“. . . elliptical, paradoxical, mysterious, adventurous, at once a strange rollicking adventure to kill giants and subdue women but also a careful meditation on mortality and love and power.”

Sophus Helle’s translation is astute, clear, and hugely rewarding. Whether it is the best out there, I could not say, but I can testify that two earlier translations I read in college were so miserable as to have me dreading this read until I opened the cover.

There is little to say of the tale itself; it’s the classic: elliptical, paradoxical, mysterious, adventurous, at once a strange rollicking adventure to kill giants and subdue women but also a careful meditation on mortality and love and power. It belies any suspicion that the ancients of 4000 years ago knew less than we did about the human condition. And, based on much of the writing done these days on these topics, the Sumerians perhaps understood more. In some ways, the seeds of much of our later great literature all were planted here.

But this is not the primary reason I recommend this work. I do it for two other reasons. The first is the clarity Helle gives to his translation, a process which is always ongoing as the excavations of ancient tablets continues and we find more and more of the epic. We see in his work with the epic what is still missing, what we make suppositions of, and where in some cases where different civilizations captured the story in a variety of ways. It was, after all, passed on from scholar to scholar, teacher to cuneiform-learning pupil, for many centuries. This can make for redundant reading in places, gaps in plot in others, but this is a far better circumstance than of translators who attempt themselves to fill in the gaps.

More important–and actually my favorite part of the reading–are the several healthy and scholarly yet completely readable essays Helle has produced around the various aspects of the work: on the workings of language, of the symbol of walls, of the nature of death, the methods for translation, the dynamics of religious ritual, and the like. These enlighten the reading with depth and interest far greater than my otherwise excellent professors from the 1990s.

Yes, I’ve become not just a fan of Gilgamesh, but a fan of Sophus Helle (I also read his equally powerful work with Enheduanna). As I write, he’s currently working on a Danish translation of Beowulf. He’s got a long career ahead of him; follow him to see what he offers us next. I am.