A Momentary Taste of Being

Gilgamesh 1 Gilgamesh 2

Treasures from the Vatican Library--a slideshow

This is one of those books that I couldn't wait to tell you about.  Normally, I'm on a weekend hiatus, but this book demanded a review. So, what's the big deal?  Gilgamesh.  But not just Gilgamesh.  In the course of discussing how the epic was written, lost, and eventually rediscovered, the author shares insights about Victorian Archeology, Victorian prejudice, Asshurbanipal, Sumerian, Akkadian, Old Persion, Aramaic, Philip Roth, Saddam Hussein, among other things.  The book analyzes the writing, preservation, discovery, and decoding of an epic that we have come to take for granted as part of our heritage.  All the while one contemplates its potential loss and the question of how much more may be out there waiting recovery/discovery. For a while the author went off on a long discursion regarding Esarhaddon, the father of Asshurbanipal.  Even as I gobbled up this information about a civilization I had been taught so little about, I did wonder where ...

Adoration of Inanna IV Reading ancient, truly ancient literature always gives me something of a frisson--a sense of being transported to that dawn of time where words were less frequently captured, or captured as often and have escaped from us.  Ah, what great things might have been that we do not know.

From Dangerous Idea: The Searchable Josephus