Your Book Review: The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Finalist #4 in the Book Review Contest [This is one of the finalists in the 2026 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked] Introduction: He Who Saw the Deep I've been thinking, lately, about the first epic story ever written. If you know anything about the Epic of Gilgamesh, you know that it's old. This is part of why I find it so interesting, but not the only part. The best comparison I can think of is the pyramids, which are just a little older. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built in the 2500s BC, around the same time as Stonehenge1 , twenty-five centuries before Cleopatra lived. It predates candles, concrete, and coins; it was centuries old when the first empire rose and when the woolly mammoth went extinct. Around 100 BC, Antipater of Sidon wrote a list of the seven most impressive sights ('Seven wonders') of the world - the pyramids were by far the oldest of the group at the time, and now, two thousand years later, all the others on the list have long since been destroyed. This should remind us that the pyramids don't just stretch far back in time - they stretch forward as well. They are piles of stone. They may be the product of the greatest minds of their age striving to put more stone in a more orderly pile than anyone had before, but still, they are piles of stone, basically artificial rock formations. They will still be there in a hundred thousand years, probably a million. They are so old they brush up against the beginning of civilisation, and yet, we are seeing them today in their youth.