The Buried Book

David Damrosch

"He who saw the deep." is the dramatic start of a translation of the oldest extant version of the epic tale of Gilgamesh, which is the focus of **The Buried Book**. Gilgamesh was evidently a real king of the Sumerian city of Uruk, and ruled c.2650 BCE. But by the time of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the mid-600s BCE, Gilgamesh was already legendary, and was in fact honored as one of the judges of souls in the underworld. His epic adventures were written in Akkadian cuneiform on hardened clay tablets, and a copy of these tablets was in Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh (near modern Mosul, Iraq). The library collapsed in the fall of the city in 612 BCE, and its contents were buried for two millennia. "The Buried Book" recounts the story of the rediscovery of the tablets, their journey to the British Museum in London, and their eventual translation into English. The book is written in reverse. It begins with George Smith's electrifying translation and publicizing of a passage on a tablet fragment which he translated during one of his lunch-hour visits to the museum. The fragment refers to a Great Flood. The public was energized by this possible independent verification of the Biblical Noah story, and George Smith was sent to Nineveh to try to find a complete copy of the flood tale. **The Buried Book** is wonderfully told, and is full of interesting information. Highly recommended.