Gilgamesh: A New English Version, Stephen Mitchell. Published by Free Press, 2004. First Edition. 290pp. with introduction and glossary. Quarter black cloth over black boards, gilt titles and borders, patterned endpapers. In fine, unread condition.
Gilgamesh dates from as early as 1700 BCE – a thousand years before the Iliad. Lost for almost two millennia, the eleven clay tables on which the epic was inscribed were discovered in 1853 in the ruins of Nineveh, and the text was not deciphered and fully translated until the end of the century. The epic is the story of literature’s first hero—the king of Uruk in what is present-day Iraq—and his journey of self-discovery. A brilliant new rendering of the oldest epic in the world by esteemed translator and bestselling author Stephen Mitchell.
