Product Description: "I half rolled, and there before my eyes was as perfect a target as I had ever seen in my life. A pressure of a thumb, a short burst, a puff of smoke, a flash of flame, a hole on the clouds-and it was over."  —Lieutenant Robert McKenzie, No...read more

These new translations bring to life for the modern reader the golden age of Egyptian fictional literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1938-1640 BC), and include the masterpiece of Egyptian poetry, The Tale of Sinuhe. An introduction and notes explain historical details, and offer for the first time a literary reading, to enable these poems to entertain and instruct, as they did their original audiences three-and-a-half thousand years ago.

Kalidasa's play about the love of King Dusyanta for Sakuntala, a monastic girl, is the supreme work of Sanskrit drama by its greatest poet and playwright (c.4th century CE). Overwhelmingly erotic in tone and in performance, The Recognition of Sakuntala aimed to produce an experience of aesthetic rapture in the audience, comparable to certain types of mystical experience. The pioneering English translation of Sakuntala in 1789 caused a sensation among European composers and writers (including Goethe), and it continues to be performed around the world. This vibrant new verse translation includes the famous version of the story from the Mahabharata, a poetic and dramatic text in its own right and a likely source for Kalidasa. The introduction discusses the play in the aesthetic and cultural context of ancient India.

Product Description: This volume presents an edition of first-millennium BC Babylonian cuneiform texts that comprise Chapters 64 and 65 of the compendium of celestial omen texts dealing with the appearance and movements of the planet Jupiter. All are accompanied by an English translation...read more

Product Description: Available once more, this is a comprehensive, comparative literary philological examination of two enduring bodies of love poetry from the ancient Near East.

2-volume set. Contains annotated translations of over 300 Babylonian and Assyrian literary compositions. Among these works are compositions otherwise unavailable in English, previously unpublished, or incorporating newly discovered fragments. Among the compositions included are: Epic of Creation; Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld; Atrahasis; Tukulti-Ninurta Epic; Adapa and the South Wind; Adapa and Enmerkar; Etana; Anzu; The Babylonian Theodicy; The Dialogue of Pessimism; The Birth Legend of Sargon of Akkad; The Gilgamesh Letter; Dialogue between a Man and His God; The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer; A Sufferer's Salvation; Wisdom of Ugarit; Sumero-Akkadian Wisdom and Proverbs; Proverbs from Letters; Pious Scholar; The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince; Agushaya Poem; Sargon King of Battle; The Cuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin; Nergal and Eresh-kigal; Shulgi Prophecy; Agum-kakrime and the Return of Marduk; Nebuchadnezzar and Marduk; Marduk Prophecy; Antiochus Soter to Nabu; Advice to a Prince; The King of Justice; In Praise of Babylon; Erra and Ishum; The Poor Man of Nippur; Lament for Tammuz; To Calm a Baby; To Recapture a Runaway Slave; To Secure Brisk Trade at a Tavern; Love Lyrics of Nabu and Tashmetu; Elegy for a Woman Dead in Childbirth; Incantations against Disease; Acrostic Hymn to Marduk; Prayers for Kings and Gods.

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Product Description: The longing stretch toward the infinite... the reluctant embrace of the temporal... this is the eternal lot of mankind; this is The Epic of Gilgamesh. Born in the cradle of civilization over 4,000 years ago, literature's first chronicle of man's search for the meaning continues to intrigue us with its universal themes This book has its provenance in Zeev Raban's fourteen remarkable gouache illustrations of The Epic of Gilgamesh...read more

The longing stretch toward the infinite . . . the reluctant embrace of the temporal. . . . This is the eternal lot of mankind. This is The Epic of Gilgamesh. Literature's first chronicle of search for meaning was born in the Cradle of Civilization over 4,000 years ago. Jackson's poetic rendition of humanity's first epic captures the passion and pathos of the search for the province and parameters of human existence, including an account of a great flood, paradise lost, man's relationship with gods and goddesses, and the inevitability of mortality. The universal themes explored in Gilgamesh continue to intrigue us in the 20th century.

Product Description: All major genres of Egyptian literature are represented in this anthology of poems, all translated into elegant English verse and providing an intimate glimpse into the lives of ancient Egyptians. The 41 pieces include hymns, such as Akhenaten's Hymn to the Sun , yarns, Ramesside love songs, laments, `schoolboy' texts and instructions, visions and religious thoughts...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: The earliest known author of written literature was a woman named Enheduanna, who lived in ancient Mesopotamia around 2300 BCE. High Priestess to the moon god Nanna, Enheduanna came to venerate the goddess Inanna above all gods in the Sumerian pantheon...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

An international authority on Sumerian culture, Jeremy Black here provides an introduction to the world's oldest poetry. Sumer, in southern Iraq, was the first literate culture in civilization, dating as far back as 2500 b.c. Its literature, which is made up almost entirely of poetry, was lost for nearly two millennia; rediscovery and decipherment of the ancient texts began in the nineteenth century.Black is fully aware of the difficulties of applying modern literary methods to the study of ancient literature, emphasizing theoretical problems that arise from contemporary expectations of a unitary text. Acknowledging the fragmentary nature of Sumerian poetry, he turns what might be considered a serious obstacle to the enjoyment of the literature into an asset. The book features Black's complete English translations of Lugalbanda, a narrative poem about the eponymous hero and his encounter with a monstrous bird, and its sequel, Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave. Looking closely at the imagery in the Lugalbanda poems, Black perceives in them a rich and sophisticated poetic imagination and technique, which, far from being in any sense "primitive," are so complex as to resist modern literary analysis.

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Product Description: Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi's sweeping study of modern Jewish writing is in many ways a long meditation on the thematics of geography in Jewish culture, what she calls the "poetics of exile and return."Until the late nineteenth century, Jews were identified in their own religious and poetic imagination as wanderers and exiles, their sacred center–Jerusalem, Zion–fatefully out of reach...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

A lyrical, autobiographical novel chronicles the story of a singer and her composer husband, from the growth of their passionate relationship in the midst of war to its tragic dissolution in war's aftermath. By the author of Paradise of the Blind. 15,000 first printing.

Product Description: Voted one of the Top 25 Books of 1999 by the Village Voice.As a poet, translator, critic, and scholar, Ammiel Alcalay has written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Republic, and Middle east Report, as well as for such literary journals as Grand Street, Conjunctions, and Paper Air...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Drawing on recent advances in Egyptology, R. B. Parkinson's new translations bring to life for the modern reader the golden age of Egyptian fictional literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1940-1640 BC). The book features The Tale of Sinuhe, acclaimed as the masterpiece of Egyptian poetry, which tells of a courtier's adventures after he flees Egypt...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Gilgamesh: A Reader provides 25 interpretative essays on the epic that stands at the dawn of literature. This collection is designed to enrich the reader's background with selections from experts on Near Eastern literature; to draw connections between Gilgamesh and other literature with interdisciplinary selections; to enliven interest in the world's oldest epic; and to stimulate thought and discussion. Influences of Gilgamesh on later literature, philological and literary studies since 1982, and Gilgamesh from other perspectives are the three broad areas covered.Also available:The Epic of Gilgamesh - ISBN 0865163529The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic - ISBN 0865165467For over 30 years Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers has produced the highest quality Latin and ancient Greek books. From Dr. Seuss books in Latin to Plato's Apology, Bolchazy-Carducci's titles help readers learn about ancient Rome and Greece; the Latin and ancient Greek languages are alive and well with titles like Cicero's De Amicitia and Kaegi's Greek Grammar. We also feature a line of contemporary eastern European and WWII books. Some of the areas we publish in include: Selections From The Aeneid Latin Grammar & Pronunciation Greek Grammar & Pronunciation Texts Supporting Wheelock's Latin Classical author workbooks: Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Catullus, Cicero Vocabulary Cards For AP Selections: Vergil, Ovid, Catullus, Horace Greek Mythology Greek Lexicon Slovak Culture And History

Sumerian, the oldest language known, is represented by hundreds of thousands of clay tablets inscribed in the cuneiform writing system. Most of the tablets are devoted to mundane matters -- ration lists, annual accounts, deeds, contracts -- but a substantial number contain examples of perhaps the earliest poetry extant. In this volume, the eminent Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen presents translations of some of these ancient poems, including a number of compositions that have never before been published in translation."this elegantly written work is a basic resource for the full understanding of early Mesopotamia. It includes translations of the Cylinders of Gudea and other poems that have been accessible only in outdated versions". -- Daniel Snell, author of Life in the Ancient Near East, 3100-322 B.C.E."What a wonderful bouquet; a gift to us all from a master Sumeriologist, a singer of human achievement, and a lover of words. Jacobsen needs no introduction and this work is special, and should be found in the home of all human and literate persons. It gives access to the mind of ancient Mesopotamia in a manner rarely duplicated heretofore.... Jacobsen has chosen widely from Sumer's rich literature -- myth, epics, hymns, boasts, epithalamia, love songs, lamentations, fables -- nad has presented us with perspective renderings". -- Jack M. Sasson, Religious Studies Review

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