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.
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
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.
> 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.
For something much closer to the other extreme, I have a version by Stephanie Dalley which seems to prioritize being faithful to the original over basically everything else. Here's a (particularly unsmooth) extract:
[Shamash] heard the words
of Gilgamesh, Scion of Uruk, [and said],
'As soon as a loud voice from the sky calls down
to him,
Rush, stand up to him, let him not [enter the
forest (?)],
Let him not go down to the wood,
nor [ ].
[Humbaba] will [not] be clothed in seven cloaks,
He will be wearing [only one]; six are taken
off (?).
Like a charging wild bull which
pierces [ ]
He shouts only once, but fills one with terror.
The guardian of the forests will shout [ ]
[ ]
Humbaba like [ ] will shout.
(gap of uncertain length)
As soon as the swords [ ]
[ ] from the sheaths [ ]
Streaked with verdigris (?) [ ]
Dagger, sword, [ ]
One [ ]
They wore [ ]
Humbaba [made his voice heard and spoke (?)]
'He will not go (?) [ ]
He will not go (?) [ ]
(7 lines illegible)
May Ellil [ ].'
It's not the easiest thing to read, but I like being so close to the actual text. If it's in this translation, it's there on a cuneiform tablet somewhere. (Or guessed in a very conservative way, like guessing that "Humbaba [______________]" should be filled in as "Humbaba made his voice heard" when that line is immediately followed by quoted speech.)
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.
Sincere question...what does it mean that the translation is written from a Woke lens? What should I be looking out for as different/hallmarks of propaganda or a viewpoint?
Also is anyone else influencing interpretations outside of the british that would be notable?
The thing with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, is that they exist in 100s of different translations, each with different levels of geographic uptake and historic validity. There has been a lot of discourse around these over the centuries, that is captured in various Indian language texts and spoken traditions.
**Philosophical incompatibility:**
Most modern writer is trained in western philosophy and often derives their understanding of philosophical building blocks from western classics and sometimes even more incompatible, contemporary philosophy. This leads to conclusions such as "Eunuchs were the original transgenders", when it is historically well known that these were forcible conversions. Contemporary politics & a urge to push progressive ideas through their works muddies the academic rigor of their work.
**Indians as a 2nd language/class:**
This is a huge problem in many western communities studying other cultures. When written documents are given much higher important, a lot that is captured by the native people in oral traditions (Often ones that are just as or more rigorous) is discarded. Similarly, the works of Indian theologists is rejected in favor or either Colonial era British Orientalists or those who would consider English to be their first language. This intersects with the Indian left taking a more western/atheist/marxist stance that leads to an inherent alienation of scholars who derive from a more traditional/religious/'native' set of sources. Lasly, these people often only understand Sanskrit in a literal sense and treat it as some sort of holy grail. Reality is that there exist just as definitive sources in other languages, and that Sanskrit itself needs a strong cultural understanding to decode metaphors that sound odd when interpreted literally. The criticism usually comes from scholar with centuries long traditions of studying the Mahabharat/Ramayana complaining about how certain interpretations have been discussed to death and the discourse is well documented. The refusal of western/english-speaking scholar with excellent funding to even do this kind of basic due diligence leads to insinuations of Hindu-phobia from said scholars. Can you imagine a christian theologian who rejects any scholarly work by the Church, it's libraries or its priests? That's what you have here.
**(Pardon my french) They bad:**
Now this part is clearly opinion but hear me out. Think about how someone ends up in theology. They are either deeply interested in these works from the POV of devotion or some kind of dislike. The western and indian academic community actively ostracizes anyone who comes across as too hindu. You will struggle to find a single hindu in a hindu-theology program anywhere. There are no jobs for you unless you are on the far end of liberal. If you are a competent Hindu with a strongly sourced native POV, you are shit out of luck. Hell, you will be actively chased off Twitter and be on the top of the 'get cancelled' list. This means that there is an inherent dislike for hinduism (I do not mean hindutva, I want to be specific here) in Academia in India and the West.
Growing up in India, Science was for the smart kids , Commerce was for those who could get by and Arts was for those for whom you had no hope. I don't endorse this by any means, but it is hard for me convey just how deeply this is embedded in the nation's psyche. I do not know a single person with half-decent grades/ who was considered bright who decided to pursue an undergrad in the liberal-arts in India. Even the best artists go into Architecture or Design, because you need money. This is the reality of an underdeveloped scarcity based society.
This leaves Liberal Arts Academia to the rich (often ones who practice western ideas with the zeal of a convert and have a deeply rooted disdain towards non-english speaking Indians) or the not-so-bright.
So you can guess what the quality of work coming out of there looks like.
**Modi:**
India is in the midst of a Trump-like hysteria around the cult of personality that is Modi. Either side has been taken in by this. This means that anything positive about Hindus is expected to be used by Modi to strengthen his case. I will let you guess if the academics like Modi or not.
> Also is anyone else influencing interpretations outside of the british that would be notable?
Western Academia & the political left of India. (Most of India's marxist agitation begins in the elite liberal arts schools of the country. Yes, India has real communists, not the milquetoast types you find in the US.)
I'm a now liberal-leaning Atheist in the US (pretty standard for someone on HN), so I have no interest in those claiming blasphemy, hurt feelings or disrespect towards their gods. However, the undue influence of the incredibly low quality liberal-arts Academia elite of India is something I have real issues with. Also, watching our literature get butchered by those who are either incompetent or malicious is just not nice to look at.
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.
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.
> Compare these two to Bheeshma and Karna, who spend their entire lives torn by conflicting loyalties.
Karna is a legend generated in recent times. In most editions of Mahabharata, he is willingly standing on the wrong side of justice willingly. He didn't even care for the well being of his supposedly friend Duryodhana. Here is a talk[0] and book[1] by Mahabharata researcher.
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.
> 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.
My apologies but both statements doesn't stand if you read the original work of Ved Vyasa or a faithful translation of it. One single incident disproves both the statement. I am not a Mahabharata expert but this proves how false legends have spread around texts like Mahabharata and Ramayana.
Krishna went as diplomat to settle the dispute without war. As a final proposal, he offered to settle the dispute just for 5 villages. Duryodhana under influence of Karna said "I will not give land worth a needle's tip." and that was the end of all negotiations.
Edit: Please refer to my other comment for details about Karna's Character.
IMO Mahabharatha's heroes (and all its characters in general) are closer to people who you may come across on a day-to-day basis; they all have various degrees of all the human traits. The story is also intimately human so it makes it easy to relate to say someone like Arjuna than to Rama.
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.
That is a very interesting observation because there is no one definitive version. For the modern reader in English, you could try Devdutt Pattanaik's versions - I really liked his Mahabharata, but haven't read his version of Ramayana. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Hundred_Ramayanas:_Five_... can give you some insight into why there are so many different versions of these epics.
He said near East. The Mahabharata be ramayanan are only the best know stories out of India. There are hundreds of prominent works and millions of stories.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
They were meant to be told around a campfire, by people who could not read or write. The repetition was a mnemonic helper, a storytelling device to impress character traits (e.g. instead of saying "Batman" you say "Batman, the Dark Knight"), and a way to take time to think about the next step in the tale (in a way similar to rappers reaching for certain words over and over, as "crutches", because they know they are easy to rhyme).
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?
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)
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).
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.
I think the main issue is simply that most modern readers have a relatively small vocabulary and are markedly acclimatized to shorter, simpler sentences. 21st century readers often struggle with works written for the reading publics of a mere one or two centuries ago. And even 100 years ago, the KJV (for example) was not regarded as a difficult read.
Indeed, it's been my observation that the written register has almost entirely disappeared - there's only the spoken register in text form. But even that has declined in complexity: consider what Presidential addresses use to look like. Go compare Lincoln's Second Inaugural address with Obama's, for example.
What gets me is letters written by normal people, from the 19th and early 20th century US. Not authors, not statesmen, not business tycoons, not military officers—workers, minor bureaucrats, enlisted soldiers. They tend to read as very "high" language, to modern eyes. Working vocabulary, as you note, seems to be larger as well, even though it's easier than ever to remind oneself of the correct word, with modern tools.
> Indeed, it's been my observation that the written register has almost entirely disappeared
I think that's a lot of it. Then again, maybe people in the 19th century US spoke like that, too? I haven't looked into it. Surely there's a book about this....
The public changed a lot as well. You aren't writing for a small(ish) gathering of literate noblemen anymore, but aiming for an entire nation with so-and-so levels of understanding.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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:
Do you really want a spoiler alert on a tale that is thousands of years old...? It would be like talking of the Gospels and going "SPOILER ALERT! the guy dies but he comes back"...
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.
> 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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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"?
> 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.
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.
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".
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.
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 Azrié, highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ARRP5i2nw8
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]
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.
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.
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 (Aṣ 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.
> 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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
If you like this sort of stuff then I recommend his channel as he has some excellent lectures on history, important history/religious books, and other stuff.
His video series on "The Evolution of Death & Burial" is very interesting.
