“GILGAMESH” by Stephen Mitchell
Ben Stagg, a British friend from the halcyon days of the musical and artistic group, The Fool, sent me this book. I humored him to read it and am forever in his debt.
A fascinating story so true of human nature with its capability to love. It is also not much of a stretch to see it as a metaphor for our callous invasion of Iraq, the cradle of civilization.
This ancient epic dates back at least to 1700 BCE. It is 1000 ears older than the Iliad. Lost for almost 2000 years. It was discovered on shards of clay tablets in the ruins of the royal palace of Nineveh (present day Mosul in Iraq). The times of the King of Uruk and reflecting the era of the laws of Hammurabi.
“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. Along the way, Gilgamesh discovers that friendship can bring peace to a whole city, that a preemptive attack on a monster can have dire consequences, and that wisdom can be found only when the quest for it has been abandoned. In giving voice to grief and the fear of death-perhaps more powerfully than any book written after it-in portraying love and vulnerability and the ego’s hopeless striving for immortality, the epic has become a personal testimony for millions of readers in dozens of languagesâ€
Michael Butler
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