We usher in 2012 with the Epic of Gilgamesh, famous in the popular imagination as the oldest written epic of any civilization (at least as far as we know). The modern-day text comes to us via clay tablets painstakingly translated by British archaeologists in the nineteenth century. Versions of the saga have since been discovered in various places in the Middle East. In approaching this text, I found a need to suspend my strong curiosity concerning the context of the Gilgamesh epic, and just enjoyed the story of Gilgamesh the king and demi-god who visited the "other" world and returned to tell the tale.
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| Cunieform table containing famous Gilgamesh epic version of the flood. |
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| Statue of Gilgamesh at University of Sydney, Australia (credit: D. Gordon E. Robertson) |
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| 9th century BC orthostat relief found in Kapara's palace, Tell Halaf, depicting "Gilgamesh Between Two Bull-Men Supporting a Winged Sun Disk". |
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