Epic of Gilgamesh
An ancient Mesopotamian epic poem of adventure and the search for eternal life.
The oldest surviving literary work in the world, The Epic of Gilgamesh details the journey of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu as they search for the secret to immortality . . .
Dating back to the third millennium BC, this epic poem influenced religion as well as the tradition of heroic sagas like the Homeric epics. Some even regard Gilgamesh as the prototype for Hercules.
Stephen Langdon
Stephen Langdon was an American-born British Assyriologist. Born to George Knowles and Abigail Hassinger Langdon in Monroe, Michigan, Langdon studied at the University of Michigan, participating in Phi Beta Kappa and earning a BA in 1898 and an MA in 1899. Following this he went to New York’s Union Theological Seminary, graduating in 1903, and then on to Columbia University to obtain a PhD in 1904. Langdon then became a fellow of Columbia in France (1904–1906), during which time he was ordained as a deacon of the Church of England (1905) in Paris. Subsequently, he moved to Oxford University in England, becoming a Shillito reader in Assyriology in 1908, a British citizen in 1913, and after the retirement of Archibald Sayce, a professor of Assyriology in 1919. However, in 1916, when World War I had diminished the size of his classes in England, he spent some time at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, serving as the curator of its Babylonian section.
