[HN Gopher] How to Read "Gilgamesh" (2019)
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How to Read "Gilgamesh" (2019)
Author : perihelions
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-11-02 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Gilgamesh is meant to be heard, not read. It comes from an oral
| tradition of storytelling that was thousands of years old before
| it was ever written down. I just finished watching an incredible
| performance of it by Abed Azrie, highly recommended:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ARRP5i2nw8
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| It sounds good in Arabic, though I guess we don't know
| precisely how Akkadian sounded[1], they are both in the same
| language group. I generally liked Mitchell's 'translation'
| (which is more like a retelling than a scholarly work)[2]
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language#Phonetics_an...
|
| 2: https://youtu.be/sf2RmQYiUJo?t=54
| dotancohen wrote:
| Of all the English translations of Gilgamesh, this is my
| preferred: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYf8AwNvKg
|
| It is not abridged, and uses contemporary phrasing. If you want
| to follow along with a text, then I highly recommend using a
| text of a different translation. This not only reminds you that
| we are experiencing a translation, but also often adds a new
| dimension to the action as no translation is complete.
|
| Here is a not-so-good text that seems to compliment the above-
| linked Youtube reading well: https://uruk-
| warka.dk/Gilgamish/The%20Epic%20of%20Gilgamesh....
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Here's the first tablet in original language sung by Peter
| Pringle (with help from prof. A. R. George for pronunciation)
| accompanied with music instruments available at the time:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ex09YaTOQ, a continuation to
| a very popular video made years ago where he sung an excerpt:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUcTsFe1PVs.
| AlanYx wrote:
| I'll check that one out.
|
| John Harris' "Epic of Gilgamesh" podcast is also a good reading
| of the text, though it's probably not as dramatic.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Overall these are some of the best comments I've ever seen on HN:
|
| 1) Recommendations of follow-up reading
|
| 2) Life experiences and hobbyist opinions
|
| Just a real great example of the intellectual curiosity we all
| look for on HN
| hnal943 wrote:
| The Storynory podcast gives a good summary of Gilgamesh for kids
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I had a class in college that focused in large part on Gilgamesh.
| It was one of the few classes I enjoyed in college. I loved that
| my very religious teacher said the flood story in Gilgamesh added
| to the validity of the Bible since it is another historical
| account of a large flood. I thought it did the opposite and
| showed that the Bible is just another book of myths with some
| historical events peppered in, like Gilgamesh.
|
| She didnt love that.
| JackFr wrote:
| The "validity" of the Bible is an ill-posed concept. It's
| neither valid nor invalid.
|
| It's pretty poor as a history, but a treasure as a historical
| document.
|
| Understood literally, it's bizarre, contradictory and rambling.
| Read in cultural and historical context it's an enlightening
| (if not _inspired_ ) look at mankind's place in the cosmos and
| how one should live knowing that you will die.
| newbamboo wrote:
| Because it's a bad take and conveys a shallow, simplistic
| understanding of literature as either fact or myth. Viewing
| literary artifacts in such a way is too black and white, overly
| modern and just not very useful when it comes to serious study.
| dartharva wrote:
| How exactly should literature be viewed then? I am having
| difficulty understanding what exactly your complaint is about
| the objective filters about something being fact or myth when
| it's (by definition) an unambiguous state of being for most
| ideas and legends, literary or otherwise. How does talking
| about it damage "serious study"?
| dotancohen wrote:
| > my very religious teacher said the flood story in Gilgamesh
| added to the validity > of the Bible since it is another
| historical account of a large flood.
|
| You very religious teacher was not alone. At the time when
| Gilgamesh was first translated, this was the prevailing
| thought.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It still provides limited credibility to the idea that the
| Bible can be used as a historic document. Their teacher
| seemed to be using it to say the Bible is literally true,
| which is a ridiculous argument as Gilgamesh has examples of
| people unrelated to Noah surviving.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Rather than as a specific historical 'religious' document
| for evidence, I've seen using it as a guide to search for
| evidence of other potential events.
|
| One potential explanation for these similar great flood
| stories have made me think of the Black Sea narrative that
| it may have flooded within the last 10k years, causing the
| rise of these stories.
|
| It may not be true, as it could also be formulated a a
| flood story to explain the flooding of rivers for farming,
| and that one time there was a 'great flood' that
| initialized it for "us".
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I've also seen arguments (unsourcable at the moment) that
| the Tigris and Euphrates used to drain separately, and
| that the adjustment when they merged could have come at
| approximately the same point in pre-history. Given the
| proximity to the origin points of both stories, (and seen
| from within their flood plains where people were already
| living) that would have looked like a huge flood, after
| which the local geography would have looked very
| different.
| lalos wrote:
| Or maybe the Bible and Gilgamesh comes from the need to pass on
| important lessons and facts to the next chunk of humans i.e.
| this is why it's important to learn how to make boats,
| sometimes climate changes and you need a backup plan, don't eat
| pork because God says so -- and also because if not properly
| cooked you'll get trichinosis (they didn't know this but
| throwing a label of pork = evil is good enough). If you read
| the bible at face value it has pretty basic rules of society.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. If you lived in tribes the 10 commandments would be a
| pretty solid set of rules to make sure you don't all kill
| each other.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > If you read the bible at face value it has pretty basic
| rules of society.
|
| Specifically, the portion of the Ten Commandments which
| instructs how to relate to other people (as opposed to
| relating to God) is just as relevant today as it was when
| written.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Specifically, the portion of the Ten Commandments which
| instructs how to relate to other people (as opposed to
| relating to God) is just as relevant today as it was when
| written.
|
| Sure, but the parts of the rest of the exodus narrative
| (either in Exodus or Deuteronomy, the two places the Ten
| Commandments appear) that discuss dealing with other people
| are...less so.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| A large portion of the Pentateuch boils down to:
|
| > Some people came to the chief with a conflict. He went into
| a special tent, "communed with the storm-god", and came out
| with some new rules for how to manage a tribe of herders that
| has grown beyond Dunbar's number.
|
| Repeat that, mix in an origin story, some king lists, and
| tribal-unification propaganda and (modulo some path
| dependency) you'll have a book that people will be treating
| as the literal truth 2500 years later.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| I would phrase the Bible as a whole to be about something
| entirely different then what you have described.
|
| It is the description of a people's experience of their
| God, stretching across thousands of years and dozens of
| generations.
|
| Reading it gives the feeling that you have lived many many
| lifetimes seeing cities, dynasties, and empires rise and
| fall.
|
| Who that God is, is something puzzled throughout and not
| done justice by comparison to any single nature spirit or
| polytheistic deity.
| burnafter185 wrote:
| Yuval Noah Harari in "Sapiens" has an interesting take on
| religion. Essentially they form a fictional narrative that
| deigns this and that. In doing so they create a system which
| can thread together far larger groups of people, we're
| thought to be near maximum capacity in dealing with 150
| people (according to Dunabr's number). But the fictional
| narratives of religion (and later government, laws,
| corporations...) help us to identify our personal
| relationships, and also help us to ascertain expected
| behavior, both of self and of other. Thus we can drastically
| expand interoperability between individuals and groups. This
| is of course entirely contingent on belief, which basically
| serves the argument issued in "The Social Contract". He
| defines this as inter-subjectivity.
|
| I think it's a pretty interesting take.
| retrac wrote:
| How appropriate! I have recently (4 months?) started studying
| Akkadian. Just an intellectual curiosity. I don't really expect
| to get far. But it has been fascinating. Let me tell you the
| factoid that got me started down this road:
|
| More writings survive in Akkadian than from the classical Latin
| world.
|
| The entire output in Latin from c. 400 BC - 300 AD pales in
| comparison to what we've dug up out of burned royal libraries.
| This surprised me to learn, though it shouldn't be when you
| consider the durability of clay vs. papyrus and other paper-like
| materials.
|
| And unlike Latin, we know almost none of it. It's completely
| alien to us culturally. The civilization that gave rise to it was
| so completely supplanted and forgotten about, no one recognized
| the writing system when finally back dug up. Which was less than
| 200 years ago. Being able to competently read Mesopotamian texts
| is less than a century old. And there are only a few hundred
| really competent Assyriologists in the world.
|
| This means that the vast majority of texts, stockpiled by the
| crates in the tens of thousands in museums and archives, have
| still not yet been read by anyone -- in more than 3000 - 4000
| years. If you want to read some _new_ (in a relative sense)
| classical literature, Akkadian is one of your few hopes.
|
| Not that most of those tablets rival Gilgamesh -- most are
| shipping receipts, tax records, legal contracts and court
| decisions. Though honestly even though can be captivating in
| their own way. Consider the picture of life we get from a man in
| Sippar 3400 years ago just from his records and letters. His
| house was excavated with all his claywork in situ, giving an
| insight into his life we often lack even with the ancient Romans
| and ancient Chinese:
|
| > "After a forty-one-year career, at the end of 1643 (As 4),
| Inana-mansum handed over his role as chief dirge singer, head of
| the ain temple of Sippar-Amnanum, to his son Ur-Utu and donated a
| number of fields and house plots to him (for a full account of
| this section, see Janssen 1992). The fact that Ur-Utu was already
| receiving (part of) his inheritance provoked the jealousy of his
| three brothers, who also claimed their shares. Inana-mansum
| refused to give them anything during his lifetime, infuriating
| them even more. [...] Kubburum (the only son who was completely
| adopted) was the most vehement concerning the inheritance, no
| doubt because he felt his position to be least assured. He
| managed to persuade his 'brothers' (since they had received
| nothing from their father either) to manipulate their father into
| giving them their shares and to litigate against Inana-mansum's
| wife for the property she had received from him. [...] A
| supplementary difficulty for the mother was that she had lost the
| sealed document stipulating the gift. Officials came to Ur-Utu's
| house, where his mother was living, examined the property deeds,
| and concluded that she had indeed rightfully received the gift
| from her husband. [...] Finally, after years of dispute and
| lawsuits, all was well that ended well: Ur-Utu became chief dirge
| singer and received a large part of his inheritance at the same
| time, while his father was still living. The brothers protested
| and lost but finally got their share of the inheritance after
| their father died.
|
| -- from (2011) Michel Tanret, _Learned, Rich, Famous, and
| Unhappy: Ur-Utu of Sippar_ , The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform
| Culture
|
| As you can see while much has changed in the years between, much
| has not. And it's all coming alive again right now in the
| previous and this generation, for the first time in millennia.
| showerst wrote:
| I wonder if many of these more transactional tablets would be
| amenable to automated transcription/translation. I imagine that
| names would be rough, but lists of goods and prices seem
| manageable.
|
| I've dabbled a little in Akkadian languages but gave up because
| the time commitment seemed too massive.
| retrac wrote:
| Yes, I imagine it would be. I suspect a lot of insights can
| be made from extensive digitization of the materials.
| Statistical studies of records over time. Finding what
| fragments may fit with others.
|
| See https://github.com/gaigutherz/Akkademia which is a deep-
| learning based approach to OCR and word segmentation in
| Akkadian. Early days. I wish I knew enough ML (or Akkadian)
| to contribute.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The fall of civilizations podcast mentions how Clay tables have
| captured this information. Long but thorough episode.
|
| https://youtu.be/jpAphcaVJIs
| smeyer wrote:
| You're making a good pitch for learning Akkadian! I wish you
| were there when I was a freshman in college idling flipping
| through the foreign language offerings to fill a requirement.
| Akkadian was towards the front of some alphabetical listing and
| I was idly wondering whether to try it or stick with the
| language I studied in high school.
|
| I still wish my school didn't have a foreign language
| requirement at all, but I feel like this pitch would have
| converted more people scrolling through that alphabetical
| section of the course catalog.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I've always wondered, how certain is our understanding of
| Akkadian? Could the dirge singer have been a tap dancer?
|
| My very small awareness of the history made it sound fairly
| speculative.
| retrac wrote:
| It would seem the language is understood quite well, but the
| cultural context of its use not so much.
|
| Akkadian is a Semitic language, quite distantly related to
| Arabic and Hebrew, etc. So we know what its siblings turned
| into, and we have a vague guess for what its unwritten
| ancestor was like. There are also some surviving bilingual
| and trilingual Akkadian texts especially in the later period.
| That includes with Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Old
| Persian, Aramaic, etc., which are all understood to varying
| degrees.
|
| It's interesting to compare to Sumerian, the language of the
| people who the Akkadians learned writing from. It's not
| related to anything else known. We only know it through
| Akkadian bilingual texts, and texts teaching Akkadians how to
| read and write Sumerian. (Sumerian went extinct by around
| 2000 BC.) Now Sumerian is much more poorly understood.
|
| Tablets is are sometimes found when cities fell or buildings
| were abandoned, basically frozen in context. In this case,
| the letters were excavated from one of the large homes in
| Sippur near the temple, which had three rooms full of clay
| archival tablets seemingly related to the life of an
| important, sometimes-wealthy priest-administrator, descended
| from a line of them. Chief dirge singer was indeed some
| priestly office related to public performances of ritual
| song.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Thanks for that!
|
| Sounds a little like a cantor, actually.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > most are shipping receipts, tax records, legal contracts and
| court decisions.
|
| I've been reading about origins of money and so came across
| reference to clay tablet writings by Syrian traders. Most of
| them are about mundane day-to-day life as you say but it's
| fascinating to just learn about life from days long past and
| forgotten. What's also interesting, to me, is the matters they
| bring up don't strike as alien but in fact can be related to by
| anyone even to this day. For instance this passage, taken from
| a paper[1]:
|
| "As to the textiles about which you wrote to me in the
| following terms: "they are (too) small, they are not good'; was
| it not on your own request that I reduced the size? And now you
| write (again), saying: "process half a mina (of wool) more in
| your textiles". Well, I have done it."
|
| [1] https://halshs.archives-
| ouvertes.fr/halshs-00642827/document
| violiner wrote:
| What are you using to study Akkadian?
| wl wrote:
| A Grammar of Akkadian by John Huehnergard seems to be the
| standard text. It's the one I used.
| adrian_b wrote:
| For a beginner, I would recommend "Complete Babylonian"
| (Teach Yourself) by Martin Worthington.
|
| It is very accessible. After having some basic knowledge,
| there are more complete grammars and dictionaries.
|
| The reason for learning an ancient language is reading the
| original texts. There is no need to become an expert, because
| there are bilingual editions for most ancient texts.
|
| In my experience, no matter how good the translator is, you
| can find much more interesting information in the original
| text, but using a bilingual edition spares you 99% of the
| time you would have needed to read unaided when that is not
| your base profession.
|
| For Akkadian, the best text for beginners is the bilingual
| edition of the code of laws of Hammurabi, which is very clear
| and easy to read (There is a better modern edition by M. E.
| J. Richardson, "Hammurabi's Laws", but also an 1904 edition
| at archive.org, "The Code of Hammurabi").
|
| After that, the bilingual edition of Gilgamesh is
| recommended, with both the Old Babylonian version and with
| the later versions.
|
| Unfortunately, the bilingual edition of Gilgamesh (A. R.
| George, "The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic" in 2 volumes) is
| quite expensive (though there are pirated copies on the Web).
| violiner wrote:
| Thank you for the recommendations. That's very helpful. I'm
| less bullish on bilingual editions (I know Ancient Greek
| well, and Latin a little less well, so I'm not totally
| uninformed) but I'm unlikely to ever be as proficient at
| Akkadian as I am at the languages I studied in college so
| I'm glad to know those exist.
| retrac wrote:
| John Huehnergard's A Grammar of Akkadian:
| https://brill.com/view/title/38184 seems to be well-
| respected. It's a grammar textbook that goes through the
| usual topics (nouns, verbs, etc.) Teaches the dialect of the
| Old Babylonian Empire and should be approachable for someone
| who has studied another language before.
|
| A History of the Akkadian Language:
| https://brill.com/view/title/21744 was just published. It's
| monumental and eclectic. All sorts of topics related to
| Akkadian. Its internal history, changes, as well as recent
| history of its deciphering. I've been skimming that, using
| that as a sort of backgrounder. Some of it's over my head,
| and I took a few semesters of linguistics once upon a time.
|
| The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary has been fully published and
| digitized:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Assyrian_Dictionary But
| it's like the OED and I think at the start you would want a
| wordbook or wordlist with your reading materials, that
| matches the dialect/era you're working with. A variety of
| those floating around.
|
| The Oxford Handbook in Cuneiform Culture - more background
| reading in https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfor
| dhb/978019...
|
| While the written form was pretty fossilized (like Latin or
| English spelling) it was used for ~3000 years and changed a
| great deal over time like any language. Old Babylonian seems
| to be a common starting point. I think probably because it's
| well-attested, was some of the first material discovered, and
| because it's the language of (the most complete version of)
| Gilgamesh, and also Hammurabi's law codes.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning "History of the Akkadian Language". I
| was not aware of it.
| violiner wrote:
| Thank you for the recommendations.
| lordleft wrote:
| I find Gilgamesh deeply moving. Near the end of the epic,
| Gilgamesh embarks on a quest for immortality, impelled by grief
| over the death of his friend Enkidu. After travails and
| adventures, immortality escapes him, and he is consoled with the
| following verse:
|
| "What you seek you shall never find.
|
| For when the Gods made man,
|
| They kept immortality to themselves.
|
| Fill your belly.
|
| Day and night make merry.
|
| Let Days be full of joy.
|
| Love the child who holds your hand.
|
| Let your wife delight in your embrace.
|
| For these alone are the concerns of man."
|
| (Tablet X)
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Uncountable generations have passed and every man, to this day,
| still asks the same exact questions.
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| > Near the end of the epic, Gilgamesh embarks on a quest for
| immortality
|
| This needs a spoiler alert!
| sorokod wrote:
| If you are interested in podcasts Literature and History has one
| about the epic of Gilgamesh
|
| https://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/2/c/4/2c43483ca62d212a/episode_00...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/mNMiD
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time (of the article, of course):
|
| _How to Read "Gilgamesh"_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21270962 - Oct 2019 (50
| comments)
| handrous wrote:
| I'm not an expert but I've probably read a whole lot more Near
| East literature than, considered over a population of billions,
| nearly everyone. In English translation, but still. A half dozen
| volumes, I think, cover to cover? Maybe seven?
|
| Gilgamesh is the only work out of all of that, that I'd recommend
| to pretty much anyone who likes literature. Egypt has a couple
| promising, if relatively late, tales, but both are only the
| beginning of the story, so it's impossible to know if they live
| up to that promise. Most of the rest, across languages and
| cultures, are very much an acquired taste, if they're enjoyable
| at all. Gilgamesh is simply _good_.
|
| Next best would probably be the Old Testament, but the older
| tales there are mostly worse-told than Gilgamesh, and the best
| writing is relatively recent.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The Ramayana sounded like fun though it's hard to figure out
| which version you're supposed to read.
| winnit wrote:
| As English versions go, I found Ralph Griffith's translation
| enchanting; his feeling for rhythm is wonderful.
| nindalf wrote:
| Ive read, listened and watched many versions of both the
| Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Of the two, the latter is the
| superior story in every way. Most importantly for me, the
| characters. I hope I won't offend anyone's religious
| sensibilities when I say the main character of the Ramayana
| is a bit dull, one dimensional and treats his wife terribly.
|
| The Mahabharata has its share of misogyny, but it has a
| couple of fantastic characters - Karna and Bheeshma. It's
| worth reading for these two alone.
|
| "The only thing worth reading about is the human heart in
| conflict with itself". These two exemplify that principle,
| whereas I found it absent in the Ramayana.
| randoglando wrote:
| > when I say the main character of the Ramayana is a bit
| dull, one dimensional and treats his wife terribly.
|
| On the mark there. What about the character of Krishna (an
| amalgamation of 3 tribal gods)? Especially the little child
| Krishna?
|
| From the perspective of the story Mahabharata is superior,
| but the Ramayana has some great characters (Hanuman,
| Lakshmana, Sita, Ravana).
|
| The Mahabharata's heroes are weaker characters, except for
| Krishna IMO.
| nindalf wrote:
| What conflict did any of the characters in the Ramayana
| face? Hanuman for example, decides to do Rama's bidding
| and then does it. The only major dilemma he faces is
| whether he should bring the cure for Lakshmana or the
| entire mountain containing the cure. He goes with the
| latter. Same with Lakshmana. Only conflict I can recall
| is when he is told to abandon Sita in the woods. He is
| torn, but decides to anyway.
|
| Compare these two to Bheeshma and Karna, who spend their
| entire lives torn by conflicting loyalties.
|
| I don't much care for Krishna as a character. Since he's
| a god, a lot of what he does makes no sense and doesn't
| need to either. He is supposed to be inscrutable. Such a
| character isn't that interesting IMO.
| awa wrote:
| Personally, I feel the characters in Mahabharata are more
| shades of grey (rather than just Good or Bad) unlike
| Ramayana which is portrayed as a fight between Good vs
| Bad.
|
| Even Krishna's role has a lot of valid criticism in terms
| of the little he does to avoid the war (being a god and
| all). The closest clean character seems to be Karna who
| is on the losing side.
| screye wrote:
| Figuring out what Ramayana and Mahabharata versions to read
| is irritatingly difficult.
|
| The popular English translation written by white people are
| often a bastardization of the classics from a Woke lens.
| Others are outright further-fictionalizing accounts to suit a
| narrative flow as if this was a Steve Jobs biography.
|
| The more faithful english translations are written by
| scholars who won't consider English to be their first
| language. So the quality of prose is lacking and epics reads
| more like textbooks. Hindi and other native language works
| are pretty good, but my proficiency in them is restricted to
| speech.
|
| I am still on a search for a book that strikes the right
| balance. A few hindu historians & intellectuals have started
| writing incredible English language books. I would count
| Sanjeev Sanyal, Vikram Sampath and Tharoor as institutionally
| important writers who want to tell the story of India & Indic
| traditions by looking past the Delhi-focused view of our
| rather shoddy academic institutions.
|
| I hope to read more works that conduct primary research
| instead of regurgitating a few 200 yr. works by british
| historians that can often veer on outright propaganda. It is
| the age of much needed revisionism in Indian scholarship. I
| am glad to see it be rooted in evidence, and not counter
| propaganda. That being said, I hope they get to continue
| contributing before the academic establishment decides to
| fully sideline them for being counter narrative.
| handrous wrote:
| Yeah, that's why I specified "Near East". I know there's
| supposed to be some really good, very early material from
| India, but I've not gotten to it yet, so I can't say whether
| Gilgamesh stands up to the best of that. There is, for sure,
| an _intimidating_ amount of it, so it has that going for it.
| snambi wrote:
| There is only one Ramayana written by Valmiki Ramayana. All
| others are based on "Valmiki's Ramayana".
| soco wrote:
| It depends a lot on the translation I suppose, because my
| experience with the old testament was rather unpleasant -
| reading it in centuries-old language brought me no joy at all.
| handrous wrote:
| AFAIK there's no reason to favor English translations of the
| Old Testament (or anything else) that use now-archaic
| English, except maybe for passages which are _themselves_
| written, in the original, in a kind of archaic or very formal
| mode, relative to the rest. It can be accurate enough (for
| whatever purpose--poetic, literal accuracy, et c.) without
| being stuffy or outdated.
|
| Another factor in my naming it the probably #2, after
| Gilgamesh, though, is that everything else is just _that bad_
| to a modern reader, so the OT looks pretty damn good compared
| to all that, even if you 're stuck with the King James
| Version. My favorite story from ancient Egypt[0], I wouldn't
| recommend to many readers, because damn, it's a _slog_ , and
| it's still an easier read than some of the others, or than
| anything I've seen in Sumerian or Akkadian (Gilgamesh
| excepted). It probably tells better, as a joke (it's a
| comedic story), than it reads, if you had someone really
| talented telling it.
|
| That's typical for other Near Eastern literatures, too. Lots
| and lots of repetition, is the main problem for a modern
| reader, as far as the prose goes. Much of it also doesn't
| really relate a story, exactly, and the cultural and
| religious references are obscure at best. You don't even get
| mythology, really, for the most part. Prayers or
| incantations, sure, but there's no Hesiod or Ovid of Sumerian
| religion. There's a _little_ of that, sure, but it 's very
| fragmentary and you have to bring a lot of context from
| outside of it to make much sense of what you're reading.
|
| For the millennia(!) of texts we have from Egypt, for
| instance, there are only a few short (and often fragmentary)
| works that we'd recognize as stories. You have to settle for
| reading a variety of non-fiction or semi-fictional genres to
| get much more out of it--"mirrors for princes" and scribal
| didactic texts, which are probably the most interesting of
| the lot, plus endless formulaic and not-especially-
| illuminating funerary texts, and a good deal of historical
| propaganda about military victories, mostly from monumental
| inscriptions, almost all of which are intensely boring even
| if you're really into military history. And that's probably
| the _richest_ literature we have from that region in the pre-
| classical period, at least as far as what 's available in
| English translation.
|
| [0] The Eloquent Peasant
| shanhaiguan wrote:
| Modern English doesn't have the thou-you singular/plural
| distinction. My preference is to keep these details in
| reading translations of religious texts, and I personally
| prefer to keep "thou" over having to say "you all" for
| plurals, and especially over collapsing them all to "you".
| The old stuffy style consideration is not as important to
| me. Maybe I'm just used to it now
| ekidd wrote:
| > The Eloquent Peasant
|
| The Eloquent Peasant is a fascinating little work. For
| those who aren't familiar with it, it's the story of a
| peasant who owns a donkey. There's a farmer alongside the
| road who has allowed his crops to grow right up to the
| path, knowing that passing draft animals will occasionally
| eat his crops. This allows him to take the owners of the
| animals to court, including the peasant in the story.
|
| But when the peasant arrives in court, he speaks with great
| eloquence. The judge is so impressed that he decides to
| drag out the trial to hear more of these speeches. He sends
| off a note to someone important (the pharaoh or the
| governor or someone), saying, "Hey, you need to hear this
| guy!"
|
| The peasant, assuming the court is corrupt, gives another
| speech about the importance of honest courts. And so it
| continues, with the peasant holding forth on justice and
| government.
|
| It's a brilliantly subversive little tale. The core of it
| is political rhetoric. The "framing story" is an amusing
| tale about a peasant with a donkey. And the officials in
| the story are secretly delighted by the peasant's eloquent
| speeches about good government. It's a way to discuss
| politics without making the pharaoh look bad, basically.
|
| By ancient standards, it's pretty remarkable. The framing
| tale and the subtle subversion feel more modern than other
| works from that era. But as the parent post suggested, it
| would probably work best told as a tale by someone who
| could switch between the humor and politics.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Thanks, that sounds entertaining. Sounds like a tract a
| court jester might write.
|
| (I think we have a progressive tendency to overestimate
| the sophistication of our age relative to those of the
| past. And not to be pedantic, but I wouldn't call what
| you described as subversive. Subversion would involve
| destroying or undermining a just political order. But
| offering a gentle reminder of the importance of justice
| is counterrevolutionary because it seeks to restore
| something good. We must not relativize revolution as
| merely that which is opposed to some prevailing status
| quo.
|
| Socrates was not subversive; the sophists were.)
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| I remember Michael Wood's TV series about the Iliad and he
| mentioned the repetition in it. He then showed a modern day
| Armenian troubadour (for lack of a better word) singing a
| story with instrumental accompaniment to a rapt audience
| [1].
|
| Is the repetition a clue that maybe these poems were meant
| to be sung, and not read?
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/64QPz2t5T3A?t=1027
| soco wrote:
| I guess they were not writing stuff for "readers"? This
| might be a well-known theory of which I'm just unaware, but
| could it be that writing fulfilled a different role/need in
| those epochs?
| isk517 wrote:
| I would think that is a good guess. Repetition is
| irritating to read but works well when something is
| performed since the audience does not have a readers
| ability to simply go back and reread a difficult or
| important passage.
| handrous wrote:
| Oh, that's absolutely a big part of it. There was no
| "reading public". _Very_ few people could read and write.
| I assume all the repetition has to do with making the
| stories better-suited to memorization and oral retelling.
| I don 't mean any of that as some kind of put-down of the
| ancients, it's just a fact that a modern reader is going
| to find the material difficult, and, even once acclimated
| to the difficulty, of limited appeal, with few exceptions
| (and I'd call out Gilgamesh as the #1 exception)
| isk517 wrote:
| I would imagine the repetition benefits the listening
| audience since there is a chance they may not hear
| something or may miss the significance of something the
| first time it is spoken.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It maybe also benefits a setup where the story is
| told/sung in small chunks over several days, so you don't
| forget what happened in the previous episode?
| whakim wrote:
| In a world in which most "literature" was memorized and
| then performed orally, repetition had a few key
| functions: 1) making it easier to tell a part of the
| story (an audience probably wouldn't listen to the whole
| thing in one go); 2) making it easier to memorize (while
| also allowing the performer/bard some time to "autopilot"
| and remember what comes next); 3) making the meter fit
| (this is why you'll see the same epithets over and over).
| clon wrote:
| This seems analogous to some documentaries and TV shows
| that restart the story pretty much from the beginning at
| 15 minute intervals, after each commercial break.
| Basically allow people latch on that just joined or were
| not paying attention. It must have been equally
| tormenting to the ancients.
| shusaku wrote:
| If you want to read the Old Testament as literature, Robert
| Alter's translation is really good. I thought his notes
| (which are not about theology) really help you tap in to what
| the authors are doing.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| on the contrary reading it in Latin actually make it an
| enjoyable read, the English is downright dreadful.
| basch wrote:
| What are the promising Egyptian tales?
| wl wrote:
| It's probably not what GP was thinking of because it's not
| relatively late and reasonably complete, but Sinuhe is
| probably the greatest surviving work of Middle Egyptian
| fiction.
| handrous wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wenamun
|
| Looks like some people think it _is_ complete, in which case,
| it 's just not particularly good.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tale_of_the_Doomed_Prince
|
| There are a few complete ones that are OK, relatively
| speaking. They're all pretty short and there aren't _that_
| many stories from pre-classical Egypt, so if you 're
| interested, I'd say track them down and give them a try, but
| don't expect easy reads. I guess part of why I favor those
| two, especially the latter, is that I can _imagine_ they
| might become great, when whole.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I don't know anything about it, is there a single canonical
| translation? If not, which one would you recommend to someone
| who, lets say, wants to read for enjoyment more but is woefully
| out of practice
| handrous wrote:
| I dunno about "canonical", but, as others have mentioned,
| Stephen Mitchell's version is good. It reads very easily
| without, as I understand it, taking too many liberties with
| the text. I'm sure there are retellings that are even
| smoother, but I doubt you can do much better for casual
| reading with anything else that's at least _fairly_ faithful
| to the original.
|
| Mitchell's careful to (accurately) frame his as a new
| _version_ , not a new _translation_ , though, because he does
| not read the original language and is leaning on several
| existing translations to assemble his version. You probably
| don't want it for, say, deep scholarly purposes.
|
| My copy of Mitchel's version has what's effectively a 60 page
| retelling at the beginning--which I've not read, so maybe it
| sucks, I dunno--as the Introduction, then a brief author's
| note about the book (in which he explains that it is _not_ a
| new translation, among other things), and ~140 pages of
| Gilgamesh itself, in largish type. It 's very long for a
| (mostly) surviving pre-classical near eastern story, but it's
| still pretty short. The rest of the volume is notes.
| soco wrote:
| Speaking about listening: there's this project of the German
| composer Helga Pogatschar called "Inanna descent in the
| underworld", a reconstruction of the old texts together with
| Prof. Dr. Konrad Volk (https://www.chrom.de/en/helga-
| pogatschar/inanna-opera/). There are some extracts on Youtube
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DBjNDkOTfk) - it has German
| translations too but I hope not enough to ruin the strangeness of
| the exercise.
| narrator wrote:
| I read Gilgamesh a few times over the years.
|
| Two things I found interesting:
|
| 1. Sex is viewed as a civilizing force. It brings Enkidu in to
| city life after being a wild man living among animals for
| example.
|
| 2. It feels as if there aren't a lot of people around and
| humanity only has a very small island like footprint in this vast
| unknown world. It's almost like how we feel about outer space
| today.
| idoubtit wrote:
| > 1. Sex is viewed as a civilizing force. It brings Enkidu in
| to city life after being a wild man living among animals for
| example.
|
| I partly disagree.
|
| Sex is what cut Enkidu from its wildlife friends, but it was
| not enough to bring him to the city life. After he spent a week
| soaring in sex, the animals would't recognize him as one of
| them, that's all.
|
| IIRC, to enter the community of humans, once rejected by the
| animals, he had to stop being naked and to drink beer. The
| final touch was to defend the herds from predators. Then he was
| civilized enough to go to the city.
| AlanYx wrote:
| There's an underlying theme of the value of domesticity in
| the text, which I think runs parallel to the theme of
| civilization.
|
| It's probably not a coincidence, but rather by design, that
| Siduri (the alewife) runs an inn (inns were associated to
| prostitution in that era). Siduri's urging Gilgamesh to
| abandon his quest in favour of indulging in domestic
| pleasures is, in some sense, a mirror to the domesticating of
| Enkidu.* And both of these are linked to some of the broader
| themes of the value of civilization.
|
| (* And interestingly, Siduri first sees Gilgamesh as a
| possible thief, because's he's so dirty from his voyage,
| similar to how Enkidu was first seen as a wild man.)
| dartharva wrote:
| I interpreted that almost all of Enkidu's civilization can be
| attributed to Shamhat. She doesn't just endow him with sex;
| she also literally taught him the ways and nuances of the
| human world (iirc) and guided him till he met Gilgamesh.
| notorious-dto wrote:
| Don't forget Bohuslav Martinu's excellent oratorio on the text:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8clFm_bvj1s
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| I read Stephen Mitchell's translation, which isnt the most
| academic but certainly the most readable. It was the 1st time I
| actually finished the book.
|
| My only problem is: It looks like parts of the story are missing.
| Certainly, the ending is very downer. Spoilers: Gilamesh fails to
| save his friend, loses the immortality herbs, and comes home
| empty handed and humiliated.
|
| Certainly, one of the lessons is that Gilgamesh learns humility
| and respect for others; but I wonder if there are further
| chapters that were never found. For the story certainly looks
| incomplete.
| handrous wrote:
| The ending feels complete, and ever-relevant, to me.
|
| I think of it every time rich people freezing their heads or
| getting blood transfusions from kids or talking about brain-to-
| computer transfers comes up, which is pretty often on this
| site.
| [deleted]
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| ha! Yes, the book does teach us the dangers of arrogance, of
| thinking we can become immortal by some trick or "magic" or
| technology-- and I suppose it does teach that lesson very
| well
| handrous wrote:
| I like how it shows people've been worried about that, and
| working on the problem, for about as long as we've had
| writing, at least. Seems we've pretty much never _not_
| worried about death, which makes sense, but it 's
| comforting to have confirmation that it's such an enduring
| part of the human condition, I guess. Egyptian literature
| backs that up, as do practices in China--in fact, it seems
| like almost anywhere there were rich kings, they were very
| concerned with attaining immortality.
|
| And hey, sooner or later, maybe someone will manage it. But
| most of these rich folks freezing their heads are just
| Gilgamesh. Same shit as 4000+ years ago.
| CalChris wrote:
| Parts of the story probably _are_ missing. His _Iliad_
| translation leaves out Book 10 with the Night Raid, entirely. A
| wonderful takedown of Mitchell is _Homer, Inc._
|
| https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n04/edward-luttwak/homer...
|
| Mitchell as a 'translator' is poetry in, garbage out. He
| bowdlerizes. Read Lattimore or Fagles or Mandelbaum or
| Fitzgerald.
| AlanYx wrote:
| I find the ending a poignant, even beautiful, testament to the
| universality of the human condition. Even kings struggle with
| having to deal with loss and mortality, and it has always been
| thus, an unbroken thread through the thousands of years that
| connect us with those who originally developed the text.
|
| I also love the restaurant at the end of the universe element
| to the text. Without giving anything away to those who haven't
| read it, one can travel to the edge of the world and find
| someone serving beer.
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| I've never seen anyone compare Gilgamesh to the the
| Restaurant at the end of the universe! :D :D
| roywiggins wrote:
| Parts of the story definitely are missing, either from tablets
| getting damaged or lost.
| wl wrote:
| I rather like how the story is bookended. After everything that
| happens, it ends with Gilgamesh reciting an excerpt from the
| beginning to Ur-Shanabi the boatman:
|
| Go up, Ur-Shanabi, pace out the walls of Uruk.
|
| Study the foundation terrace and examine the brickwork.
|
| Is not its masonry kiln-fired brick?
|
| And did not seven masters lay its foundations?
|
| One square mile of city, one square mile of gardens,
|
| One square mile of clay pits, a half square mile of Ishtar's
| dwelling.
|
| Three and a half square miles is the measure of Uruk!
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| Yes, the ending returning to the start was beautiful ,in a
| heart breaking sort of way
| idoubtit wrote:
| This was after Gilgamesh, fearing death, tried to gain
| immortality and failed. He's back to his town, but he's not
| afraid any more. I loved this poignant ending: he's not
| bitter; cities are there to stay through buildings (walls)
| and society (agricultural production, religion); meaning we
| cannot gain immortality as individuals, but what we achieve
| as a collective outlasts us.
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| thats a great point-- I never realised it in my reading.
|
| An I suppose Gilgamesh the epic survived, even though the
| culture/civilisation that created it died out. Which just
| goes to show that immortality is possible for beautiful
| ideas/stories, just not for humans
| pfdietz wrote:
| Egypt's might is tumbled down
|
| Down a-down the deeps of thought;
|
| Greece is fallen and Troy town,
|
| Glorious Rome hath lost her crown,
|
| Venice' pride is nought.
|
| But the dreams their children dreamed
|
| Fleeting, unsubstantial, vain
|
| Shadowy as the shadows seemed
|
| Airy nothing, as they deemed,
|
| These remain.
|
| (Mary E. Coleridge, 1908)
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Since we're mentioning Stephen Mitchell I'd also recommend his
| translation of The Tao Te Ching.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > For the story certainly looks incomplete.
|
| Quite the opposite. Modern stories (mostly) have happy endings.
| But Gilgamesh - like life - ends with (the prospect of) death.
| That is as complete as a story can be.
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