Greek Mythology

When the clay tablets that comprise the Akkadian / Old Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh were first pieced together and translated by scholars in the nineteenth century, some aspects of the ancient text seemed remarkably familiar. There was, for example, the account of a great flood, with only a pair of survivors, Utnapishtim and his wife: "How is it that one man has saved himself? / No breath of life was meant to be kept safe / from its obliteration in the flood."[footnoteRef:0] The first translators of Gilgamesh were familiar with at least two versions of this story. The first, which arguably everyone knows (and which in 2014 is about to receive a big-budget Hollywood treatment) is the Old Testament story of Noah's Ark -- and the narrative parallels between Utnapishtim and Noah are numerous. But the other ancient myth is a Greek one, the story of Deucalion and...
[ View Full Essay]