Religion and Humanity in Mesopotamian Myth and Epic

Primary Sources
Since the mid-1990s, the accessibility of translations and transliterations of Mesopotamian literature has greatly 
improved, with the potential to greatly expand interdisciplinary analyses in this area. Access to sources is further 
improved by the availability of continually updated online sources containing text editions, English-language 
translations, and some bibliography, notably the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI),
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 the Electronic Text 
Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL),
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 and the Melammu Project.
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Stephanie Dalley’s 
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others
(1989)
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is a very readable 
entry point to the world of Akkadian myth. Two anthologies, one by Benjamin R. Foster (
Before the Muses: An 
Anthology of Akkadian Literature
, 2005)
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 and the other from Thorkild Jacobsen (
The Harps that Once Sounded . . . 
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Religion and Humanity in Mesopotamian Myth and Epic
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Sumerian Poetry in Translation
, 1987),
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 present a great variety of textual evidence in translation, with some 
commentary. Foster’s earlier work 
From Distant Days: Myths, Tales and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia
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is also a useful 
source.
To begin to explore the 
Epic of Gilgamesh
, it is helpful to start with a strong translation of the text, such as Andrew 
George’s 
The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation
(2001), which includes Sumerian and Hittite sources for the epic as 
well as critical essays from leading scholars.
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 Also by George, and uniting a new (currently definitive) translation with 
a critical analysis of the text, is 
The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts 
(2003), in two volumes.
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 The first comprehensive translation of 
Enuma Elish
, written by Wilfred Lambert, was 
published posthumously in 2013.
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As well as containing a detailed commentary, Lambert’s edition contains several 
other Babylonian creation myths, and also a thorough bibliography of each ancient source.