James Mullen

Dr. Thomas Long

ENG 251

27 September 2000

Non-Fiction Book Review

The book that this review is centered upon is The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels by Alexander Heidel. This is a study of the search for congruity in epics such as Gilgamesh and how they pertain to more widely known works such as the books of Genesis in the Bible. While much is known of the highly publicized Bible, not much is known of earlier texts in which some of the same stories and themes can be seen. This work seeks to study in more depth these common themes and stories and to compare and contrast to try and achieve a better understanding of all the works involved.

This study starts out with a detailed translation of the entire Gilgamesh epic that has been found up to this point. The translation is rough and has very little flow. This shows that is it a more literal translation of what is on the clay tablets (the original source for all translations) than what we were given to study in class. After the exhaustive translation of the epic poem, the author goes into related materials. These materials include other stories from this time (roughly) that deal with some of the main themes that Gilgamesh dealt with. Varying accounts of the flood or deluge as well as several passages that deal with the underworld are spread throughout this chapter.

Next comes a chapter dealing with the ideas that cultures have about death and the afterlife. This chapter deals with everything from burial practices to whether or not each culture believe that humans were meant for some sort of immortality. Finally comes the chapter that deals with the flood or deluge that many cultures have in their literary (and possible historical) past. Many subjects are covered in this chapter such as comparing and contrasting dimensions of the ark, reasons for the flood in the first place, survivors of the flood, the bird scene that runs through most of the works, and even the sacrifices made after finally surviving the flood. All in all this was a very exhaustive work.

The author of this book does not include a bibliography for all the works cited in therein. However, he does have expansive footnotes that run almost throughout the book. In these footnotes he names the scholarly journals, studies, and other sources he used for this work as well as simply explaining some of the more complex ideas that he tries to convey without breaking up the flow of the text. The author also includes a small listing of symbols and characters that are found throughout the book simply because the translation of the work and the use names in other cultures might be hard to discern without these symbols.

This book was designed for a more scholarly study. The layman's interest might wane even before they were to get through the entire epic of Gilgamesh. As well, the plethora of names and places might confuse the casual reader. That is why it can be assumed that this work was written for people who want a deeper study than just the translation that you can get on the bookshelf of your local store. However, it can also be seen that it was written with a certain flow in order to keep things going. We do not get lost while the author sidetrack (the author doesn't even really sidetrack much at all). So, it can be estimated that this book is for college level and above studies.

As a whole, I found this work to be quite effective in everything that it tried to accomplish. The author clears up his main points at the end of each chapter and he uses this opportunity to blend it all together. The work drew some interesting conclusions and did so in a way that brought the reader along for the discovery. It got the point across and that's the basic mission for every non-fiction book, and in that, it was very effective.

Bibliography

Heidel, Alexander. The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. The University of  Chicago Press, Chicago: 1949