September 27, 2004
The Story
of him who knew the most of all men know
who made the journey; heartbroken; reconciled;
….
open the copper chest with the iron locks;
the tablet of lapis lazuli tells the story.
(tr. David Ferry)
Apropos of only a few things digital, today I held and examined, illiterately, several 4,000-year-old Sumerian texts and one that was slightly more recent: one of the surviving tablets of clay upon which is written, in cuneiform Akkadian, part of the first known epic, Gilgamesh.