Book Club: Epic of Gilgamesh

Join us for book discussion and social time! There’s no pressure to have completed the book fully to participate - join us to hear about the book and meet new friends (as long as you don't mind spoilers for the oldest written story in history!). Please keep your RSVPs up to date.

August's book is Epic of Gilgamesh by unknown author/authors and is available in audio or in physical format.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, being written in ancient Sumerian, has a large number of translations available. No translation is better than others, but they do serve different purposes. For this, I recommend that readers choose one of two translations by Stephen Mitchell or Andrew George. Mitchell's translation is for those that want a more poetic, story based translation versus George's more academic take.

And for anyone concerned about length, the story itself is relatively short and should take ~5-6 hours to read.
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Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world’s oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh’s adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, the Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind’s eternal struggle with the fear of death.