Note 23 — Introduction.

The publication of the tablet was then undertaken by Dr. Stephen Langdon in monograph form under the title, “The Epic of Gilgamish.”23 In a preliminary article on the tablet in the Museum Journal, Vol. VIII, pages 29–38, Dr. Langdon took the tablet to be of the late Persian period (i.e., between the sixth and third century B. C.), but his attention having been called to this error of some 1500 years, he corrected it in his introduction to his edition of the text, though he neglected to change some of his notes in which he still refers to the text as “late.”24 In addition to a copy of the text, accompanied by a good photograph, Dr. Langdon furnished a transliteration and translation with some notes and a brief introduction. The text is unfortunately badly copied, being full of errors; and the translation is likewise very defective. A careful collation with the original tablet was made with the assistance of Dr. Edward Chiera, and as a consequence we are in a position to offer to scholars a correct text. We beg to acknowledge our obligations to Dr. Gordon, the Director of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, for kindly placing the tablet at our disposal. Instead of republishing the text, I content myself with giving a full list of corrections in the appendix to this volume which will enable scholars to control our readings, and which will, I believe, justify the translation in the numerous passages in which it deviates from Dr. Langdon’s rendering. While credit should be given to Dr. Langdon for having made this important tablet accessible, the interests of science demand that attention be called to his failure to grasp the many important data furnished by the tablet, which escaped him because of his erroneous readings and faulty translations.