Penn Museum Event: Gilgamesh, January 8, 2014
Last night the AW and I finally got back to a museum lecture! Here's the description:
Gilgamesh: Journeys to the End of the World
Steve Tinney, Associate Professor, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania
Gilgamesh was a figure of legend in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) from as early as 4,500 years ago. The tales of his travels were not only stories of adventure in places no human had ever seen, but also reflections on questions of life and knowledge. In this lecture, Dr. Tinney recounts some of Gilgamesh's greatest journeys and revisits discussions about what they meant back then, as well as what they mean today.
I really enjoyed the lecture. Dr. Tinney was a good storyteller - he used images of archaeological artifacts and ancient texts to help tell the story of Gilgamesh and his journeys. (He also used a slide of an artist's depiction of Uruk as a placemarker at different points in his lecture, to differentiate when he was going to begin a new section of discussion - he loses some points for pointing out that he was doing it, but not enough to outweigh the fact that he actually organized his lecture in the first place.) It was cool to hear what someone who can actually read Sumerian and Babylonian has to say about the Gilgamesh legend and the different ancient versions of it.
Gilgamesh: Journeys to the End of the World
Steve Tinney, Associate Professor, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania
Gilgamesh was a figure of legend in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) from as early as 4,500 years ago. The tales of his travels were not only stories of adventure in places no human had ever seen, but also reflections on questions of life and knowledge. In this lecture, Dr. Tinney recounts some of Gilgamesh's greatest journeys and revisits discussions about what they meant back then, as well as what they mean today.
I really enjoyed the lecture. Dr. Tinney was a good storyteller - he used images of archaeological artifacts and ancient texts to help tell the story of Gilgamesh and his journeys. (He also used a slide of an artist's depiction of Uruk as a placemarker at different points in his lecture, to differentiate when he was going to begin a new section of discussion - he loses some points for pointing out that he was doing it, but not enough to outweigh the fact that he actually organized his lecture in the first place.) It was cool to hear what someone who can actually read Sumerian and Babylonian has to say about the Gilgamesh legend and the different ancient versions of it.