Sumerian Mythology: Captivating Myths of Gods, Goddesses, and Legendary Creatures of Ancient Sumer and Their Importance to the Sumerians

Good read, a little more about the main legends than I was hoping to read about instead of the mythology but still just as interesting. I also did not know that much about Gilgamesh which was cool to hear/learn about.

Vertiginous amounts of time have passed since these myths, if we would date our times according to these founding stories then we would be in the 46th century or so. But, at the same time, they feel quite modern, the civilization and the characters are quite developed. Sumer in those times, I read it in a Wikipedia article, contained a good part of the global human population, and reading these myths seem so.Matt Clayton presents the Sumerian myths in a modern language, his introductory notes are informative while being concise. The myths and stories themselves are very good, there are no illustrations or maps though, not that it is quite important and well, I guess that would make more expensive the book, but even without them I prefer to read these historical series in my kindle than stressing my sight with Wikipedia articles in the computer. If you found super amazing the Epic of Gilgamesh (whose edition in these series I highly recommend) you will like to get this book as an additional background for that story.

This book is only 100 pages long.100 pages long if you count;3 blank pages - 98-10011 pages of names of people and places with a description - in a font larger than the rest of the book.3 pages of bibliographyand 3 pages of adds for the writer's other books that are probably just as "captivating"ly short. (He claims all his books are "captivating" on the cover).-This is not a book for children due more to the sexuality in the book than the violence. (of course, violence is more seen to be acceptable in many places in America than sexuality, so not for American children for sure).-The writer points to the work that he calls the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) created by the Faculty of Oriental Studies at University of Oxford. I would suggest trying to track that down online before/instead of purchasing this book. He does not indicate that he translated anything himself. He rather is taking bits of pieces of other people's work and compiling it (hopefully) in his own words.-The book has a very simple writing style so it is accessible to anyone that really deserved to graduate into junior high school (at least 40 years ago that would have been the case).-I bought this book as I have previous exposure of Sumerian mythology and was looking on a newer take on the subject versus this very basic, limited (and some points opinionated for no good reason) reader.-If you need a light-weight intro into the subject, maybe start here.I would think that there are far better and more complete compilations of the Sumerian myths.If you really want to dive into the thick of it, then just go directly to Zecharia Sitchin as he directly translate Sumerian works himself along with work of other ancient civilizations.-I won't be buying another book written by this writer because of the caliber of this work.

Good book that lightly touches on Sumerian Mythology. Touching on Gods and beliefs in Sumer. This book will inspire you to further investigate the Sumerian Gods. If you have already a knowledge of Sumerian Gods, you may want to pass this book by. Good for those just finding out for the first time about Sumerian’s.

A great read that had a bunch of information in a short read.

This author needs to go back to English 101.

Really good coverage of the gods of Sumer. It is hard to piece together a culture from mythology and pottery and some accounting, but so far it looks like between what was told by the Akkadians who absorbed and followed and the actual information gleaned from the clay tablets found, the assemblage of gods has been reconstructed with nice detail. Informative read.

... or maybe you could describe this slim volume as the Cliff's Notes Abridged version, or the Reader's Digest Condensed Sumerian mythology. The author has taken fifteen myths/stories (if you count the four parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh separately), rephrased them into prose rather than poetic form, eliminated much (though not all) of the formulaic/repetitive verbiage, and provided an overall introduction, and introductions and commentary on the individual myths.In several other books, I've read analyses of portions of the Enuma Elish, and the story of Anzu's theft of the Tablets of Destiny; I was hoping to find more complete versions of those stories, but neither is included here. I was especially interested in "The Exploits of Ninurta", describing the putdown of the rebellious Asag/mountain demon and his/its warriors and allies, and that story is here, but ... "Exploits" contains an intriguing episode in which Ninurta sits in judgement of the numerous "stones" involved in the battle, comments on the conduct of each during the fighting, and decrees often-puzzling rewards or punishments. Of that passage, author Clayton says "The section of the myth in which Ninurta declares the fates of the stones is lengthy and somewhat abstruse; here it has been telescoped for a modern audience." No kidding; Clayton "telescopes" the whole episode into three short sentences, which convey nothing of the peculiarity of the full text, let alone the details.In a few places the book suffers from sloppy formatting, such as section titles marooned as the last line of a page rather than heading up the text they relate to.This volume doesn't inspire me to have any interest in any of the author's several similar books.

Arrived quickly and well packaged. I've only just started reading this book and I think it is really informative so far.

Great read,in 10 mins

ok