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Notes on video lecture:
Gilgamesh as World Literature
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on August 9, 2017 (go to class or lectures)


Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
antiquity, death, Genesis, immortality, flood, 3000, cuneiform, Layard, Rawlinson, Biblical, couplets, warfare, walking, British, place, Zabibah, Enkidu, Persia, Nimrod, medieval, rudimentary, testament, Rilke, cruel, Rassam, Chaldean, rival, friends, Iraq, Behistun, Akkadian, 36, tablets, Underworld
when Austen Henry discovered the clay tablets on which Gilgamesh is written, nobody could read them
he brought them back to the Museum
gradually people start to study them
Sir Henry (1810-1895)
was in the British service in
got interested in inscriptions
found inscription in which turned out to be by Darius I (550-486 BCE), in three different scripts
copied the inscription onto paper
spends 20 years learning how to translate it by comparing the scripts
by the 1870s, there is a knowledge
George Smith (1840-1876)
first to decipher part of the Gilgamesh
had never been to college or high school
gets interested in history
his firm was in distance on his lunch hour to the British Museum
got hired by the museum
published what they had of Gilgamesh and publishes it under The Epic of the Deluge
Chaldea is the region of Southern today
where the Babylonians came from
published the book The Chaldean Accounts of
in the 12 tablets of Gilgamesh, one tablet is about the story
George Smith persuades the British Museum to send him to look for more
died when he was after writing 8 books and establishing the field of Assyrian studies on a new basis
what does it mean for a work of world literature to enter the world
Gilgamesh made a career for George Smith but this interest also led to his in a sense
after he wrote to the British Museum that there was tribal , diseases, the British Museum told him to keep looking for it, and so he stayed two more months and died
Hormuzd (1826-1910)
first important Iraqi archeologists
was a friend and then of George Smith
found a number of the tablets
wrote the book, "Asshur in the Land of "
Rainer Maria (1875-1926)
claimed this was the greatest ancient work he has ever read
Saddam Hussein authored a book: " and the King"
written in 2000, is a novel that the CIA believes was written by Saddam Hussein, probably with the help of some ghostwriters
the plot is a love story about a powerful ruler of Iraq and a beautiful commoner girl named Zabibah
she comes to the city to restrain and educate the headstrong monarch
as comes to Gilgamesh
Zabibah's husband is a and unloving man who rapes her
the book is set in 7th or 8th century Tikrit, Hussein's home town
Joan Lunden
Australian novelist
heroine goes on a quest
Gilgamesh is relevant in the world today but comes from such a different world years old
a Sumerian king who has everything
the gods dispatch a wild man to teach him his
the plan goes awry when they become best
they set out together to see the world
they become so arrogant that the gods condemn the wild man to the
bereft, the king makes one last effort to achieve but fails
he stands before the walls of his great city
he knows his story will be his only lasting
format
has an ancient epic formality
rather dramatic but has a formal pace
history
1200 BCE priest Sîn-lēqi-unninni remade the text an adventure story into a story about a quest for ancient knowledge
so this story is about seeking antiquity to find a modern lesson
no one ever lived in
everyone always lives in the present
the oldest texts we have are already talking about an antiquity that they're reacting against
delivery of poem
when spoken in
measured, formal progress
much alliteration
half lines and then
points which allow the one reciting it to catch their voice
Ideas and Concepts:
From the crucial finds in linguistic history department, via tonight's Masterpieces of World Literature:
"The Behistun Inscription is a multilingual inscription in a large rock relief on a cliff at Mount Behistun in Western Iran, the finding and translating of which was crucial in the the decipherment of cuneiform script, and subsequently to the translation of clay tablets on which the story of Gilgamesh had been recorded over 3,000 years ago in the Ancient Cuneiform script of the Sumerians.
The Behistun inscription was authored by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in 522 BC and his death 486 BC. It includes three versions of the same text, written in three different cuneiform script languages:Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, a variety of Akkadian. The inscription is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
In 1598, the Englishman Robert Sherley saw the inscription during a diplomatic mission to Persia on behalf of Austria, and brought it to the attention of Western European scholars.
In 1621, the Italian explorer Pietro della Valle visited the inscription in the course of a pilgrimage.
In 1764, German surveyor Carsten Niebuhr visited it for Frederick V of Denmark, publishing a copy of the inscription in the account of his journeys in 1778.
In 1835, Sir Henry Rawlinson, an officer of the British East India Company army assigned to the forces of the Shah of Iran, began studying the inscription. Despite its relative inaccessibility, Rawlinson was able to scale the cliff with the help of a local boy and copy the Old Persian inscription. Rawlinson set to work on deciphering the text and returning to the site in 1843, and with the help of other scholars, he was eventually to the ability to read the inscription completely, which greatly promoted the development of modern Assyriology."
"The Behistun Inscription is a multilingual inscription in a large rock relief on a cliff at Mount Behistun in Western Iran, the finding and translating of which was crucial in the the decipherment of cuneiform script, and subsequently to the translation of clay tablets on which the story of Gilgamesh had been recorded over 3,000 years ago in the Ancient Cuneiform script of the Sumerians.
The Behistun inscription was authored by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in 522 BC and his death 486 BC. It includes three versions of the same text, written in three different cuneiform script languages:Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, a variety of Akkadian. The inscription is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
In 1598, the Englishman Robert Sherley saw the inscription during a diplomatic mission to Persia on behalf of Austria, and brought it to the attention of Western European scholars.
In 1621, the Italian explorer Pietro della Valle visited the inscription in the course of a pilgrimage.
In 1764, German surveyor Carsten Niebuhr visited it for Frederick V of Denmark, publishing a copy of the inscription in the account of his journeys in 1778.
In 1835, Sir Henry Rawlinson, an officer of the British East India Company army assigned to the forces of the Shah of Iran, began studying the inscription. Despite its relative inaccessibility, Rawlinson was able to scale the cliff with the help of a local boy and copy the Old Persian inscription. Rawlinson set to work on deciphering the text and returning to the site in 1843, and with the help of other scholars, he was eventually to the ability to read the inscription completely, which greatly promoted the development of modern Assyriology."

On the timeless lack of antiquity, via tonight's Masterpieces of World Literature: "In 1200 BCE, a priest named Sîn-lēqi-unninni rewrote the text of Gilgamesh from an adventure story into a story about a quest for ancient knowledge, thus turning it into an epic about seeking antiquity to find a modern lesson. If there is a lesson here, it is that no one ever lives in antiquity. Everyone always lives in the present. The oldest texts we have are already talking about an antiquity that they're reacting against."