{"id":17,"date":"2007-07-28T09:03:07","date_gmt":"2007-07-28T09:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html"},"modified":"2007-07-28T09:03:07","modified_gmt":"2007-07-28T09:03:07","slug":"the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html","title":{"rendered":"The Epic of the Epic of Gilgamesh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my reading pile this weekend from my father:  An <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/issues\/2007\/may\/gilgamesh.php?page=1\">excerpt<\/a> in Smithsonian of a new book about the unlikely man who discovered the Epic of Gilgamesh and made the connection between the oldest flood epic ever uncovered and the story of Noah.  I wrote about this quite a lot in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brucefeiler.com\/books\/walking.html\">WALKING THE BIBLE <\/a>but I never knew that much about the founder, George Smith, who today we call a high-school dropout who discovered the story quite by accident while working at the British Museum in 1872.  <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What he had uncovered would become known in the West as The Epic of Gilgamesh, the 3,200-year-old account of the eponymous hero&#8217;s exploits and one of the oldest works of literature in the world. It constituted one of the most sensational finds in the history of archaeology. Smith would go on to become the world&#8217;s leading expert in the ancient Akkadian language and its fiendishly difficult script, write the first true history of Mesopotamia&#8217;s long-lost Assyrian Empire and publish pathbreaking translations of the major Babylonian literary texts. All that from a self-taught laborer who had never been to high school, much less college. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my reading pile this weekend from my father: An excerpt in Smithsonian of a new book about the unlikely man who discovered the Epic of Gilgamesh and made the connection between the oldest flood epic ever uncovered and the story of Noah. I wrote about this quite a lot in WALKING THE BIBLE but&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":352,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Epic of the Epic of Gilgamesh - Feiler Faster<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Epic of the Epic of Gilgamesh - Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In my reading pile this weekend from my father: An excerpt in Smithsonian of a new book about the unlikely man who discovered the Epic of Gilgamesh and made the connection between the oldest flood epic ever uncovered and the story of Noah. I wrote about this quite a lot in WALKING THE BIBLE but&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-07-28T09:03:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"bfeiler\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Epic of the Epic of Gilgamesh - Feiler Faster","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Epic of the Epic of Gilgamesh - Feiler Faster","og_description":"In my reading pile this weekend from my father: An excerpt in Smithsonian of a new book about the unlikely man who discovered the Epic of Gilgamesh and made the connection between the oldest flood epic ever uncovered and the story of Noah. I wrote about this quite a lot in WALKING THE BIBLE but&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html","og_site_name":"Feiler Faster","article_published_time":"2007-07-28T09:03:07+00:00","author":"bfeiler","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html","name":"The Epic of the Epic of Gilgamesh - Feiler Faster","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-07-28T09:03:07+00:00","dateModified":"2007-07-28T09:03:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/cd560df5c2f027ddc9a594e3313de1d8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/07\/the-epic-of-the-epic-of-gilgam.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Epic of the Epic of Gilgamesh"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/","name":"Feiler Faster","description":"The Blog of Bestselling Author and Commentator Bruce Feiler","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/cd560df5c2f027ddc9a594e3313de1d8","name":"bfeiler","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ce3\/ce3529dc7e8bc71c31414750eb2dfd45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ce3\/ce3529dc7e8bc71c31414750eb2dfd45x96.jpg","caption":"bfeiler"},"description":"Bruce Feiler is one of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most popular voices on faith, family, and finding meaning in everyday life. He is the best-selling author of nine books, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and America's Prophet, and one of only a handful of writers to have four consecutive New York Times nonfiction bestsellers in the last decade. He is also the writer\/presenter of the PBS miniseries WALKING THE BIBLE. His latest book, The Council of Dads, tells the uplifting story of how friendship and community can help one survive life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greatest challenge. For more information, please visit brucefeiler.com or councilofdads.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/author\/bfeiler"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}