Primal epic of the world

Derrek Hines, Gilgamesh, Chatto & Windus (paperback) £8.99

Curiously, the hero of the oldest known work of literature was a real historical personage: Gilgamesh, ruler of the Sumerian city of Uruk (in modern Iraq) around 2800 BC.

The Epic of Gilgamesh depicts the king as a musclebound superman: longhaired, broadshouldered, lion-slaying: descending into the land of the dead to rescue his friend Enkidu.

In the underworld Gilgamesh encounters Utnapishtim (Noah) who tells him the story of the Flood in much the form it was recorded hundreds of years later in the Bible.

The Gilgamesh story exists in many forms.  Fragments are turning up all the time.  New editions roll off the presses - a children’s version is promised by OUP later this year.

Derrek Hines’ retelling “is in no sense a translation”.  Citing similar recent reworkings of the classics by Christopher Logue, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, Canadian-born Hines feels free to shatter the Ashmolean atmosphere of antiquity, mixing timeless and contemporary imagery.

Gilgamesh is “so handsome he robs the world of horizon”.  Shamhat the priestess who seduces the wild Enkidu is described 

Hines’ language is sometimes jarring but on the whole vigorous and inventive (“sun’s acetylene glare off a full parking lot / of armour”).

Surely the megalomaniac spirits of Saddam Hussein and the Mother of All Battles hover close at hand as do perhaps ill-judged references to the twin towers.

The strongest feeling given off by the original Epic is overwhelming fear of death.  If we remember the king’s name nearly five thousand years later he has achieved immortality of a kind.

Perhaps it is not so surprising.  Only a real man could lie so brazenly about his exploits.

Oxford Times  1 February 2002