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Two things about Gilgamesh make a post.
Jan. 12th, 2025 06:28 pm1. A Helle of a Dissertation (sorry sorry sorry)
In dawdling about the Internet preparing for a conversation on Gilgamesh, I stumbled across Sophus Helle's dissertation.1
The dissertation is not itself about Gilgamesh, but about authorship -- Helle's other great interest being Enheduanna as the first named author of an ancient text.
I am engaged by his thesis, which suggests that authorship -- which is not a universal among pre-modern and early modern texts -- arises out of cultural crisis, the need to condense identity from a shared cultural body of literature into a single figure.
From the committee's notes:
I have not read the entire dissertation -- only the preliminary notes so far! -- but I find this at least an interesting and in some ways a congenial thesis.
From the committee's notes again, Helle's approach seems both sane and useful:
The overall response of the committee is rather what I would expect of commentary on a dissertation by Helle: that the work is inspired, even brilliant, but also a little bit scattershot and neglectful of detail.
Here it is if you want to look at it too.
2. The Operatic Gilgamesh
There is a new opera based on Gilgamesh!
It's Australian. From 2024. The images associated with it appear to include Enkidu and Gilgamesh smearing (bull's?) blood all over each other.
Now I have to try to figure out whether there is a recording and if so, how I can see it.
§rf§
1. If you don't happen to be a ridiculous Gilgamesh fentity, I'll note that Helle is a current rock star of ancient text translation and the creator of my fave version of Gilgamesh. And, as Jasmine points out, his website is an academic thirst trap.
2. I do need an Ancient Texts icon of some kind.
In dawdling about the Internet preparing for a conversation on Gilgamesh, I stumbled across Sophus Helle's dissertation.1
The dissertation is not itself about Gilgamesh, but about authorship -- Helle's other great interest being Enheduanna as the first named author of an ancient text.
I am engaged by his thesis, which suggests that authorship -- which is not a universal among pre-modern and early modern texts -- arises out of cultural crisis, the need to condense identity from a shared cultural body of literature into a single figure.
From the committee's notes:
Helle’s main argument is that authorship rose to prominence in an otherwise anonymous culture during times of cultural crises .... demographic, linguistic, and political upheaval that threatened the authority of cuneiform scholarship. Tradition had to be protected, and to do so, it had to be condensed into the figure of the author.
I have not read the entire dissertation -- only the preliminary notes so far! -- but I find this at least an interesting and in some ways a congenial thesis.
From the committee's notes again, Helle's approach seems both sane and useful:
Arguing that authorship in the ancient world should be studied as cultural narratives rather than as an empirical reality, Helle demonstrates that narratives of authorship are “a crucial and often overlooked source of information of how literary texts were perceived, categorized, and evaluated” (67).
The overall response of the committee is rather what I would expect of commentary on a dissertation by Helle: that the work is inspired, even brilliant, but also a little bit scattershot and neglectful of detail.
Here it is if you want to look at it too.
2. The Operatic Gilgamesh
There is a new opera based on Gilgamesh!
It's Australian. From 2024. The images associated with it appear to include Enkidu and Gilgamesh smearing (bull's?) blood all over each other.
Now I have to try to figure out whether there is a recording and if so, how I can see it.
§rf§
1. If you don't happen to be a ridiculous Gilgamesh fentity, I'll note that Helle is a current rock star of ancient text translation and the creator of my fave version of Gilgamesh. And, as Jasmine points out, his website is an academic thirst trap.
2. I do need an Ancient Texts icon of some kind.
