The Oldest Stories in the World [antikvár]

All over the world and in all ages men have told tales, and many of these tales have become part and parcel of our cultural tradition. Everyone knows of Cinderella and Snow White, or of the adventures of Ulysses. Yet the curious thing is that, while the myths of Greece and Rome and the legends of Indie gods and Icelandic heroes are "familiar in men's mouths as household words," the oldest stories of all are virtually unknown. These are the stories told nearly four thousand years ago by the peoples of the Near East and written upon clay tablets which have been found in the ruins of their ancient cities. The reason for their obscurity is that the tales are of fairly recent discovery and have not yet fully emerged from the exclusive preserve of the scholar. The object of this book is to make them available to the "common reader," so that they too may take their rightful place in literature and popular lore. What is here offered, however, is neither a bald and mechanical translation nor a loose paraphrase. All stories everywhere depend just as much on what is implied as on what is said, and an attempt has therefore been made to recapture, with the aid of comparative material, that host of ideas and associations which the tales evoked in their original hearers and which served to clothe the bare skeleton of words. Moreover, where a story has