What is Reddit's opinion of The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics)?
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There is a good thread on this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/179fl4/from_a_laymans_perspective_the_relationship/

I don't feel qualified to answer this in detail, however it was something interesting I was made to think about when studying The Epic Of Gilgamesh and read about previously so I will put a few thoughts here.

An important point is that the story of "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and other Sumerian poems, especially the parts concerning Enkidu, vary significantly depending on the text source. This is unsurprising given how long the stories were in popular circulation for.

Also, the concept of "gay" didnt exist then like it does today. We have limited knowledge of the Sumer civilisation however it seems they were fairly relaxed when it comes to sex. We know there was people who engaged in homosexual sex, for example references to priests called "assinu" meaning "womb-man". It should be noted it appears anal sex in general was not frowned upon (female priests also practiced anal sex to not get pregnant).

I would ask you to think of your question like this: think how different gay sex was viewed in greek times to now. Then remember the Sumer civilisation ended over 1000 years before the period commonly recognised as ancient Greece. Therefore, I think the way you postulate the question, "was he gay", is inappropriate as you are applying modern concepts to life thousands of years ago, to a totally different society.

So, I would argue the question you should ask is "did Gilgamesh engage in homosexual acts with Enkidu". This would make your question meaningful and explicit. To this I would then answer I have never seen a text where Enkidu and Gilgamesh are explicitly stated to have sex. Some texts do seem to imply a romantic relationship (to me in their English translation anyway - hardly accurate and definately not explicit), and some don't.

And even so, again, this is an ancient civilisation. What I, as a UK native reading in 2020 may view as implying homosexuality, may in that culture have been considered perfectly normal bonding between two males. Travelling to the Middle East and having to repeatedly kiss men and have my hand held by men opened my eyes to this. That would all be viewed as very gay in the UK.

In conclusion, my take when looking into this is that unless someone can reference an explicit statement of them being homosexual or engaging in sex together, it's all just speculation. I have read many preserved ancient texts in their english translations relating to Gilgamesh and never have found an unequivocal, explicit statement. (If anyone does know of a source that does explicitly state they are gay please let me know!)

Further Reading:

I would read the penguins classic version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It contains some other Sumerian poems and different versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh from older sources. This allows for a good starting comparison, before you look in more depth.

(If anyone can reccomend more books on Sumerian literature/culture it would be appreciated!)

I really like the A. R. George edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh, although there's a recent edition by Benjamin Foster that I haven't read yet. Foster's anthologies Before the Muses and From Distant Days are some of my favorites and I reference them all the time for Akkadian mythology and poetry.

I envy anyone who was introduced to Mesopotamia in primary or second school. The curriculum at my school focused, ad nauseum, on Greece and Rome, with a little bit of Ancient Egypt thrown in for good measure. I didn't discover Mesopotamia until my brief time at college.

If there's anything about Mesopotamia that you're interested in or curious about, ask away. The community has been more active lately and we've got some good people who browse now!

The Epic of Gilgamesh. This has probably been mentioned by now in the thread, but as the oldest surviving piece of human literature, you could argue that this is where it all started. I'm a fan of the Penguin Classics edition, and the epic is also obviously in public domain; here is the Project Gutenberg link.

Is it the most riveting read? Maybe not, compared to mainstream and modern novels. The Epic is still worth reading because even back when people lived in mud brick homes and the ancient equivalent of New York City was anywhere with a population of 40,000+, exploration of the human condition was still something that intrigued people.

It's a story about justice, seeking glory, friendship, mortality, and whether or not immortality is something as literal as "never dying".

Everyone should read it at least once in their lives, if not only to experience where our literary tradition as a species first began.

Penguin Classics has a decent translation.

Timeline for tonight, lining up the histories of the Ukraine-Caucasus steppe with the standard history of the Ancient Near East. Along the top and bottom are the period coverage of various books. It's a little ugly, I think, but refinements can be made later.

If you want to get up to speed on the main contours of ("Western") world history, a five-book intensive course might involve

Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East. There are many survey texts of the Near East after 4000 BCE, but Mieroop's book is possibly the best. This gets you through the Bronze and Iron Ages, up through the conquest of Alexander.
Parker, A History of Greece. This is definitely a "textbook." It has inserts, end-of-chapter questions, all the sorts of "textbooky" things that I usually dislike. But it's a fine survey of Greece from 1200 BCE to 30 BCE, and leaves on the cliffhanger of the oncoming Roman conquest.
Boatwright et al, The Romans: From Village to Empire. Good balance of coverage for classical Rome, with a good discussion of the source documents.
WIckham, The Inheritance of Rome. Covers Europe, Byzantium, and the Middle East from 500 CE to 1000 CE.
Findlay and O'Rourke, Power and Plenty. This is a sweeping history of the second millennium CE from the perspective of economic trade and development.

Obviously this list omits considerable material, but that's the nature of a 5-book list. Yes, it ignores all of India and China, all of sub-Saharan Africa, and the development of the Americas before Columbus. You can explore those topics as well, I just don't have a quick, handy guide to them.

For more on the Ancient Near East, I like

Hallo, The Ancient Near East. This is an incredibly short (under 200 pages) and dense history of the ANE from 4000 to 300 BCE. Packed full of material, and some of the discussion is dated. You'll want to read this book slowly and cross-reference its claims with other texts. Good for culture.
Postgate, Early Mesopotamia. Rather than being a "political" history, Postgate focuses on social and economic history, which suits my tastes perfectly. He covers the period 3000-1500 BCE.
Cline, 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Good coverage of the Late Bronze Age (1500-1100 BCE), with an obvious focus on the Bronze Age Collapse.

For more on Classical Antiquity, you can't do much better than

The Routledge History of the Ancient World, an 8-volume series covering Greece and Rome from 1000 BCE to 700 CE or so.

For the Middle East after the fall of Rome, look no further than

Goldschmidt, A Concise History of the Middle East. This book begins with Islam c.600 CE and proceeds onwards.

Tonight I'm reading the Andrew George critical translation of <em>Gilgamesh.</em> I like his style. Tablet I of Gilgamesh is basically the Babylonian equivalent of that old George Washington video.

George has a 90-minute lecture on Gilgamesh that you can view here.
The Histocrat has a 2-hour video on Gilgamesh and his setting that you can view here.

Alright, I think I've gotten everything out of my system.

For 489 (from last fall but probably won’t change))

Required Texts: PDFs will be provided to cover opening assignments. The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew George (2003, ISBN: 978-0140449198).https://www.amazon.com/Epic-Gilgamesh-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140449191/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501635575&sr=1-3&keywords=epic+of+gilgamesh (Paperback or Kindle). [Kindle version available. There may also be a pdf: https://d3jc3ahdjad7x7.cloudfront.net/NRUTVm6ZhlKhuLUJiV0EMwP1RzD8YcWzShoETQ3DN3aPcGWE.pdf ] Germania, Tacitus. Available as a PDF in Sakai Resources. Translated by Mattingly. Use the PDF; further information on the text here:https://www.amazon.com/Agricola-Germania-Classics-S/dp/B0052XBRDE/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501597051&sr=1-2&keywords=tacitus+germania+mattingly DC Confidential, Sir Christopher Meyer.https://www.amazon.com/DC-Confidential-Christopher-Meyer/dp/0753820919/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501596592&sr=1-1&keywords=meyer+dc+confidential Kindle edition, through Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/DC-Confidential-Christopher-Meyer-ebook/dp/B00590YJQ2/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Getting Our Way, Sir Christopher Meyer.https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Our-Way-Christopher-Meyer/dp/0753827166/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501596511&sr=8-1&keywords=meyer+getting+our+way (hardcover, paperback, or Kindle digital version) The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore.https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer-Richmond-Lattimore/dp/0226470490/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548298122&sr=8-1&keywords=homer+iliad+lattimore Please purchase the edition with introduction and notes by Richard Martin. Amazon, unfortunately, lists various editions with various translations on the same page. Kindle Edition, with the correct Lattimore translation, here: https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer-ebook-dp-B0069SJMQU/dp/B0069SJMQU/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1548298122 [There may be a download available of the translation without the introduction or notes: https://epdf.pub/the-iliad-richmond-lattimore-tr-university-of-chicagod8c84111c3b05379d457d233a230ff5171506.html] The Aeneid, Virgil. Translation: Allen Mandelbaum https://www.amazon.com/Aeneid-Virgil-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553210416/ref=tmm_mmp_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1624907001&sr=8-3 Mandelbaum translation currently listed under “Mass Market Paperback” Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Aeneid-Virgil-Bantam-Classics-ebook/dp/B000FBFO8M/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524450395&sr=1-2&keywords=virgil+aeneid+mandelbaum ($2.00) [Kindle version available or make use of this free version of the Mandelbaum translation: https://epdf.pub/the-aeneid-of-virgil.html] King Lear, Oxford Shakespeare Edition (be sure to purchase the Oxford Edition, edited by Stanley Wells). Kindle or Paperback Edition: https://www.amazon.com/History-King-Lear-Shakespeare-Classics/dp/0199535825/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&dpID=51ivuZAko3L&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=detail [There is a free version of the text of King Lear, without notes, here: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/king-lear/] Beowulf. Seamus Heaney translation. https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-New-Verse-Translation-Bilingual/dp/0393320979/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501598494&sr=1-1&keywords=beowulf (hardcover, paperback, or Kindle) [Kindle version available as above or use the UNC library version: https://search-proquest-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/pq1lit/docview/2147693322/Z301145660/45F1B1F2ADE148B9PQ/1?accountid=14244]

Is this not it?

Your response is bringing us now into the realm of literature and the Quran as a literary text. Which, in my opinion, is a much more sensible way to think about it. It's refreshing to meet a Muslim who's willing to have this kind of discussion!

> Got to agree. One problem with the argument that I've presented, is that even if we leave out the translations and assume we're working only with a purely Arabic Qur'an, there's still the issue of why so many different books of tafsir (i.e. exegesis)

I'm no scholar or expert in Arabic. I can read Arabic with reasonable Tajweed, and I understand a handful of words and phrases but serious engagement with the original Arabic is beyond me. From what I've read however, the Quran is problematic in that it contains many words which are not Arabic and words which appear very seldomly or don't have a clear translation. It's similar (although not as pronounced) when compared to Biblical study. In the New Testament there are some words that appear once, and only once, in Greek making them very difficult to translate!

The Quran is known to contain words from other languages, including Aramaic, Egyptian, Greek etc. In fact, it might not even be purely Arabic. A German Scholar named Luxenberg has suggested that parts of the Quran make more sense when read as Syro-Aramaic rather than Arabic. Right now, this area of study is still in it's infancy. We will definitely learn more as this is investigated in the future.

> But, I've got myself a theory about this. While translation might be an imprecise science, interpretation is an art form. And like other arts, its influenced by a number of extraneous factors, including the time and culture of those doing the interpreting. To cut a long winded story down to just a few words, the interpreters of the Qur'an will infuse the narratives with the norms of their culture

Ah! And now we're in the realm of literature, my passion :) (even more so than religion). I am both a writer and avid reader. Interpretation is indeed an art form, sometimes expressed by the sentiment: "No two people read the same book". And this is true of almost any literary work. We reflect our own opinions, cultural values and ideas into whatever we read and the book reflects it back. The author can certainly manipulate our feelings, but the better works of literature tend to support a multitude of possible interpretations. For instance: in Harry Potter, whether you choose to see Snape as an asshole, a tragic hero or morally ambivalent depends on your own internal moral compass. In Othello, whether you see Iago as sympathetic, evil or a lunatic, and whether you see Othello is sympathetic or an idiot depends on you.

Generally speaking, stories that allow for multiple interpretations survive because they can be reinterpreted as the culture and world around you changes. Consider a dishwasher manual: it is ONLY relevant to one particular dishwasher so absent the dishwasher it becomes obsolete. Consider the Bible. People reading it 2000 years ago got something out of it, just as people reading it today get something out of it, just as people reading it 2000 years from now will as well. What's fascinating about religious texts is how ambiguous they are. And it is BECAUSE they are ambiguous that they survive and can always be reinterpreted within a new age with new challenges. In literary context, to say that any one reading is canonical is insane actually.

One of the more interesting things one encounters when studying religious mythology and literature is how so many of the stories get told and retold and retold. Thousands of cultures have their own version of the Flood Myth. The oldest version we have of it in writing appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh in a retelling of the Babylonian Atrahasis; the most popular version appears in Genesis featuring Noah. At the core it's the same story. And to me that's something truly beautiful: that there are these very primordial stories that speak to the core of what it is to be human that keep getting retold. The Epic of Gilgamesh is actually one of my favourite stories of all time. It's 5000 years old and yet it discusses the most obvious theme of all: what it is to be mortal and die. This is a theme embedded and played upon by most religions.

> So in a culture where slapping your wife around was considered acceptable and divorce was seen as a challenge to one's dominant role in the family, "beating" would be taken as the preferred interpretation of the Arabic word daraba. And in a society where domestic violence is regarded as unacceptable, "divorce" would be taken as the preferred interpretation of the same word, and linguistically both interpretations work.

Completely true. If you want to beat your wife, that's what you'll inflect in the Quran. If you don't, the reverse is likely to be true.

> But which one did Allah really mean? Did he actually mean it to be loose like that, so it could be interpreted in two different ways for different cultures? Beat me, but that's one of the things about the linguistics of the Qur'an that fascinates me

To me personally, I'm not convinced that Allah wrote it. The Quran functions very much like any other literary text, in that can be interpreted to mean so many different things. Maybe that is why it has survived: because 1400 years later it is still relevant somehow whether people want to admit that or not.

> Whao, I've never even heard of those ones. I'll have to investigate them at some stage.

Taref Khalidi's translation focuses mainly on trying to capture the poetic structure and beauty of the original Arabic. He also goes for more gender neutral pronouns. His word choice is a tad repetitive though.

Here's a reference I've used in the past to help me pick Quran translations. Khalidi isn't on here though.

http://www.meforum.org/717/assessing-english-translations-of-the-quran

> Yeah, I think that's a good point that is seldom talked about. When I did tajweed, the teacher talked about this and just passed it off along the lines of, "if you were a native Arabic-speaker, you'd recognize the words and not need the diacritical marks". But then there's the issue of sentence context and how that changes the meaning of a word. This is something I'd like to look into a bit further over time.

It's actually NOT obvious, even to native Arabic-speakers. You must have heard of Variant Readings. The Hadith suggest there may be as many as 14. The two surviving ones are Hafs and Warsh and, depending on where you put the vowels there are DEFINITE differences in what the verses mean. The Hafs translation is just the one that won the popularity vote (like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John won for the Gospels). There are other variant readings that do allow different meanings.

Wikipedia gives a few examples. e.g.

Quran 15:8 says "we do not send down" in Hafs and "the angles do not come down" in Warsh. There are many others and it further compounds the allowable readings.

> Another really good point and something that I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand, that the Qur'an isn't always saying, "you should do this". Sometimes it's just saying, "this is what happened in the past", recounting historical events. But, like you've said, it doesn't always frame it as a historical event and you've often got to go to other books to get extra details.

Something I've felt about the Quran is that it brings together a new narrative by weaving together many of the older prophet stories. The general story underlying the Medinan Surahs in the Quran is:

A warner comes to some corrupt people -> the warner is ignored -> the people are destroyed for their transgressions

This is how Muhammad interprets the Biblical stories of Abraham, Lot, Noah, Moses/Pharoah and the Arabian stories of Ad and Thamud. It's quite an interesting take. Muhammad was using it to suggest to the Quraish what would happen to them if they did not heed his warnings. The Makkan Surahs are another kettle of fish altogether (and to me, a lot less interesting). They read more like Muhammad having a power trip.

> You can read into it a license for violence, perhaps because at one point it time that was exactly what it was intended to be. And you can read into it pacifist beatnik, because at one time that's what it was intended to be. Trying to reconcile those two extremes at any one point in time is problematic to say the least.

Addressed this. Looking forward to your response :). I think we're broadly on the same track here.

I HAVE NO REASON TO BE ANGRY THIS WEEK AS GIL DECIDED TO TURN UP FOR A MEASLY 30 QUARTZ. GUESS MY CATALYST DID IT'S JOB. I SHOULD PROBABLY FINISH READING IT.