20 New Lines from The Epic of Gilgamesh Discovered in Iraq, Adding New Details to the Story

The Epic of Gil­gamesh, one of the old­est nar­ra­tives in the world, got a sur­prise update last month when the Sulay­maniyah Muse­um in the Kur­dis­tan region of Iraq announced that it had dis­cov­ered 20 new lines of the Baby­lon­ian-Era poem of gods, mor­tals, and mon­sters. Since the poem has exist­ed in frag­ments since the 18th cen­tu­ry BC, there has always been the pos­si­bil­i­ty that more would turn up. And yet the ver­sion we’re famil­iar with — the one dis­cov­ered in 1853 in Nin­eveh — has­n’t changed very much over recent decades. The text remained fair­ly fixed — that is, until the fall of Bagh­dad in 2003 and the intense loot­ing that fol­lowed yield­ed some­thing new.

Since that time, the His­to­ry Blog notes:

the [Sulay­maniyah] muse­um has a mat­ter of pol­i­cy paid smug­glers to keep arti­facts from leav­ing the coun­try, no ques­tions asked. The tablet was acquired by the muse­um in late 2011 as part of a col­lec­tion of 80–90 tablets sold by an unnamed shady char­ac­ter. Pro­fes­sor Farouk Al-Rawi exam­ined the col­lec­tion while the sell­er hag­gled with muse­um offi­cial Abdul­lah Hashim. When Al-Rawi saw this tablet, he told Hashim to pay what­ev­er the sell­er want­ed: $800.

That’s a pret­ty good deal for these extra lines that not only add to the poem’s length, but have now cleared up some of the mys­ter­ies in the oth­er chap­ters. These lines come from Chap­ter Five of the epic and cast the main char­ac­ters in a new light. Gil­gamesh and his com­pan­ion Enkidu are shown to feel guilt over killing Hum­ba­ba, the guardian of the cedar for­est, who is now seen as less a mon­ster and more a king. Just like a good director’s cut, these extra scenes clear up some mud­dy char­ac­ter moti­va­tion, and add an envi­ron­men­tal moral to the tale.

The His­to­ry Blog arti­cle has an in depth descrip­tion of the trans­la­tion, with links to a schol­ar­ly paper on this very impor­tant find, and prompts the ques­tion, how much more is there to be dis­cov­ered?

In the video above, Hazha Jalal, man­ag­er of the tablet’s sec­tion of the Sulay­maniyah Muse­um talks (in Kur­dish) about the new dis­cov­ery, say­ing (in trans­la­tion): “The tablet dates back to the Neo-Bably­on­ian peri­od, 2000–1500 BCE. It is a part of tablet V of the epic. It was acquired by the Muse­um in the year 2011 and [then] Dr. Farouk Al-Raw translit­er­at­ed it. It was writ­ten as a poem and many new things this ver­sion has added, for exam­ple Gil­gamesh and his friend met a mon­key. We are hon­ored to house this tablet and any­one can vis­it the Muse­um dur­ing its open­ing hours from 8:30 morn­ing to noon. The entry is free for you and your guests. Thank you.”

In the mean­time, if you’ve got a few min­utes to spare, you can click here to Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia.

You can also find the epic in our twin col­lec­tions, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free and 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

via The His­to­ry Blog

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Hear the “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” the Old­est Com­plete Song in the World: An Inspir­ing Tune from 100 BC

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.