---
product_id: 18121421
title: "Gilgamesh"
brand: "john gardnerjohn maier"
price: "A$38"
currency: AUD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 10
url: https://www.desertcart.com.au/products/18121421-gilgamesh
store_origin: AU
region: Australia
---

# Gilgamesh

**Brand:** john gardnerjohn maier
**Price:** A$38
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Gilgamesh by john gardnerjohn maier
- **How much does it cost?** A$38 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.com.au](https://www.desertcart.com.au/products/18121421-gilgamesh)

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## Description

Gilgamesh

## Images

![Gilgamesh - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81mZF+q3d1L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    For me it was a great history lesson
  

*by R***Y on Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2017*

I wanted a thoughtful presentation of this ancient story and; not just a prose story just listing a series of events, sequenced, with the missing portions filled in by narrator's assuming subjective fillers.  These authors presented translations of the available sources (tablets) and thought out reasoning for the interpretations of the missing source material.  The book gave me an appreciation for the quality of information on the lives of people living in an ancient setting.  For me it was a great history lesson.Ray

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    An excellent version for the interested reader who isn't a specialist
  

*by J***E on Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2015*

I bought this to replace a copy I'd had for years that got lost in a move. Those knowledgeable in the field undoubtedly have problems with this version. Indeed, that's recognized in Maer's introduction. However, I believe this is the best edition available for the amateur who simply wants to know the story and gain some understanding of its importance. The overall quality of the writing is the best of any version I've seen (given Gardner's abilities that's to be expected) and Maer's introduction covers the history of both this edition and of the work itself very clearly and usefully.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    An extensively annotated translation for in-depth study.
  

*by T***I on Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2001*

GILGAMESH : Translated from the Sin-leqi-unninni Version by John Gardner and John Maier, with the assistance of Richard A. Henshaw. 304 pp.  New York : Vintage Books, 1985 (1984).  ISBN 0-394-740-89-0 (pbk.)The present book is the fruit of a collaboration between John Gardner, literary scholar and writer who was responsible for the translation, and John Maier, who wrote the 50-page Introduction, the extensive  Notes, and the concluding Appendix.  Although both might be described  as 'non-specialist enthusiasts,' and it was their intention to write "a translation for the non-specialist" (page 4), evidence of real scholarship is evident throughout, and it's clear that we are dealing here with enthusiasts who were madly in love their subject and knew a great deal about it.The Gilgamesh story has a very long history and reaches back to a real Sumerian hero of the Third Millenium B.C.  Its late version was written, not in Sumerian but in Akkadian, the language of Sumer's conquerors, by the priest, Sin-leqi-unnini, around 1300 B.C., and it is this Middle Babylonian version that we have been given in the present book.Although Gilgamesh is usually presented as a poem in twelve books, Gardner and Maier, guided by the fact that each of its twelve cuneiform tablets has six columns on each side, and feeling that "the column is an important unit of composition" (page vii), decided to  treat the tablets as seventy-two columns or separate poems.  Hence the  unusual column-by-column layout of their book.Most clay tablets that have survived are usually in a pretty battered condition, and have lost many words and lines of their text.  These  losses are usually smoothed over and largely hidden in translations for the ordinary reader.  But in the Gardner-Maier the general intent seems  to have been, not so much to give us a reader's version of Gilgamesh, but to literally transcribe, line-by-line and with all of the many gaps and losses caused by wear and breakage, what is actually on the tablets, thereby bringing us much closer to the extant text.This can make for a very different and interesting kind of reading  experience, though one that involves work since we ourselves must use  our imagination to try to fill in the gaps.  Here is an example from TABLET IX Column i lines 15-24, with losses and editorial insertions in square brackets exactly as found on page 196, but with my obliques added to indicate line breaks :"Gilgamesh takes up the axe in his hand; / he drew [the weapon] from his belt / [and] like an arrow . . . he fell among them. / He  struck . . . smashing them, / . . . [enjoying it]. / He threw . . . / he [guarded] . . . / Second . . . / He lifted . . . / . . ."Fortunately, most columns have far less damage than this, and some have none at all.  Here are lines 1-5 of TABLET I Column iv :"The animals came, their hearts grew light in the waters. / And as for him, Enkidu, child of the mountain, / he who fed with gazelles on  grass, / he drank with the wild beasts at the watering place / and with the hurrying animals his heart grew light in the waters" (page 77).Here we begin to touch on something of the beauty and mystery of this strange and compelling text.  What is Enkidu, the wild man?  What stage of human development does he represent?  And how did he find his way into this poem of a highly civilized people?  As for what happens when the sacred whore arrives a few lines later to "teach him what a woman is," I leave it to your imagination . . .If the first of the passages quoted above worried anyone, I should add that, following each column of translation, Maier has supplied  extensive notes which can run to two or three times the length of the  translated column.  These notes attempt to supply us with as much  relevant Gilgamesh scholarship as Maier has been able to pack into them,  and make frequent references to the original language.  Using these  notes will sometimes help the reader to puzzle out the meaning of at  least some of the damaged or missing lines.In addition to Maier's extensive notes, and his scholarly Introduction which will interest all students of the Ancient Near East, he has also gone to the trouble of giving us an interestingly illustrated 30-page Appendix, 'Translating Gilgamesh,' which shows us something of the difficulties of translating cuneiform.Mutterings have been heard about the appropriateness of this Appendix, but there is a real aura of romance about these extremely ancient and miraculously preserved clay tablets, and cuneiform is a fascinating and beautiful script.  Given this, it's hard to see how anyone could be seriously interested in 'Gilgamesh' and not be interested in both its  language and the ancient vehicles that brought this language to us. And anyway, you don't have to read the Appendix if you don't want to read it.  Think of it as a bonus.The Gardner-Maier edition is, as I've indicated, the joint product of  two real and very scholarly enthusiasts, men who assumed in their readers an interest in Gilgamesh and Gilgamesh-related matters as keen  as their own.  As such it's not an edition that I would recommend to  most beginners.  The newcomer to Gilgamesh would, I think, be far  better off starting with something less ambitious such as the excellent Penguin Classics edition by N. K. Sandars, and to save the Gardner-Maier for later when they will be in a position to benefit from it more.But for those who have already fallen in love with this mysterious and  wonderful story, and who would like to get closer to the original and  dig into the details, it's doubtful that there could be any better  version for the enthusiastic non-specialist.  I just wish Maier had  also thought to add a Bibliography and an Index, or if he did, that  someone hadn't forgotten to include them.

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*Last updated: 2026-03-09*