Sophus Helle translates the latest version of Gilgamesh, including newly-discovered clay tablets. You can hear Gilgamesh read aloud in the Akkadian language here. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And the earth was without form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Gilgamesh was originally written as a Sumerian tale, before being reinterpreted in the Akkadian language around 1800 BCE, with the most well-known version composed in the first millennium BCE. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The story sheds light on the development of Mesopotamian literature, the earliest literary tradition yet known. New portions of the story are still being discovered in archaeological excavations. It was part of the Mesopotamian literary canon, and we have been able to piece the story together because tablets have been discovered at a variety of sites, with new tablets filling in missing sections of the story. It was lost for two millennia before being rediscovered in 1849 CE. The epic of Gilgamesh was told and retold in ancient Mesopotamia for thousands of years.
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