Free Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell

bibliography, understood the difficult passages to the best of my inexpert ability, and cobbled together a rough prose version. (Like many other translators, I have omitted Tablet XII, which most scholars consider as not belonging to the epic.) At this stage, I felt rather like a bat, feeling out the contours of the original text by flinging sound waves into the dark. Once my prose version was completed, I began the real work, of raising the language to the level of English verse. The line that I use, a loose, noniambic, nonal-literative tetrameter, * is rare in English; the two examples I know well are sections of Eliot’s
Four Quartets
and Elizabeth Bishop’s wonderful “Sestina.” I worked hard to keep my rhythms from sounding too regular, and I varied them so that no two consecutive lines have the identical rhythm.
    When possible, I kept fairly close to the literal meaning; when necessary, I was much freer and did not so much translate as adapt. I chose not to reproduce some of the quirks of Akkadian style, which for ancient readers may have been embellishments but are tedious for us: for example, the word-for-word repetitions of entire passages and the enumerations from one to seven or twelve. I filled in the many gaps in the text; I changed images that were unclear; I added lines when the drama of the situation called for elaboration or when passages ended abruptly and needed transitions; I cut out a number of fragmentary passages; and when the text was garbled, I occasionally changed the order of passages. (All these changes are documented in the notes.) While I have tried to be faithful to the spirit of the Akkadian text, I have often been as free with the letter of it as Sîn-le-qi-unninni and his Old Babylonian predecessors were with their material. I like to think that they would have approved.

    Except for the Prologue and the end of Book XI, which have five beats to the line.

GILGAMESH

H e had seen everything, had experienced all emotions, from exaltation to despair, had been granted a vision into the great mystery, the secret places, the primeval days before the Flood. He had journeyed to the edge of the world and made his way back, exhausted but whole. He had carved his trials on stone tablets, had restored the holy Eanna Temple and the massive wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal. See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun. Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can imagine, approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar, a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty, walk on the wall of Uruk, follow its course around the city, inspect its mighty foundations, examine its brickwork, how masterfully it is built,observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens, the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares. Find the cornerstone and under it the copper box that is marked with his name. Unlock it. Open the lid. Take out the tablet of lapis lazuli. Read how Gilgamesh suffered all and accomplished all.

S urpassing all kings, powerful and tall beyond all others, violent, splendid, a wild bull of a man, unvanquished leader, hero in the front lines, beloved by his soldiers—
fortress
they called him,
protector of the people, raging flood that destroys all defenses—
two-thirds divine and one-third human, son of King Lugalbanda, who became a god, and of the goddess Ninsun, he opened the mountain passes, dug wells on the slopes, crossed the vast ocean, sailed to the rising sun, journeyed to the edge of the world, in search of eternal life, and once he found Utnapishtim—the man who survived the Great Flood and was made immortal—he brought back the ancient, forgotten rites, restoring the temples that the Flood had destroyed, renewing the statutes and sacraments for the welfare of the people and the sacred land. Who is like Gilgamesh? What other king has inspired such awe? Who else