Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world’s oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh’s adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, The Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind’s eternal struggle with the fear of death. This new edition of Andrew George’s translation has been extensively revised to include recently discovered fragments and new sources.

Paperback, ISBN 9780140449198, SKU 1049198