The Book of Lost Books Read Free Page A

Ashurbanipal of Assyria had ordered his troops to seek out the ancient wisdom in the cities of Babylon, Uruk, and Nippur. These spoils of war were then translated into Akkadian from the original Sumerian.
    Over time, the poem was supplemented by more ancient versions discovered in Nippur and Uruk, as well as copies from places as far apart as Boghazköy in Asia Minor and Megiddo in Israel. Gradually, an almost complete version of
The Epic of Gilgamesh
was assembled out of Hittite, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, and Old Babylonian.
    Who first wrote it? We do not know. Was it part of a wider cycle of myths and legends? Possibly, even probably, and there is a slim chance that further archaeological research will answer this. What, finally, is it about?
    Gilgamesh is a powerful king of Uruk. The gods create an equal for him in the figure of Enkidu, a wild man, brought up among beasts and tempted into civilization by sex. They become firm friends, and travel together to the forest, where they slay the ferocious giant Humbaba, who guards the cedar trees. This infuriates the goddess Ishtar, who sends a bull from Heaven to defeat them. They kill and sacrifice it, and Ishtar decides that the way to harm Gilgamesh is through the death of Enkidu. Distraught, Gilgamesh travels through the Underworld in search of eternal life, and eventually meets with Utnapishtim at the ends of the world. Utnapishtim was the only human wise enough to escape the Flood, and, after forcing Gilgamesh through a purification ceremony, shows him a flower called “The Old Are Young Again.” It eludes his grasp, and Gilgamesh dies.
    The themes resonate through recorded literary endeavor. Gilgamesh wrestles with mortality; he declares he will “set up his name where the names of the famous are written.” Death is inevitable and incomprehensible. Even the giant Humbaba is given a pitiable scene where he begs for his life. Prayers, elegies, riddles, dreams, and prophecies intersperse the adventure; fabulous beasts sit alongside real men and women. The fact that we can discern different styles and genres within
The Epic of
Gilgamesh
hints that unknown versions existed prior to it.
    All the earliest authors are anonymous. A legendary name, an Orpheus or Taliesin, serves as a conjectural origin, a myth to shroud the namelessness of our culture’s beginnings. Although anonymity is still practiced, it is as a ruse to conceal Deep Throats, both investigative and pornographic. It is a choice, whereas for generations of writers so absolutely lost that no line, no title, no name survives, it is a destiny thrust upon them. They might write, and struggle, and edit, and polish, yet their frail papers dissipate, and all their endeavor is utterly erased. To those of whom no trace remains, this book is an offering. For we will join them, in the end.

Homer
    {
c. late eighth century
B.C.E.}
    HOMER WAS . . .
    The verb’s the problem here. Was there even such a person as Homer?
    There was, or there was believed to be, a Homer: minds as skeptical as Aristotle’s and as gullible as Herodotus’ knew there was, of sorts, a, once, Homer.
    â€œWhen ’Omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre . . . They knew ’e stole; ’e knew they knowed,” says Rudyard Kipling.
    â€œBut when t’ examine ev’ry part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same” was Pope’s interpretation.
    Samuel Butler, in “The Authoress of the Odyssey” (1897), proposed that at least half of Homer was a woman.
    E. V. Rieu, in 1946, patriotically complained:
    Homer’s
Iliad
and
Odyssey
have from time to time afforded a first class battleground for scholars. In the nineteenth century in particular, German critics were at endless pains to show, not only that the two works are not the product of a single brain, but that each is a piece of intricate and rather ill-sewn patch-work. In this process Homer disappeared.
    The imperishable Homer