In 1873, the Telegraph funded a groundbreaking expedition. Now, a new book by Vybarr Cregan-Reid tells the story of what happened when George Smith rediscovered The Epic of Gilgamesh. (Vybarr Cregan-Reid, The Telegraph).
Had he not died so young, Smith could have gone on to become the Darwin of archaeology. As it is, even the little work that he was able to do still refashioned the landscape of his own and other disciplines forever.Man is snapped off like a reed in a canebreak.*
As regular readers know well, Gilgamesh resurfaced in Second Temple Judaism as a giant.
*X.301, Andrew George's Penguin translation, 1999.