The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Gilgamesh by an unknown author. The book can be found on the Norwegian and My Book Lists.
Gilgamesh is one of, if not the, oldest story known today. Written at least 4,000 years ago, it was originally found on a series of clay tablets in the cuneiform language. When originally discovered, we had not yet cracked the cuneiform code and therefore the story sat without us knowing what we had. Roughly 150 years ago linguists cracked the cuneiform code and the story of Gilgamesh was slowly realized and spread out among the world. So despite it being likely the oldest story we have today, it is still fairly young to modern literature, as opposed to The Iliad and The Odyssey. Written as an epic poem, Gilgamesh has not faired completely unharmed through the ages. The story itself is littered with missing words and whole sections of the story just missing. These gaps represent where tablets were illegible or even completely broken apart. The gaps cause a lot of the story to remain unknown, however, luckily, the story has a tendency to repeat itself. A lot. This allows us, as the reader, to potentially piece together many of the missing sections. The repeated sections also adds to the theory that this was originally meant to be presented in front of a live audience. Unfortunately though, the many, many repeated sections in written form have a tendency to get glossed over by the reader. The story itself tells of the ancient Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh who stands over 18 feet tall. Across the 12 known tablets, Gilgamesh battles the guardian Humbaba, he makes some friends along the way, and eventually becomes part of the tale of a great flood sent by the gods to inundate the world. There is even a boat that needs to be built in order to survive the flood (with specific building measurements given). This story, although near identical to the biblical account of the flood, was written over a thousand years earlier resulting in a very interesting history lesson. Overall I found the story of Gilgamesh to be alright on its own, however I found the most fascinating part was the history behind the story and all the contexts interlaid within the story itself. I highly recommend the Sophus Helle translated version, which includes essays about the epic and provides much needed context about various parts of the story. Being the foundational work of essentially the civilization that followed makes me want to recommend this work to everyone.
