The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh

Synopsis

Adventurers, explorers, kings, gods, and goddesses come to life in this riveting story of the first great epic--lost to the world for 2,000 years, and rediscovered in the nineteenth century

Composed by a poet and priest in Middle Babylonia around 1200 bce, The Epic of Gilgamesh foreshadowed later stories that would become as fundamental as any in human history, The Odyssey and the Bible. But in 600 bce, the clay tablets that bore the story were lost--buried beneath ashes and ruins when the library of the wild king Ashurbanipal was sacked in a raid.

The Buried Book begins with the rediscovery of the epic and its deciphering in 1872 by George Smith, a brilliant self-taught linguist who created a sensation when he discovered Gilgamesh among the thousands of tablets in the British Museum's collection. From there the story goes backward in time, all the way to Gilgamesh himself. Damrosch reveals the story as a literary bridge between East and West: a document lost in Babylonia, discovered by an Iraqi, decoded by an Englishman, and appropriated in novels by both Philip Roth and Saddam Hussein. This is an illuminating, fast-paced tale of history as it was written, stolen, lost, and--after 2,000 years, countless battles, fevered digs, conspiracies, and revelations--finally found.

Review

David Damrosch is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is the general editor of The Longman Anthology of World Literature and the founding general editor of The Longman Anthology of British Literature. He lives in New York City.Introduction

Early in April of 1840, a young British traveler arrived in the dusty provincial capital of Mosul in what is now northern Iraq. Restless, ambitious, and completely unsure of what he should do with his life, Austen Henry Layard had just spent several months wandering around Greece, Turkey, and the Levant, admiring the monumental ruins left by the Greeks and Romans throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Now he was venturing into unsettled regions rarely visited by European travelers, for it was said that uncharted sites around Mosul held imposing remains of Nineveh and other ancient Assyrian cities. The reports Layard had heard were both true and false: the sites were there, yet when Layard went out to them, he was astonished to discover that there was nothing to see. All that remained of the great Mesopotamian civilizations were formless mounds of earth, forty or fifty feet high and up to a mile wide, with not one temple, not one pillar, not one sculpture in sight.

Far from disappointing him, the desolation of the Assyrian sites only fired Layard's imagination. As he later wrote, a traveler crossing the Euphrates would seek in vain for "the graceful column rising above the thick foliage of the myrtle" or the elegant curves of an amphitheater above a sparkling bay. "He is now at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps upon which he is gazing," Layard continued. "The more he conjectures, the more vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets desolation; a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder; for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by." Then and there, Layard resolved that he would be the one to uncover the history buried in the bleak mounds before him.

Layard and a handful of other archaeological explorers soon embarked on one of the most dramatic intellectual adventures of modern times: the opening up of three thousand years of history in the cradle of civilization. Layard led the way with spectacular discoveries at two different sites. At a site south of Mosul, he uncovered beautifully carved reliefs and a set of magnificent, human-headed winged bulls that became centerpieces of the British Museum's collection; across the Tigris from Mosul he found the long-buried ruins of Nineveh. There he discovered the vast palace built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, its endless corridors and seventy rooms lined with two full miles' worth of carved reliefs; not for nothing had Sennacherib named it "Palace Without Rival."

As spectacular as the carvings were, Layard's most important find was literary: he and his Iraqi friend and assistant Hormuzd Rassam uncovered the major library assembled by Sennacherib's grandson, Ashurbanipal. Layard and Rassam shipped a hundred thousand clay tablets and fragments back to the British Museum, and these proved to be keys to uncovering the region's ancient history and its rich literature. The greatest of the thousands of texts that Layard and Rassam brought to light is The Epic of Gilgamesh, the first great masterpiece of world literature.

This book tells the story of that long-buried book, a history of imperial conflict and of cross-cultural cooperation. During the epic's varied life, it has cut across many of the divides that arose during the long history of the intertwined civilizations that flourished in Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean. Gilgamesh links East and West, antiquity and modernity, poetry and history, and its echoes can be found in the Bible, in Homer, and in The Thousand and One Nights. At the same time the epic illuminates the profound conflicts that persist within each culture, and within the human heart itself. "Why," Gilgamesh's divine mother Ninsun asks the sun god, "did you afflict my son Gilgamesh with so restless a spirit?"

As it unfolds, The Epic of Gilgamesh becomes a searching meditation on the nature of culture. After ill-advised adventures lead to the sudden death of his beloved friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh is overwhelmed with despair and a deep fear of death. He abandons his city and goes in search of immortality, whose secret he believes he can learn from his ancestor Uta-napishtim, miraculous survivor of the Flood that swept over the earth centuries before. After a long and perilous journey Gilgamesh finally meets Uta-napishtim, only to find that he cannot transcend the human condition after all. Gilgamesh's quest may have failed, but along the way he learns lessons about just and unjust rule, political seductions and sexual politics, and the vexed relations among humanity, the gods, and the world of nature.

Though it is one of the earliest explorations of these perennial themes, this haunting poem isn't a timeless classic, in the sense in which Ben Jonson spoke of Shakespeare's works as "not of an age, but for all time." Instead, Gilgamesh has lived in two very different ages, the ancient and the modern, and only in these. A story of the fragile triumph of culture in the face of death, the epic strangely came to illustrate its own theme through its turbulent history. It was widely read in the Near East for a thousand years, until it vanished amid the eclipse of the region's ancient cultures, buried under successive waves of empire, from the Persians to the Romans and their successors. The epic was buried in ruin mounds along with Mesopotamia's entire written production, as people stopped speaking the region's older languages and lost even the ability to read the cuneiform script in which the works were written. Unexpectedly, the epic reemerged in the nineteenth century into a scene of renewed imperial conflict, involving Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, Chechens, Jews, Englishmen, Russians, and others in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. The choices these rivals made in the nineteenth century set the stage for the conflicts being played out in Iraq today.

Layard and Rassam uncovered Ashurbanipal's great library, but they had no way to know what it contained, for no one in the world could read the intricate cuneiform characters inscribed on the clay tablets. A group of gifted linguists worked during the next two decades to unlock the secrets of cuneiform writing and to decode the ancient language of Akkadian, in which most of the tablets were written. Finally, in 1872, a young assistant curator named George Smith came upon the Gilgamesh epic as he worked his way through the myriad of tablets and fragments in the British Museum's collection. The epic aroused intense interest and controversy from the moment Smith began to translate it, as his readers realized that this distant text had much to tell them about a work at the heart of Western culture: the Bible. Smith found that Gilgamesh's ancestor Uta-napishtim was an early version of Noah, and his tale of the Flood broadly agreed with the biblical account but differed in some significant details.

Within days of this discovery, sermons and newspaper editorials began to engage in sharp debate: What did the Babylonian version prove, the truth of biblical history or its falsity? As the New York Times noted in a front-page article, "For the present the orthodox people are in great delight, and are very much prepossessed by the corroboration which it affords to Biblical history. It is possible, however, as has been pointed out, that the Chaldean inscription, if genuine, may be regarded as a confirmation of the statement that there are various traditions of the deluge apart from the Biblical one, which is perhaps legendary like the rest." Smith's scholarly detective work brought the ancient epic squarely into the middle of the heated Victorian controversy over creation and evolution, religion and science, a debate that continues today.

Some further detective work is required today, though, to get the full benefit of the epic's rich history. Layard, Rassam, and Smith wrote voluminous books about their adventures, but they rarely told the whole story in print: as proper Victorians, they could be irritatingly discreet just when they approached the heart of the conflicts in which they were involved, and like all memoirists they shaped their tale for public ends. To get a three-dimensional picture, it is necessary to supplement their books with other sources. Fortunately, the British Museum and the British Library have preserved many of their private letters and journals, which are fresh, lively, and often surprisingly candid. Most of these papers have been buried for a century in these archives, never published or even discussed. These materials give a vivid picture of what was going on behind the scenes, and at important points they correct received ideas that are flat-out wrong. Archival research sometimes becomes almost its own branch of urban archaeology. Whereas the British Library's holdings have been comprehensively catalogued and cross-indexed, the British Museum's departments have much more informal archives, consisting of yellowing file folders, masses of correspondence going back two hundred years, and stacks of old account books. The museum's curators have the most precise knowledge of every artistic artifact in their care, but departmental records can be stored in rather haphazard ways. In a small field like Assyriology, everyone knows their discipline's history in a general way, but it is rarely studied in depth. Documents concerning the early days of archaeology are scattered, and finding key sources can be a chancy affair, following an uncertain trail from one informant to another.

I had this experience in talking with two curators in the British Museum's Department of Near Eastern Antiquities, Susan Collins and Irving Finkel. They generously took time away from their curatorial work on several occasions to supply me with cuneiform tablets, old letters, and Victorian newspaper clippings, yet I drew a blank when I asked for sources on a crucial episode involving Hormuzd Rassam. He had gone on to a distinguished career after discovering Ashurbanipal's palace but late in life had become embroiled in disputes with the museum's rising young Egyptologist, E. A. Wallis Budge. The conflict had culminated in a disastrous lawsuit that Rassam filed against Budge in 1893, and I was sure that the museum must have records of this suit. Dr. Collins was able to find some newspaper reports and a few unrelated letters from Budge, but nothing more. Dr. Finkel, too, was at a loss, but just as I was about to leave, some stray remark prompted him to pause, thoughtfully stroking his bushy white beard. There was, he suggested, another archivist I could talk to, at the museum's little-visited Central Archive, and perhaps I might find something there.

So I made my way to the Central Archive, which is reached, oddly, through an unmarked door at the back of the British Museum gift shop. Once through that door, I walked through a series of darkened, echoing rooms filled with empty bookshelves (the books having been transferred to the recently constructed British Library), then came to a warren of small offices, among which is the Central Archive. Of the seven days of the week, it is open to the public for five hours on Tuesdays. In the archive I found a trove of information: an entire folio scrapbook labeled "Rassam v. Budge, 1893." It contained extensive records of the pivotal lawsuit, including the pleadings and the actual transcript of the judge's detailed summation to the jury. Turning the musty pages of this volume, I experienced the archaeologist's sense of discovery as a long-lost drama unfolded, day by day, in the summer of 1893.

Archaeologists work their way down through time, from the present-day surface back through layer after layer of the ever more distant past. This book proceeds in the same way into "the dark backward and abysm of time," in Prospero's phrase. The following chapters will go from what is known to what is unknown, from what is near in space and time to what is far away. The account begins with the lives of the two people who played decisive roles in the epic's modern recovery: George Smith, who found the epic in the British Museum only to lose his life in Syria a few years later; and Hormuzd Rassam, discoverer of Ashurbanipal's palace, whose major contributions to archaeology were long suppressed by his English rivals. Starting in the Victorian period, we will then work down in time to explore the ancient era of the tablets' burial in the burning ruins of Ashurbanipal's palaces in Nineveh; to examine the mature epic and the early cycle of songs from which it grew; and, finally, to reach Gilgamesh himself at the threshold of history nearly five thousand years ago, architect of Uruk's independence and builder of its magnificent wall.

This journey into antiquity has parallels in the ancient text itself, when Gilgamesh leaves his city in search of the secret of eternal life, making the dangerous journey to find his ancestor, "Uta-napishtim the Faraway." Journeys ideally end with a return home-in this case, back to the present-and the epilogue of this book will look at Gilgamesh's renewed life in the present. It has come to figure in the literary work and the political musings of figures as disparate as Philip Roth and Saddam Hussein, and even as a point of reference in the first and second Gulf Wars. The most ancient masterpiece of world literature has become bound up with the most current of events today. Copyright � 2006 by David Damrosch. All rights reserved.

The Buried Book

Adventurers, explorers, kings, gods, and goddesses come to life in this riveting story of the first great epic—lost to the world for 2,000 years, and rediscovered in the nineteenth century Composed by a poet and priest in Middle Babylonia around 1200 bce, The Epic of Gilgamesh foreshadowed later stories that would become as fundamental as any in human history, The Odyssey and the Bible. But in 600 bce, the clay tablets that bore the story were lost—buried beneath ashes and ruins when the library of the wild king Ashurbanipal was sacked in a raid. The Buried Book begins with the rediscovery of the epic and its deciphering in 1872 by George Smith, a brilliant self-taught linguist who created a sensation when he discovered Gilgamesh among the thousands of tablets in the British Museum's collection. From there the story goes backward in time, all the way to Gilgamesh himself. Damrosch reveals the story as a literary bridge between East and West: a document lost in Babylonia, discovered by an Iraqi, decoded by an Englishman, and appropriated in novels by both Philip Roth and Saddam Hussein. This is an illuminating, fast-paced tale of history as it was written, stolen, lost, and—after 2,000 years, countless battles, fevered digs, conspiracies, and revelations—finally found.

This is an illuminating, fast-paced tale of history as it was written, stolen, lost, and—after 2,000 years, countless battles, fevered digs, conspiracies, and revelations—finally found."

Gateways to World Literature the Ancient World Through the Early Modern Period

Gateways to World Literature presents a fresh and diverse range of the world's great literature in a two-volume set that links past and present, East and West, and literary and cultural contexts at an affordable price. The anthology includes epic and lyric poetry, drama, and prose narrative, with many complete works and a focus on the most influential pieces and authors from each region and time period. Engaging introductions, scholarly annotations, maps, pronunciation guides, and illustrations developed by a distinguished editorial team provide a wealth of materials that support and illuminate the selections.

Penguin Paperbacks. A variety of Penguin paperbacks are available at a significant discount when packaged with either volume of Gateways to World Literature. See the end of this book for further details."

Gateways to World Literature the Seventeenth Century to Today

ALERT: Before you purchase, check with your instructor or review your course syllabus to ensure that you select the correct ISBN. Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable. In addition, you may need a CourseID, provided by your instructor, to register for and use Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products. Packages Access codes for Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products may not be included when purchasing or renting from companies other than Pearson; check with the seller before completing your purchase. Used or rental books If you rent or purchase a used book with an access code, the access code may have been redeemed previously and you may have to purchase a new access code. Access codes Access codes that are purchased from sellers other than Pearson carry a higher risk of being either the wrong ISBN or a previously redeemed code. Check with the seller prior to purchase. -- Gateways to World Literature presents a fresh and diverse range of the world's great literature in a two-volume set that links past and present, East and West, and literary and cultural contexts at an affordable price. The anthology includes epic and lyric poetry, drama, and prose narrative, with many complete works and a focus on the most influential pieces and authors from each region and time period. Engaging introductions, scholarly annotations, maps, pronunciation guides, and illustrations developed by a distinguished editorial team provide a wealth of materials that support and illuminate the selections.

-- Gateways to World Literature presents a fresh and diverse range of the world's great literature in a two-volume set that links past and present, East and West, and literary and cultural contexts at an affordable price."

World Literature in Theory

World Literature in Theory provides a definitive exploration of the pressing questions facing those studying world literature today. Coverage is split into four parts which examine the origins and seminal formulations of world literature, world literature in the age of globalization, contemporary debates on world literature, and localized versions of world literature Contains more than 30 important theoretical essays by the most influential scholars, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hugo Meltzl, Edward Said, Franco Moretti, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gayatri Spivak Includes substantive introductions to each essay, as well as an annotated bibliography for further reading Allows students to understand, articulate, and debate the most important issues in this rapidly changing field of study

Coverage is split into four parts which examine the origins and seminal formulations of world literature, world literature in the age of globalization, contemporary debates on world literature, and localized versions of world literature ..."

A Study Guide for The Epic of Gilgamesh

Damrosch , David , The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great “ Epic of Gilgamesh ,” Henry Holt, 2007. Damrosch presents an engaging account of how the clay tablets of the Gilgamesh epic were unearthed and sent to England in the ..."

Gateways to World Literature

The Emergence of Subjectivity in the Ancient and Medieval World

The Emergence of Subjectivity in the Ancient and Medieval World: An Interpretation of Western Civilization represents a combination of different genres: cultural history, philosophical anthropology, and textbook. It follows a handful of different but interrelated themes through more than a dozen texts that were written over a period of several millennia and, by means of an analysis of these texts, presents a theory of the development of Western civilization from antiquity to the Middle Ages. The main line of argument traces the various self-conceptions of different cultures as they developed historically, reflecting different views of what it is to be human. The thesis of the volume is that through examination of these changes we can discern the gradual emergence of what we today call inwardness, subjectivity, and individual freedom. As human civilization took its first tenuous steps, it had a very limited conception of the individual. Instead, the dominant principle was that of the wider group: the family, clan, or people. Only in the course of history did the idea of what we now know as individuality begin to emerge, and it took millennia for this idea to be fully recognized and developed. The conception of human beings as having a sphere of inwardness and subjectivity subsequently had a sweeping impact on all aspects of culture, including philosophy, religion, law, and art: indeed, this notion largely constitutes what is today referred to as modernity. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that this modern conception of human subjectivity was not simply something given, but rather the result of a long process of historical and cultural development.

Kapuściński , Ryszard , Travels with Herodotus , trans. by Klara Glowczewska, New York: Knopf 2007. Lateiner, Donald, The Historical Method of Herodotus, Toronto: Toronto University Press 1989. Marozzi, Justin, The Way of Herodotus: ..."

Leadership at the Crossroads [3 volumes]

What is leadership? Not only has that question been debated since the beginning of human culture and society, but it's a moving target based on the definer, and the epoch. The definition can be thought-provoking and profound: A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him, (Lao Tzu, 6th century BC ). Or the profundity may lie shrouded in the prosaic: A leader is one who has followers, (Peter Drucker, 20th century). However you define the concept, today's challenges for leaders of all stripes are monumental, and the need for effective leadership is huge. More than anything, this set travels farther and digs deeper than most leadership books. It takes us from mere explanations of leadership to an understanding of it as part of the human condition. Reading it should be at the top of the to-do list for any leader in any era. In Leadership at the Crossroads, contributors from a wide variety of fields, including management, economics, political science, philosophy, sociology, history, literature, and psychology, explore the many facets of leadership. The set comprises: Volume 1: Leadership and Psychology; Volume 2: Leadership and Politics; Volume 3: Leadership and the Humanities. Collectively, this set showcases traditional and emerging approaches to leadership in both theory and practice and raises new questions brought on by society's new challenges. It also suggests solutions for developing and promoting leadership in the corporate world, politics and diplomacy, religion, education, non-profits, and the arts. Whether identifying qualities that will serve a U.S. president well, or the characteristics of the essential can-do supervisor in today's corporation, Leadership at the Crossroads supplies insights and intelligence that will help leaders make the most of the challenges and opportunities lying before them.

Lewiston, NY: St. David's University Press, 1987. Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Henry Holt, 2006. Frymer-Kensy, Tikva. In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, ..."

Heterotopic World Fiction

After more than a century of genocides and in the midst of a global pandemic, this book focuses on the critique of biopolitics (the government of life through individuals and the general population) and the counterdevelopment of biopoetics (an aesthetics of life elaborating a self as a practice of freedom) realized in texts by Virginia Woolf, Michel Foucault, and Michael Ondaatje. Their world fiction produces transhistorical, transnational experiences offered to the reader for collective responsibility in these critical times. Their books function as heterotopias: spaces and processes that recall and confront regimes of recognized truths to dismantle fixed identities and actualize possibilities for becoming other. Higgins and Leps define and explore a slant, biopoetic perspective that is feminist, materialist, anti-racist, and anti-war.

Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Henry Holt, 2007. ———. Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. ———."

Literary Translation and the Making of Originals

Literary Translation and the Making of Originals engages such issues as the politics and ethics of translation; how aesthetic categories and market forces contribute to the establishment and promotion of particular "originals†?; and the role translation plays in the formation, re-formation, and deformation of national and international literary canons. By challenging the assumption that stable originals even exist, Karen Emmerich also calls into question the tropes of ideal equivalence and unavoidable loss that contribute to the low status of translation, translations, and translators in the current literary and academic marketplaces.

George Economou, Bristol: Shearsman Books. ... Damrosch , David (2003), What is World Literature?, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ... The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh , New York: Holt."

The Written World

From clay tablets to the printing press. From the pencil to the internet. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Harry Potter. This is the true story of literature -- of how great texts and technologies have shaped cultures and civilizations and altered human history. The inventions of paper, the printing press and the world wide web are usually considered the major influences on the way we share stories. Less well known is the influence of Greek generals, Japanese court ladies, Spanish adventurers, Malian singers and American astronauts, and yet all of them played a crucial role in shaping and spreading literature as we know it today. The Written World tells the captivating story of the development of literature, where stories intersect with writing technologies like clay, stone, parchment, paper, printing presses and computers. Central to the development of religions, political movements and even nations, texts spread useful truths and frightening disinformation, and have the power to change lives. Through vivid storytelling and across a huge sweep of time, The Written World offers a new and enticing perspective on human history.

6 Beginning with names For an account of the discovery and the decipherment of cuneiform script, read the excellent book by David Damrosch , The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (New York: Henry Holt, ..."

Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia [2 volumes]

This book provides high school and undergraduate students, and other interested readers, with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field. Provides readers with information about written science fiction in all its forms—novels, stories, plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels Includes original interviews with major writers like Ted Chiang, Samuel R. Delany, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Connie Willis that are not available elsewhere Features numerous sidebars with additional data about various subjects and key passages from several classic works Includes hundreds of bibliographies of sources that provide additional information on various specific topics and the genre of science fiction as a whole

“ Earth Abides by George R . Stewart (1949).” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Volume 3. Edited by Gary Westfahl. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1019–1021. Scott, Donald M. 2012. The Life and Truth of George R ."

Gilgamesh

Vivid, enjoyable and comprehensible, the poet and pre-eminent translator Stephen Mitchell makes the oldest epic poem in the world accessible for the first time. Gilgamesh is a born leader, but in an attempt to control his growing arrogance, the Gods create Enkidu, a wild man, his equal in strength and courage. Enkidu is trapped by a temple prostitute, civilised through sexual experience and brought to Gilgamesh. They become best friends and battle evil together. After Enkidu's death the distraught Gilgamesh sets out on a journey to find Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Great Flood, made immortal by the Gods to ask him the secret of life and death. Gilgamesh is the first and remains one of the most important works of world literature. Written in ancient Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C., it predates the Iliad by roughly 1,000 years. Gilgamesh is extraordinarily modern in its emotional power but also provides an insight into the values of an ancient culture and civilisation.

Gilgamesh is the first and remains one of the most important works of world literature. Written in ancient Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C., it predates the Iliad by roughly 1,000 years."

Hingga Akhir Waktu

Karya ahli fisika terkenal dan penulis buku laris The Elegant Universe dan The Fabric of the Cosmos, penjelajahan memukau atas luasnya waktu dan pencarian makna oleh umat manusia. Kosmos luar biasa luas dalam ruang dan waktu, tapi diatur oleh hukum-hukum matematis universal yang sederhana dan elegan. Pada lini masa kosmik itu, era manusia sungguh spektakuler, tapi hanya sejenak. Suatu hari nanti, kita tahu bahwa kita semua akan tiada. Dan kita juga tahu bahwa alam semesta akan tiada juga. Until the End of Time adalah pembahasan Brian Greene atas penjelajahan kosmos dan petualangan kita untuk memahaminya. Greene membawa kita melintas waktu, mulai dari pemahaman terbaik kita akan awal alam semesta, ke sedekat-dekatnya perkiraan sains atas akhirnya. Dia menelaah bagaimana kehidupan dan akalbudi muncul dari kekacauan purba, dan bagaimana akalbudi kita, dalam upaya memahami kefanaannya, mencari berbagai cara memberi makna bagi pengalaman: dalam cerita, mitos, agama, ekspresi kreatif, sains, pencarian kebenaran, dan kerinduan kita akan yang kekal. Melalui serangkaian cerita yang menjelaskan berbagai lapis realitas yang saling berhubungan dari mekanika kuantum sampai kesadaran dan lubang hitam, Greene memberi kita gambaran lebih jernih tentang bagaimana kita terbentuk, di mana kita sekarang, dan ke mana kita menuju. Namun segala pengetahuan itu, yang muncul sesudah kemunculan kehidupan, akan sirna dengan berakhirnya kehidupan. Kita jadi sadar: selama saat singkat keberadaan kita, kita bertugas mencari makna kita sendiri. Mari kita mulai.

158 David Damrosch , The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007). 159 Andrew George, terj., The Epic of Gilgamesh : The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian ..."

Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia

The Greek name Mesopotamia means 'land between the rivers.' The Romans used this term for an area that they controlled only briefly (between 115 and 117 A.D.): the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, from the south Anatolian mountains ranges to the Persian Gulf. It comprises the civilizations of Sumer and Akkad (third millennium B.C.) as well as the later Babylonian and Assyrian empires of the second and first millennium. Although the 'history' of Mesopotamia in the strict sense of the term only begins with the inscriptions of Sumerian rulers around the 27th century B.C., the foundations for Mesopotamian civilization, especially the beginnings of irrigation and the emergence of large permanent settlements, were laid much earlier, in the fifth and fourth millennium. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia defines concepts, customs, and notions peculiar to the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia, from adult adoption to ziggurats. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, and hundreds of cross-reference dictionary entries on religion, economy, society, geography, and important kings and rulers.

Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh ."

Ecoambiguity

Delving into the complex, contradictory relationships between humans and the environment in Asian literatures

Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Henry Holt, 2007. Damrosch , David . What Is World Literature? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Damrosch , David , ed."

Readings in Oriental Literature

Readings in Oriental Literature: Arabian, Indian, and Islamic is an up-to-date elucidation of some diverse and discrete, yet common and classic, subjects and authors, and the distinctive oriental elements present in them. The book, composed of fourteen essays, includes ancient Arabian poetry; the Arabian Nights; the Arabian desert; the Arabian influence on Melville; Shelley’s Orientalia; Coleridge’s Kubla Khan; the influence of English Romantics on the Bengali Tagore; Bangladesh’s national anthem, and her exiled daughter Taslima Nasreen; the Victorian reaction to British India; religious diversity and Islam in the West; the Muslim East in English literature; and reading literature from an Islamic point of view. Marked by an originality of approach and a freshness and simplicity, the book takes note of contemporary theoretical, interdisciplinary and cultural discourse drawn from literature, history, politics and religion as necessary. However, it is far from being unnecessarily weighed down by the loaded clichés, oft-repeated jargon and overused euphemisms of modern literary or critical theory. The result is, regardless of its specialized treatment of otherwise commonplace or well-known texts or topics, that the overall discussion is as lucid, introductory and expository as it is deep and scholarly, making the book accessible and understandable to non-specialist readers, in addition to specialist researchers and academics.

Referring to David Damrosch 's The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (2007), the famous modern literary critic Harold Bloom said, “It is salutary to be reminded by David Damrosch that ultimately we and ..."

World Mythology

Mythology and religious-studies teachers will appreciate World Mythology for its thematic approach, historical background information, commentary, and discussion questions provided for each myth from a range of geographic regions. For the same reasons, any reader interested in mythology will enjoy the contents and format of the book.

Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh and Others. Rev. ed. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University, . Damrosch , David . Buried Book : e Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh ."

An Everlasting Name

The ever-growing interest in cultural memory has generated an impressive body of academic literature on public commemoration, but not enough attention has been paid until now to the power and appeal of names to transcend death. This book is the first to investigates onymic commemoration as a technology of immortality. Bringing together issues as diverse as casualty lists on public display and honorific street-names, the inquiry expands on the commemorative capacity of an “everlasting name” as a site of remembrance. It explores how notions about names, being, fame and an afterlife have coalesced into prestigious and time-honored commemorative practices and traditions that demonstrate the cultural power of an “everlasting name” to confer immortality through remembrance. By linking ancient traditions and modern practices, this book offers a cross-cultural analysis of onymic commemoration that is broad in scope and covers a wide time frame, encompassing diverse historical periods, cultural contexts and geopolitical settings.

Damrosch , David . 2006. The Buried Book . The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Henry Holt. Davidzon, Vladislav. 2020. “Invitation to Beheading: What can American statue-topplers learn from Europe?"

Reading the Past Across Space and Time

Featuring leading scholars in their fields, this book examines receptions of ancient and early modern literary works from around the world (China, Japan, Ancient Maya, Ancient Mediterranean, Ancient India, Ancient Mesopotamia) that have circulated globally across time and space (from East to West, North to South, South to West). Beginning with the premise of an enduring and revered cultural past, the essays go on to show how the circulation of literature through translation and other forms of reception in fact long predates modern global society; the idea of national literary canons have existed just over a hundred years and emerged with the idea of national educational curricula. Highlighting the relationship of culture and politics in which canons are created, translated, promulgated, and preserved, this book argues that such nationally-defined curricula were challenged by critics and writers in the wake of the Second World War.

Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Clover, Carol, and John Lindow (ed). 2005. ... Damrosch , David , and Natalie Melas (eds). 2009. ... Damrosch , David . 2007. The buried book : The loss and rediscovery of the great epic of Gilgamesh ."

Until the End of Time

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose, from the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe. "Few humans share Greene’s mastery of both the latest cosmological science and English prose." —The New York Times Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal. From particles to planets, consciousness to creativity, matter to meaning—Brian Greene allows us all to grasp and appreciate our fleeting but utterly exquisite moment in the cosmos.

Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York : Henry Holt and Company , 2007 . Darwin , Charles . The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex ."

Sumerian Origins

A Mysterious Group of People came to settle in southern Mesopotamia, sometime around 5400BC. What is now the modern state of Iraq, the first city of Mesopotamia was founded named Eridu. Although historians have generally regarded this as the world’s first city, we have seen this challenged on numerous occasions by recent discoveries too numerous to mention here. Eridu had all the things we ordinarily associate with an ancient city: temples, administrative buildings, housing, agriculture, markets, art, and, of course, walls to keep out unsavoury characters.The elusive aspect is we have absolutely no idea where they acquired their language, and bizarre language it is, we have no idea what they originally looked like. Their language, which we call Sumerian, and the subsequent Akkadian derivative were linguistic isolates. Sumerian is the oldest known written language on Earth, and any languages it might have derived from or developed alongside have been lost to time. Figuring out what their baffling ethnic identity based on their art is a doomed effort, because their art was so stylized that a good case could be made that it portrays people of any ethnicity, or the people they encountered. The Sumerian language was not Semitic, and the Akkadian conquests of 2334 BCE disrupted the ethnic and cultural isolation of the Sumerian people. By about 2000 BCE, the Sumerians were speaking Akkadian and the Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations were regarded as a single enterprise.Does this mean that we’ll never know how the Sumerian language developed, or where the Sumerians originally came from? Well if any reasonably well-preserved Sumerian bones can be found DNA testing could tell us their ethnic origin. Although this all sounds murky, we have literature left in the form if cuneiform writing that speaks volumes on their day to day life and their highly unusual gods. The Sumerian pantheon reads like wild science fiction at times and although they often speak of their own origins in terms of their gods and family ties many have chosen to label this as mythology, ignore it, or merely treat it in a literature aspect.

"The Great Stag: A Sumerian Deity and Its Affiliations", Fifty-Third General Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of ... Damrosch , David (2006), The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh , New York City, ..."

The Human Cosmos

A Best Book of 2020 NPR A Best Book of 2020 The Economist A Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Smithsonian A Best Science & Technology Book of 2020 Library Journal A Must-Read Book to Escape the Chaos of 2020 Newsweek Starred review Booklist Starred review Publishers Weekly An historically unprecedented disconnect between humanity and the heavens has opened. Jo Marchant's book can begin to heal it. For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are--our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost. Our relationship to the stars and planets has moved from one of awe, wonder and superstition to one where technology is king--the cosmos is now explored through data on our screens, not by the naked eye observing the natural world. Indeed, in most countries modern light pollution obscures much of the night sky from view. Jo Marchant's spellbinding parade of the ways different cultures celebrated the majesty and mysteries of the night sky is a journey to the most awe inspiring view you can ever see--looking up on a clear dark night. That experience and the thoughts it has engendered have radically shaped human civilization across millennia. The cosmos is the source of our greatest creativity in art, in science, in life. To show us how, Jo Marchant takes us to the Hall of the Bulls in the caves at Lascaux in France, and to the summer solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at New Grange in Ireland. We discover Chumash cosmology and visit medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same. A four-billion-year-old meteor inspires a search for extraterrestrial life. The cosmically liberating, summary revelation is that star-gazing made us human.

16; David Damrosch , The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2007). as one collection: Jeanette Fincke, “The British Museum's Ashurbanipal Library Project,” Iraq 66 (2004): ..."

Approaches to World Literature

The present volume introduces new considerations on the topic of “World Literature”, penned by leading representatives of the discipline from the United States, India, Japan, the Middle East, England, France and Germany. The essays revolve around the question of what, specifically in today's rapidly globalizing world, may be the productive implications of the concept of World Literature, which was first developed in the 18th century and then elaborated on by Goethe. The discussions include problems such as different script systems with varying literary functions, as well as questions addressing the relationship between ethnic self-description and cultural belonging. The contributions result from a conference that took place at the Dahlem Humanities Center, Freie Universität Berlin, in 2012.

Of course, other prominent and more recent examples offer themselves from the field of genuine literary studies, like David Damrosch's investigation of The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh which ..."

The Novel: An Alternative History

Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, The Novel: An Alternative History is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the pre-modern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these pre-modern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny. Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining-The Novel: An Alternative History is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel.

Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . NY: Holt, 2007. Davis, Dick. Panthea's Children: Hellenistic Novels and Medieval Persian Romances. NY: Bibliotheca Persica, 2002."

Day of Honey

Originally published in hardcover in 2011.

Out ofthe Ashes. HarperCollins, 1999. Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery ofthe Great Epic of Gilgamesh . Henry Holt, 2006. Eisenstadt, Lt. Col Michael. “Iraq: Tribal Engagement Lessons Learned,” Military Review, ..."

The Writing of the Gods

The fast-paced and “engrossing account” (The New York Times Book Review) of “one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history” (The Christian Science Monitor): two rival geniuses in a race to decode the writing on one of the world’s most famous documents—the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries. Carved in ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone carried the same message in different languages—in Greek using Greek letters, and in Egyptian using picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Until its discovery, no one in the world knew how to read the hieroglyphs that covered every temple and text and statue in Egypt. Dominating the world for thirty centuries, ancient Egypt was the mightiest empire the world had ever known, yet everything about it—the pyramids, mummies, the Sphinx—was shrouded in mystery. Whoever was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone would solve that mystery and fling open a door that had been locked for two thousand years. Two brilliant rivals set out to win that prize. One was English, the other French, at a time when England and France were enemies and the world’s two great superpowers. Written “like a thriller” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The Writing of the Gods chronicles this high-stakes intellectual race in which the winner would win glory for both himself and his nation. A riveting portrait of empires both ancient and modern, this is an unparalleled look at the culture and history of ancient Egypt, “and also a lesson…in what the human mind does when faced with a puzzle” (The New Yorker).

Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York : Henry Holt , 2006 . Darnell , John Coleman , and Colleen Manassa . Tutankhamun's Armies : Battle and Conquest during Ancient ..."

City of the Good

How we came to seek absolute good in religion and nature—and why that quest often leads us astray People have long looked to nature and the divine as paths to the good. In this panoramic meditation on the harmonious life, Michael Mayerfeld Bell traces how these two paths came to be seen as separate from human ways, and how many of today’s conflicts can be traced back thousands of years to this ancient divide. Taking readers on a spellbinding journey through history and across the globe, Bell begins with the pagan view, which sees nature and the divine as entangled with the human—and not necessarily good. But the emergence of urban societies gave rise to new moral concerns about the political character of human life. Wealth and inequality grew, and urban people sought to justify their passions. In the face of such concerns, nature and the divine came to be partitioned from the human, and therefore seen to be good—but they also became absolute and divisive. Bell charts the unfolding of this new moral imagination in the rise of Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Hinduism, Jainism, and many other traditions that emerged with bourgeois life. He follows developments in moral thought, from the religions of the ancient Sumerians, Greeks, and Hebrews to the science and environmentalism of today, along the way visiting with contemporary indigenous people in South Africa, Costa Rica, and the United States. City of the Good urges us to embrace the plurality of our traditions—from the pagan to the bourgeois—and to guard against absolutism and remain open to difference and its endless creativity.

Damrosch , David . 2006. The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Henry Holt. Davies, Philip R. 1992. In Search of “Ancient Israel.” Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 2008."

Literature for a Changing Planet

Why we must learn to tell new stories about our relationship with the earth if we are to avoid climate catastrophe Reading literature in a time of climate emergency can sometimes feel a bit like fiddling while Rome burns. Yet, at this turning point for the planet, scientists, policymakers, and activists have woken up to the power of stories in the fight against global warming. In Literature for a Changing Planet, Martin Puchner ranges across four thousand years of world literature to draw vital lessons about how we put ourselves on the path of climate change—and how we might change paths before it’s too late. From the Epic of Gilgamesh and the West African Epic of Sunjata to the Communist Manifesto, Puchner reveals world literature in a new light—as an archive of environmental exploitation and a product of a way of life responsible for climate change. Literature depends on millennia of intensive agriculture, urbanization, and resource extraction, from the clay of ancient tablets to the silicon of e-readers. Yet literature also offers powerful ways to change attitudes toward the environment. Puchner uncovers the ecological thinking behind the idea of world literature since the early nineteenth century, proposes a new way of reading in a warming world, shows how literature can help us recognize our shared humanity, and discusses the possible futures of storytelling. If we are to avoid environmental disaster, we must learn to tell the story of humans as a species responsible for global warming. Filled with important insights about the fundamental relationship between storytelling and the environment, Literature for a Changing Planet is a clarion call for readers and writers who care about the fate of life on the planet.

For an account of the discovery and decipherment of cuneiform script, read the excellent book by David Damrosch , The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (New York: Henry Holt, 2006). 3."

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Church tradition has long held that humanity arose from two people living in a garden of paradise in the Mesopotamian basin roughly six thousand years ago. Scientists now have abundant evidence that the human population never numbered less than ten thousand, originated out of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, and descended from ancestors that we share in common with several other species (some now extinct, some still living). Is it possible to make these two starkly different worldviews agree, or do we have to choose one and discard the other? This book will summarize the fossil and genetic discoveries that support the scientific view, and then address the impact that this has upon many Christian theological tenets. In the process, it presents many examples of the church adjusting long-held traditions and teachings in the face of scientific advances, as well as examples of how we often hold two seemingly contradictory ideas together without feeling a need to discard one of them. Many theologians have written on this topic without adequately incorporating the scientific aspects. Many others have addressed the science without exploring the impact on theology. This book accomplishes both.

Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Holt, 2007. Dangel, A. W., et al. “Complement Component C4 Gene Intron 9 Has a Phylogenetic Marker for Primates: Long Terminal Repeats ..."

Rumors of Wisdom

This study brings together literary and philological criticism to offer a reading of Job 28 as poetry. The heart of the study consists of two major sections. The first is an interpretation of the poem against the heroic deeds of ancient kings described in Mesopotamian royal narratives, especially the Gilgamesh epic. The second is a thorough philological and textual commentary which employs an aesthetic rationale for restoring the text of the poem as a work of art. The study reveals a multileveled masterpiece whose complexity impacts how one reads Job 28 as poetry and theology.

Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh , and Others. Revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh ."

Alfred Loisy and Modern Biblical Studies

Damrosch , David . The Buried Book : The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Henry Holt, 2006. Daniels, Peter T. “Edward Hincks's Decipherment of Mesopotamian Cuneiform.” In The Edward Hincks Bicentenary Lectures ..."

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