Books by Sophus Helle (translator)

“Sophus Helle is an incredible writer and a meticulous scholar. These translations of Enheduana’s work capture what it might have felt like to read them or to listen to them in the original. The poetry is so impactful and so breathtaking, and he does such a great job of striking a balance between fidelity and poetry. It’s just gorgeous, I don’t know how he does it.” Read more...

Books about Mesopotamia

Moudhy Al-Rashid, Historian

“Gilgamesh is a hero in the ancient mould. He’s half-god, enormously strong, a bit randy, a bit dim, and he goes through adventures which embody the human experience writ large. He starts off as the king of a small kingdom, making a nuisance of himself – enforcing droit du seigneur, sleeping with women on their marriage night, pushing other men around, being a bit of an arse. So the gods make a rival to him in strength, a wild man. They fight, realise neither can win, then become best friends and go off on all sorts of adventures. They kill all sorts of ogres and beasts, until the gods think this is getting a bit much and decide Gilgamesh’s friend has to die. It’s then that Gilgamesh realises the truth of mortality. He sees his friend die, and thinks if this heroic human being, the strongest of the strong, can die, that means I’m going to die too. He faces his own mortality, and it’s terrifying. He leaves his kingdom and roams the wilderness, looking desperately for some solution to the problem of mortality.” Read more...

The best books on Immortality

Stephen Cave, Philosopher