6/28/2023 0 Comments Gilgamesh by Michael Schmidt![]() Sin-leqi-unninni’s version is in Standard Babylonian, reworked from Old Babylonian, and, in Schmidt’s opinion, losing by that “some of the directness and freshness of the Old Babylonian.” What Gilgamesh certainly has is a claim to be the oldest extant poem in the world, originating some 3700 years ago, easily predating Homer, although it was unknown to Western readers until the 1850s, which is some sense makes it a newer addition to the canon. It differs from established ancient epics such as the Iliad, Odyssey or Aeneid in that it is unfinished (or at least we don’t have the complete text), does not have one single author, and, by dint of new discoveries made by scholars, constantly evolving, with parts of it being housed in different places. It’s not even a single poem, but “a confusion of stories”, a number of reassembled fragments and tablets in more than one ancient language plus an “edition” assembled and organised out of scattered bits by one Sin-leqi-unninni, who between 13 BCE made what we would now call a “standardized text” out of it, adding, as Schmidt tells us, “prefatory lines … and a reprise that echoes the opening but in a darker tone.” ![]() ![]() The Epic of Gilgamesh, as it’s usually titled by scholars and translators, may in fact not be an epic at all. ![]()
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