The Epic of Gilgamesh and Expedition To Nineveh
In 1872, Smith achieved worldwide fame by his translation of the Chaldaean account of the Great Flood, which he read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology on December 3 and whose audience included the Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, the only known instance of a serving British Premier ever attending a lecture on Babylonian literature.
This work is better known today as the final chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known work of literature in the world, for which Smith is now popularly and justly famed as the discoverer. The following January, Edwin Arnold, the editor of The Daily Telegraph, arranged for Smith to go to Nineveh at the expense of that newspaper, and carry out excavations with a view to finding the missing fragments of the Flood story. This journey resulted not only in the discovery of some missing tablets, but also of fragments that recorded the succession and duration of the Babylonian dynasties.
In November 1873, Smith again left England for Nineveh, for a second expedition, this time at the expense of the Museum, and continued his excavations at the tell of Kouyunjik (Nineveh). An account of his work is given in Assyrian Discoveries, published early in 1875. The rest of the year was spent in fixing together and translating the fragments relating to the creation, the results of which were published in The Chaldaean Account of Genesis (1880, co-written with Archibald Sayce).
Read more about this topic: George Smith (assyriologist)
Famous quotes containing the word expedition:
“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)