--- title: Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is... description: Poet laureate Simon Armitage has published a translation of the ancient Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh. The poem dates back at least 4,000 years, with Sumerian... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/gilgamesh-by-simon-armitage-review-an-ancient-epic-is-brilliantly-translated-4ru2igvqp twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is brilliantly translated | daily.dev og:description: Poet laureate Simon Armitage has published a translation of the ancient Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh. The poem dates back at least 4,000 years, with Sumerian... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/gilgamesh-by-simon-armitage-review-an-ancient-epic-is-brilliantly-translated-4ru2igvqp og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/4RU2IgVQP.png og:image:alt: Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is brilliantly translated og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is brilliantly translated **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Poet laureate Simon Armitage has published a translation of the ancient Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh. The poem dates back at least 4,000 years, with Sumerian sources from 2000BC and fragments in a later Akkadian form discovered by archaeologists in the 19th century. Armitage avoids rhyme, uses a standard four-beat line, and mixes modern and archaic language with alliteration similar to his earlier translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Reviewer Philip Terry calls it a 'tour de force' likely to become one of the standard English renditions, though not the last word on the poem. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 59 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-30). **TL;DR:** Discussion centers on whether Armitage, who doesn't read Akkadian and worked from another scholar's literal glosses, can be considered a legitimate 'translator,' alongside tangents on alternative translations, rhyme in English verse, and ancient Mesopotamian culture. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 40% mixed · 30% skeptical **The case for** - Several people vouch for Armitage's skill based on his earlier Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translation. - Some note he is unusually transparent in his introduction about his reliance on an Assyriologist's literal translations and the limits of his method, unlike other pseudotranslators who hide this. - One commenter frames it positively as a working/middle-class poet succeeding as poet laureate. **The pushback** - Many question whether someone with no Akkadian or Sumerian knowledge, working from another scholar's glosses, should be called a 'translator' rather than a reinterpreter. - Some doubt the credentials of the Assyriologist (Jacob Dahl) who provided the literals, noting he specializes more in proto-Elamite than Akkadian. - Skepticism that any modern scholar can truly grasp the cultural context of a dead language and civilization. - One commenter predicts the work will not age well and will later be criticized for containing contemporary biases. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Debate splits between defenders who trust Armitage's poetic skill and transparency, and skeptics who question the legitimacy of a translation done without knowledge of the source language, amid long tangential threads on other translations, ancient massage oil, rhyme in English verse, and the poet laureate stipend. **Hottest debate:** Whether a translation produced without any knowledge of Akkadian, relying entirely on another scholar's literal glosses, can legitimately be called a 'translation' at all. **Open questions** - Has any Akkadian specialist formally reviewed or endorsed this translation? - Which existing translation (this one, Sophus Helle's, Andrew George's, or older public-domain versions) is best for a first-time reader? **Highlights** > no mention of this bieng an actual translation from the original sumerian in any of the reviews, and the truely epic and laudable journey that is bieng replaced by the sleezy term 'verse translation', ie : hollywood sceen play ready, as that is what could be the most that can be expected from a former probation officer turned the official british royal panegrist. edit: the songs of innana and other older actual translations of gilgamesh are there for some little peeks into the sumerian world that continues to define ours in so many subtle ways. edit, edit: before commenting I did a fairly decent search for any details on this 'book' , of which nothing that I found written in plain text offered anything other than the standard devious prevercations found when some politico/legalistic thing is bieng floated. And I can state with absolute certitude that this 'translation/rewrite' of Gilgamesh will not age well even in the tiny demographic it is aimed at and will go further out on the limb and suggest that this 'work' will soon be evaluated and found to contain certain 'isms' from some of the one name only agregators of our literary present. > — [metalman on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50301456) > It looks like he has not studied any Akkadian. He is apparently reliant on glosses by Assyriologist Jacob Dahl and presumably other translations. From the introduction: > Benjamin R. Foster, another esteemed academic author who has made significant contributions to the study and translation of the poem, [...] says, “I have no patience with clueless folk who think they can translate the epic without going to the trouble of mastering Babylonian.” This is a disheartening and discouraging comment. Are we really to accept that satisfactory transmissions of the Gilgamesh story rest entirely in the hands of professionals in the subject of Assyriology, or that the poem is located behind some kind of intellectual force field, or that those of us outside the inner circle must leave such profound work to the fellowship? And what of the counter argument: that the job of translating poetry cannot be fully realized by professors, only by poets? > Echoing George and Foster to some extent, Michael Schmidt comments, “Interlopers achieve mixed results among the dead languages of the world.” Am I one such interloper, trespassing on hallowed ground? My approach to Gilgamesh has been the same as for my medieval translations, with the hope of producing critically informed work that speaks to the widest readership, attempting to balance linguistic and historical frameworks against literary expectations of the present day. The difference this time is that like almost everyone else on the planet I have no comprehension of Akkadian or other languages of the period, and for his thorough and no-nonsense translations of the cuneiform scripts I am indebted to Jacob L. Dahl, professor of Assyriology and fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, who provided me with the literals to work from. Jacob also answered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of my questions, some of them well below his pay grade, and stuck to the task for three or four more years beyond my wildly optimistic timeframe. I am enormously grateful to Jacob, for being a medium between this world and the world of the long dead, and for help in bringing them back to life. Any errors of judgment or rogue deviations between the files he submitted to me and the publication of this book are entirely of my making. > — [wl on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50304937) > One isn't well served by something that old. Our knowledge of Akkadian (and the Sumerian predeccesor) has improved since the early twentieth century, as your very link notes. Some Akkadian hapaxes in Gilgamesh that baffled early translators can now be read on the basis of comparative Semitic or other work. If you want a free translation online of a great work of literature, you don't have to limit yourself to old public-domain stuff. The shadow libraries will have more recent editions. > — [TFNA on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50301990) > > as that is what could be the most that can be expected from a former probation officer turned the official british royal panegrist. In a Britain where it’s harder than it has been for fifty years to be from a working/middle-class background and make it in the arts, I think it’s great that a polytechnic graduate, former probation officer is the poet laureate. > — [mattjhall on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50302472) > Thank you for pointing this out. Dahl is not really an Akkadian-focused scholar, though he teaches it; he's more well-known for his work on proto-Elamite. Still, probably more than capable to assist. I wonder if any Akkadian experts have weighed in on this translation? > — [AlanYx on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50308289) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263127) · 160 points · 59 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Medium](https://daily.dev/posts/medium-e0zlrh3x7) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Paradise Lost, diffed](https://daily.dev/posts/paradise-lost-diffed-m29swzcps) · Arthur O'Dwyer · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI in the Iliad and the Odyssey : Homer Wrote the First Prompt](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-in-the-iliad-and-the-odyssey-homer-wrote-the-first-prompt-1rp47xwqh) · SQL Authority · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Book excerpt: The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope](https://daily.dev/posts/book-excerpt-the-game-narrative-kaleidoscope-vdh2xhvmz) · Game Developer · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ars Astronomica – English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin astronomy texts](https://daily.dev/posts/ars-astronomica-english-translations-of-rare-hebrew-and-latin-astronomy-texts-pl4poezpn) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/gilgamesh-by-simon-armitage-review-an-ancient-epic-is-brilliantly-translated-4ru2igvqp) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is brilliantly translated","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/gilgamesh-by-simon-armitage-review-an-ancient-epic-is-brilliantly-translated-4ru2igvqp","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/gilgamesh-by-simon-armitage-review-an-ancient-epic-is-brilliantly-translated-4ru2igvqp"},"datePublished":"2026-10-30T11:25:44.460Z","dateModified":"2026-10-30T18:56:36.824Z","description":"Poet laureate Simon Armitage has published a translation of the ancient Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh. 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