 stars if not for half the story being lost to time. Surprisingly has a humble message about death and the fleeting nature of life.

[Melvin Kauffman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I thought it was going to be and apparently not the real deal.