How to Read “Gilgamesh” | The New Yorker

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The heart of the world’s oldest long poem is found in its gaps and mysteries.

Save this story Save this story The mid-nineteenth century was a time when very many Western people began to doubt the historical truth of the Bible. Was it really the case that we were all descended from Adam and Eve, whom God created in his own image and placed in a beautiful garden and then, by reason of their sins, banished from there? Did their descendants compound their wickedness, to the point where God decided to drown them all, in a huge flood? And did he, afterward, seeing the destruction he had wrought, make a covenant with the one surviving family, that of Noah, promising that he w

How to Read “Gilgamesh” | The New Yorker

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