From the late third millennium BCE on, the adventures of the hero Gilgamesh were well known throughout Babylonia and Assyria, and the discovery of Akkadian-language fragments of versions of his tale at Boğazkoy, Ugarit, Emar, and Megiddo demonstrates that tales of the hero's exploits had reached the periphery of the cuneiform world already in the Late Bronze Age. A century of excavation at the Hittite capital of Hattusa (mod. Boğazkoy) has yielded more textual sources for Gilgamesh than are known from all other Late Bronze Age sites combined. The Gilgamesh tradition was imported to Hattusa for use in scribal instruction, and has been of particular importance to modern scholars in reconstructing the epic and analyzing its development, since it documents a period in the history of the narrative for which very few textual witnesses have yet been recovered from Mesopotamia itself. And it is this very Middle Babylonian period to which scholarly consensus assigns the composition of the final, "canonical" version of the epic. The Hittite Gilgamesh offers a full edition of the manuscripts from Hattusa in the Hittite, Akkadian, and Hurrian languages recounting Gilgamesh's adventures.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest written chronicle in the world, composed two to three thousand years before Christ. It tells events in the life of a king in an ancient Sumerian city of Mesopotamia.In the tradition of the Greek Iliad or the medieval Beowulf, the heroic central figure is admired for his prowess and power; he is a warrior, whose greatest adventures are here recounted, sometimes fantastic and ultimately magical, as he ventures beyond the bounds of the world. The Epic of Gilgamesh is an artifact of the first civilization, that which is the father and mother of our own civilization. It is like the great-great-great-grandparent whose name you do not know but without whom you would not exist. There are many matters that are not believable to us—monsters, deities, and places that we do not think exist, nor ever existed. Yet we can perceive in Gilgamesh a person like ourselves. This is the story of a man, not a god. We understand him, even if we do not understand or believe all that he does. Gilgamesh is the first literature of mankind to express the human condition.

This book takes a bold new approach to the prehistory of Homeric epic, arguing for a fresh understanding of how Near Eastern influence worked.

Special Features- Aims to show how The Gilgamesh Epic developed from its earliest to its latest form- Systematic, step-by-step tracking of the stylistic, thematic, structural, and theological changes in The Gilgamesh Epic- Relation of changes to factors (geographical, political, religious, literary) that may have prompted them- Attempts to identify the sources (biographical, historical, literary, folkloric) of the epic's themes, and to suggest what may have been intended by use of these themes- Extensive bibliography- Indices

An accessible introduction to the Bronze Age culture in Asia Minor. Famed for their warriors, the Hittites flourished in the region of modern Turkey from the seventeenth to thirteenth centuries BC. In this book, archaeologist Damien Stone explores the rich history of the Hittite civilization beyond their skill in battle, from religious reverence for the sun and storms to eclectic rock carvings which survive to this day. Stone describes the colorful succession of Hittite rulers, complete with assassinations, intrigue, and an evil stepmother, but he also parses the development of the Hittite language and considers the Hittites’ legacy in religion, art, and culture today. In short, The Hittites is a wide-ranging, accessible introduction to this vibrant ancient culture.

The evolution of the Gilgamesh epic" (1982) / Jeffrey H. Tigay -- From "Gilgamesh in literature and art: the second and first millennia" (1987) / Wilfred G. Lambert -- From "Gilgamesh: sex, love and the ascent of knowledge" (1987) / Benjamin Foster -- "Images of women in the Gilgamesh epic" (1990) / Rivkah Harris -- "The marginalization of the goddesses" (1992) / Tikva Frymer-Kensky -- "Mourning the death of a friend: some assyriological notes" (1993) / Tzvi Abusch -- "Liminality, altered states, and the Gilgamesh epic" (1996) / Sara Mandell -- "Origins: new light on eschatology in Gilgamesh's mortuary journey" (1996) / Raymond J. Clark -- From "a Babylonian in Batavia: Mesopotamian literature and lore in The sunlight dialogues" (1982) / Greg Morris -- "Charles Olson and the poetic uses of Mesopotamian scholarship" / John Maier -- From "'Or also a godly singer, ' Akkadian and early Greek literature" (1984) / Walter Burkert -- From "Gilgamesh and Genesis" (1987) / David Damrosch -- "Praise for death" (1990) / Donald Hall -- From "Gilgamesh in the Arabian nights" (1991) / Stephanie Dalley -- "Ovid's Blanda voluptas and the humanization of Enkidu" (1991) / William L. Moran -- From "the Yahwist's primeval myth" (1992) / Bernard F. Batto -- "Gilgamesh and Philip Roth's Gil Gamesh" (1996) / Marianthe Colakis -- From "The epic of Gilgamesh" (1982) / J. Tracy Luke and Paul W. Pruyser -- From "Gilgamesh and the Sundance Kid: the myth of male friendship" (1987) / Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow -- "Gilgamesh and other epics" (1990) / Albert B. Lord -- From "Reaching for abroad: departures" (1991) / Eric J. Leed -- From "Introduction" to he who saw everything (1991) / Robert Temple -- "The oral aesthetic and the bicameral mind" (1991) / Carl Lindahl -- From "Point of view in anthropological discourse: the ethnographer as Gilgamesh" (1991) / Miles Richardson -- From "The wild man: the epic of Gilgamesh" (1992) / Thomas Van Nortwick.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the world's oldest epic masterpiece.