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Gilgamesh translated

Language Log 2026-04-27

‘Gilgamesh’ Review: Love and Death in Mesopotamia The epic of Gilgamesh is more than 40 centuries old. Simon Armitage’s new translation feels thrillingly alive. By William Giraldi, WSJApril 24, 2026

Much as I admire Simon Armitage's translation, I must say that I am overwhelmed by the excellence of the reviewer, William Giraldi.  He is much plauded for his fiction, literary criticism, and journalism.  Reading though this review, I often find myself celebrating his uncanny ability to find the mot juste at the very moment when I was wondering how he would extricate himself from a difficult, intricate sentence / thought.

There is something almost absurd about attempting to appraise “Gilgamesh,” as though one were asked to appraise wind, or love, or that first human thought that trembled toward language. And yet here comes Simon Armitage, the poet laureate of the U.K., with his stunning new verse translation, not as a vandal of antiquity but as a lucid accomplice to its endurance. As he does with his unimprovable versions of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (2008) and “The Death of King Arthur” (2012), Mr. Armitage understands that the oldest stories are never old, only waiting for a new singer.  

His rendering does not genuflect before the epic, about the indomitable King Gilgamesh, whose adventuring kinship with Enkidu and grief over his death drive him on a profitless quest for immortality, so much as enter into a bold union with it. This is not a museum-piece translation, a dusty tablet behind glass, but a reanimation, a voice tugged up from the clay and made to speak again in a tongue that is ours. Mr. Armitage writes with a poet’s mastery of rhythm and rupture, refusing both the sterile fidelity of the scholar and the vulgar opportunism of the adapter. His is an epic that breathes—raggedly, unevenly, but thrillingly alive.

We must bear in mind that, in his quest for fidelity, Armitage has teamed up with Jacob Dahl, Oxford don who is a specialist of the pre-Classical cultures and languages of the Near East, whose work we have elsewhere separately followed, e.g.,  Dahl, J., "Proto-Elamite and linear elamite, a misunderstood relationship?", Akkadica, 2023; via WP: Proto-Elamite script.  Thanks to Yves Rehbein here.

The entire review, which is much longer than what I've excerpted here, is well worth reading for its insights and illuminations.  Heartily recommended for anyone who is interested in Gilgamesh.

Who was Gilgamesh?

Gilgamesh (/ˈɡɪlɡəmɛʃ/, /ɡɪlˈɡɑːmɛʃ/; Akkadian: , romanized: Gilgāmeš; originally Sumerian: , romanized: Bilgames) was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BC. He was possibly a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who was posthumously deified. His rule probably would have taken place sometime in the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period, c. 2900–2350 BC, though he became a major figure in Sumerian legend during the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BC). 

The modern form "Gilgamesh" is a direct borrowing of the Akkadian , rendered as Gilgāmeš. The Assyrian form of the name derived from the earlier Sumerian form , Bilgames. It is generally concluded that the name itself translates as "the (kinsman) is a hero", though what type of "kinsman" was meant is a point of controversy. It is sometimes suggested that the Sumerian form of the name was pronounced Pabilgames, reading the component bilga as pabilga (), a related term which described familial relations, but this is not supported by epigraphic or phonological evidence.

WP

Closing queries by June Teufel Dreyer:

One of the reviewers says that the original was written in Sumerian, a language with no know relatives.  So a unique written language? Can this be true?

We actually have several Sumerian specialists who are regular Language Log readers.  Maybe they will have some answers to these questions.

 

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