Myths from Mesopotamia

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1. krzs9Aug 2026
   I can certainly recommend :

   1. The Literature of Ancient Sumer - Jeremy Black. It is a quite substantial anthology, has myths, hymns, laments, royal praise poetry, proverbs, literary debates, etc.

   2. Myths from Mesopotamia - Stephanie Dalley. I bought this for Gilgamesh, loved the rest of it too. One of my most treasured books.

   3. Weavers, Scribes, and Kings - Amanda Podany. Not Sumerian literature, but my favorite comprehensive history book covering all of Mesopotamian history. I mention this particularly because all the literature we do have came to us through scribes, and this book gets into whatever we can know about their internal lives really well. Reading about their tutoring and how they learnt to write, what we can deduce about how their lessons were structured - fascinating stuff.

   For such an ancient civilization, it is astounding how much we do have and how closely we can meet them.

   [1] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-literature-of-an...

   [2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/myths-from-mesopotam...

   [3] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/weavers-scribes-and-...

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2. dkerstenNov 2018
   I've listed the books I have below. I haven't read much of them yet (its slow going). The one that I'm currently in the process of reading is "Myths from Mesopotamia" by Stephanie Dalley. I like it so far, but its not an easy read. It gives you a relatively direct translation of the Sumerian texts, so there are many missing fragments (tablets found in different cities tended to have slightly different versions of the same stories, so you couldn't use them to complete missing bits from tablets from another city). This makes it time consuming to read, but does give you an accurate picture.

   The books I have and am slowly trying to get through are:

     "Myths from Mesopotamia" by Stephanie Dalley
     "History Begins At Sumer" by Samuel Noah Kramer
     "Guide To Understanding Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Cananite And Phoenician Tablets, Slabs, Symbols And Cuneiform Inscriptions" by Maximiliien de Lafayette
     "Cuneiform" by Irving Fincel and Jonathan Taylor
     "Sumerian Mythology" by Samuel Noah Kramer
     "Introduction to Sumerian Grammar" by Daniel Foxvog
   

   I'm not far enough through all of them to be able to properly compare and haven't read any other books, so I'm not sure if I would recommend them or not.

   The Cuneiform book was fun (if you're interested in Cuneiform) as cuneiform is easy to write and I was able to write my name phonetically :)

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3. dkerstenOct 2019
   Yes. I’ve been (very slowly) reading Myths from Mesopotamia, by Stephanie Dalley, which contains literal translations of the tablets, gaps and all. Its not an easy read at all. The thing about these ancient Sumerian texts is that, probably due to their nature of being told verbally by storytellers, tablets from different regions or times had slightly different tellings, so one tablet cannot be directly used to fill in the gaps of another. The book tells the same sections from multiple tablets and leaves it up to the reader to fill in the gaps.

   Here’s a random excerpt, for anybody interested in seeing what its like to read:

       The Scorpion-man made his voice heard and spoke,
       ‘It is impossible, Gilgamesh, [                     ]
       Nobody has passed through the mountain’s inaccessible tract.
       For even after twelve leagues [        ]
       The darkness is too dense, there is no [light.]
       To the dawn [                 ]
       To the dusk [                 ]
       To the dusk [                 ]
       The sent out [                ]
       (5 lines fragmentary, then 16 lines missing)
       (gap of about 18 lines)
       In grief [                     ]
   
   

   Yeah. Not easy! But I like the idea that I’m reading a translation that wasn’t in any way interpreted or embellished.
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