The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh

Adventurers, explorers, kings, gods, and goddesses come to life in this "useful, entertaining and informative" story of the first great epic (The Washington Post)

Composed in Middle Babylonia around 1200 BCE, The Epic of Gilgamesh foreshadowed later stories that would become as fundamental as any in human history: The Odyssey and the Bible. But in 600 BCE, the clay tablets that bore the story were lost to the world, buried beneath ashes and ruins.

David Damrosch begins with the rediscovery of...