Epic Hero
How a self-taught British genius rediscovered the Mesopotamian saga of Gilgamesh—after 2,500 years
By David Damrosch
In November 1872, George Smith was working at the British Museum in a second-floor room overlooking the bare plane trees in Russell Square. On a long table were pieces of clay tablets, among the hundreds of thousands that archaeologists had shipped back to London from Nineveh, in present-day Iraq, a quarter-century before. Many of the fragments bore cuneiform hieroglyphs, and over the years scholars had managed to reassemble parts of some tablets, deciphering for the first time these records of daily life in Assyria of the 7th and 8th centuries B.C.—references to oxen, slaves, casks of wine, petitions to kings, contracts, treaties, prayers and omens.
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In the brief decade after he “entered into official life” in 1867, Smith had written eight important books. All modern scholarship on Babylonian literature stems from his pathbreaking work, and at the time of his illness he did at least know that his accomplishments would live on, both in his own books and in the work of those who would follow in his footsteps. [See the full article at: Biblical archeology, gilgamesh epic]