LOS ANGELES, CA — Dyr and Associates Publishing announced today that the new eBook "The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Teachings of Siduri and How Siduri's Ancient Advice Can Help Guide Us to a Happier Life, Third Edition" has been made available for free on Amazon.com: http://amzn.com/B00B5KFX06
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a seminal tale of gods, kings, battles, friendship, loss, the fear of death, the search for immortality and advice on how one should live life, and represents our first great work of literature. While the origin of the Epic of Gilgamesh is lost to the sands of time, it is probable that key concepts in this story had been verbally transmitted for a very long time before the invention of writing, but we have no way of knowing when, where or why the story actually originated or even how many original contributors there were. What we do know is that the story encompassed a large number of concepts, ideas and philosophies, and was considered important enough that it was told from generation to generation for hundreds of years, before being immortalized in clay around four thousand years ago.
Unfortunately, the original "Old Babylonian" version of the Epic of Gilgamesh is incomplete, making it difficult for us to piece together the exact story our ancient ancestors considered so important. However, several critical fragments of the original Epic have been recovered and differ in significant ways from later more complete versions. One of the most fascinating of these original fragments is the Sippar tablet which was discovered near the city of Sippar, on the Euphrates river, upstream of the Babylonian region in present day Iraq. The Sippar tablet contains the earliest recorded advice, given by a beautiful young girl called Siduri, on how we should live our lives. Interestingly, in a later version of the Epic of Gilgamesh (referred to as the “Akkadian” version) Siduri’s advice was removed from the Epic and much of her original role was given to Utnapishtim, an immortal wise old man. One theory for the diminishment of Siduri’s role is that Siduri being young, female and working class (a wine maker), and Utnapishtim being old, male and high class (an immortal wise man) may have contributed, and may suggest possible differences between Sumerian and Akkadian culture. Specifically, this change may highlight a degree of ageism, sexism and/or classism in post-Sumerian cultures, and the removal of Siduri's advice could represent the first recorded case of censorship.
Siduri's words were recorded long before any other religious text and they represent a very different perspective to those used today. Siduri was pro-wine, pro-feasting, pro-music, pro-dancing, pro-joy, pro-sex and pro-family. In his new book Peter Dyr has re-introduced Siduri's teachings, and the original Old Babylonian fragments into the Epic of Gilgamesh, while using the later Akkadian text to fill in the gaps in the original story. He has also included a discussion of Siduri’s teachings and how we can, if we so wish, live our lives according to Siduri’s original ancient advice.
About Dyr and Associates Publishing
Dyr and Associates Publishing is a non-profit organization, based in Los Angeles California, recently founded by Peter Dyr and his associates to popularize the Epic of Gilgamesh and the teachings of Siduri. Peter Dyr is a life-long enthusiast of ancient Sumerian literature and the primary goal of his research and writing is to re-incorporate the original Old Babylonian tablets back into the overarching Gilgamesh story, make the Epic easy to read for the non-specialist and to highlight and discuss some of the core concepts our ancient ancestors considered so important that they were verbally transmitted for many generations before being immortalized in clay around 4,000 years ago.
For more information, please visit EpicOfGilgamesh.webs.com
Contact
To learn more about this book, please contact:
Peter Dyr, Author
Email: [email protected]
http://epicofgilgamesh.webs.com/