Volume 53, Number 4 · March 9, 2006
'The True Epic Vision'
By Jasper Griffin
Gilgamesh: A New English Version
by Stephen Mitchell
Free Press, 290 pp., $24.00
There were two ancient languages and literatures: Greek and Hebrew. One of them, probably Hebrew, was the original language, from which (after the Fall) all the others arose as degenerate and distorted descendants. That was, roughly, how things looked to educated Westerners until, in the early nineteenth century, there began a great age of discoveries and decipherments. European conquests and Western inquisitiveness combined to unearth, and gradually to make intelligible, a huge variety of ancient scripts and forgotten languages: Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite, Phoenician, and more. The history of mankind became suddenly much longer and more complex. At the same time, the sciences of geology and archaeology were busy extending the age of the world and the evolution of species, the human race itself—very controversially—not excluded.
Review, 2632 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |