Gilgamesh, Etana, Enmerkar, Lugalbanda… This book invites us to discover the fantastic tales of these legendary kings. We are in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC, and the kings of that time seek to legitimise their power by linking themselves to the lineages of heroes. To this end, they have the amazing epic adventures of their so-called ancestors composed and recorded on clay tablets. In spite of the difficulty of the task, Véronique Grandpierre has devoted her energies to reconstructing the stories and bringing these heroic destinies back to life. To be an Assyriologist is no small affair. You have to read the cuneiform script and that means not only deciphering and understanding its characters but also giving them a meaning (which can differ from one sentence to the next).
The clay tablets are also fragmentary, which means that the Assyriologist must become a real detective who is able to assemble and reunite the pieces, literally, of a story.
This is an original and vivid work that shines a light on Mesopotamian mythology. The author gives considerable space to describing the influence of these myths on our own collective imagination. The work is richly documented and intelligently presented, and is the fruit of many years of reflection.
