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Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others
Stephanie Dalley
The World’s Classics Series (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) 368 pp., $7.95, paper
In the 1850s, the great library of the Assyrian King Assurbanipal was discovered in Nineveh by a team led by the British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard. Among these tablets were Mesopotamian stories of the creation or the universe, the flood, the adventures of Gilgamesh and others. When deciphered and published in the following decades, these texts caused a sensation. Even the British prime minister attended the meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology in 1872, when George Smith, a young Assyriologist working at the British Museum, first read to the public the newly translated passages from the Babylonian flood story.
In the last century, many more excavations have uncovered thousands of additional tablets and fragments, including many mythological and religious texts. The only attempt to translate all the major myths from Mesopotamia into English in modern times was the classic 1950 work, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, edited by James Pritchard (Princeton Univ. Press). Although there were two subsequent editions of this work, It has long been outdated. Many newly discovered tablets and fragments have filled in gaps in these texts, and our understanding of linguistic problems has also vastly increased.
Fortunately for the English-speaking world Stephanie Dalley, a researcher in Assyriology at Oxford, has translated afresh all the major Mesopotamian myths written in Akkadian. These include the Atrahasis myth (the Old Babylonian version of the flood story that was first published in 1969), the Epic of Creation (Enuma Elish), the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Descent of Ishtar and a number of less-well-known myths: Nergal and Ereshkigal, Adapa, Etana, Anzu, the Dunnu theogony 013and Erra. All of these myths are more complete and better understood now than ever before. A thorough, firsthand familiarity with the intimate corners of modern Assyriology informs Dalley’s translation, which is written in clear and lively English. Dalley supplies very informative and insightful introductions to each myth and provides many useful notes to particular readings or difficulties in the texts.
These wonderful texts are now available in an English translation that reflects modern knowledge, rather than the knowledge of a generation ago. A generation hence, I am sure that another translation will need to be done. In the meantime, we owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Dalley for helping to keep these stories alive.
The hardback edition of Dalley’s book, published in 1989, was an expensive $59 (this is Oxford University Press, after all). The work has now been issued in this affordable paperback edition, which very definitely belongs in the library of anyone interested in biblical archaeology or the ancient Near East.
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others
Stephanie Dalley
The World’s Classics Series (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) 368 pp., $7.95, paper