"This scrupulous new translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh manages to convey much of the archaic power and even something of the occasional humor of the ancient Mesopotamian poem. What is especially valuable is that the translators, by collating passages from the different ancient versions of this epic that have survived only in fragments, have made available many vivid narrative episodes that will be new to most English readers of the poem." - Robert Alter, University of California, Berkeley This Norton Critical Edition includes: - An expanded translation from the Akkadian aby Benjamin R.
Foster based on new discoveries, adding lines throughout the world's oldest epic masterpiece. - Benjamin R. Foster's full introduction and expanded explanatory annotations. - Eleven illustrations.
- Analogues from the Sumerian and Hittite narrative traditions along with "The Gilgamesh Letter," a parody of the epic enjoyed żeby Mesopotamian schoolchildren during the first millennium BCE. - Essays aby Thorkild Jacobsen, William L.
Moran, Susan Ackerman, and Andrew R. George, and a poem aby Hillary Major. - A Glossary of Proper Names and a Selected Bibliography.