SOURCE: Vulpe, Nicola. “Irony and the Unity of the Gilgamesh Epic.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 53, no. 4 (January-October 1994): 275-83.

In the following essay, Vulpe argues that the twelfth tablet story of Gilgamesh's descent into the netherworld is essential to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

E. A. Speiser ends his translation of Gilgamesh, published over thirty years ago, with a cursory dismissal of the poem's final tablet, stating simply that “it is an inorganic appendage to the epic proper.”¹ Similarly, in her translation published in 1990, Maureen Gallery Kovacs ends with the final words of the Eleventh Tablet; more prudent than Speiser, she takes some trouble to explain her decision in an appendix² but ultimately concurs with conventional wisdom that considers the Descent into the Netherworld an unfortunate and unsatisfactory conclusion. Similarly, though he includes the final Descent in his 1992 translation, Jean Bottéro makes clear in his introduction that he...