1) The three volumes of Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature
2) Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh
3) Black et al, The Literature of Ancient Sumer
4) Foster's From Distant Days (Akkadian)
After that there should be some major works from India, but I haven't gotten around to that yet, so it's, uh, (counts) 14 volumes of Greek lit, philosophy, and math instead. A few Chinese authors ought to be represented along with the Greeks, but again, haven't gotten to it.
I usual prefer accuracy over readability in translations if I have to choose between the two, but I make an exception for some epic verse. Mitchell's Gilgamesh is one of those cases. It's not an abridgment or a retelling, but it errs on the side of readability. Great read, I'd definitely recommend it.
Lichtheim's introductions leave me wanting more, but those books are still very good, and they make the Sumerian and Akkadian volumes seem really bad in comparison. AFAIK there's not much out there better than those two, so those literatures may be in need of a good, well-edited anthology. The Literature of Ancient Sumer is serviceable, but I wasn't even able to finish From Distant Days and I'm considering getting rid of it. Part of that's the literature itself (seems like a big step down from Sumer, IMO) but part of it's the poor work of the editor, annotator, and translator, Foster.
Only the first few works in Vol. 1 of Lichtheim predate the Sumerian and Akkadian literature, and most of the stuff in Vol. 3 is all the way up in the first millennium BCE, but I keep the trilogy together anyway.
1) The three volumes of Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature
2) Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh
3) Black et al, The Literature of Ancient Sumer
4) Foster's From Distant Days (Akkadian)
After that there should be some major works from India, but I haven't gotten around to that yet, so it's, uh, (counts) 14 volumes of Greek lit, philosophy, and math instead. A few Chinese authors ought to be represented along with the Greeks, but again, haven't gotten to it.
I usual prefer accuracy over readability in translations if I have to choose between the two, but I make an exception for some epic verse. Mitchell's Gilgamesh is one of those cases. It's not an abridgment or a retelling, but it errs on the side of readability. Great read, I'd definitely recommend it.
Lichtheim's introductions leave me wanting more, but those books are still very good, and they make the Sumerian and Akkadian volumes seem really bad in comparison. AFAIK there's not much out there better than those two, so those literatures may be in need of a good, well-edited anthology. The Literature of Ancient Sumer is serviceable, but I wasn't even able to finish From Distant Days and I'm considering getting rid of it. Part of that's the literature itself (seems like a big step down from Sumer, IMO) but part of it's the poor work of the editor, annotator, and translator, Foster.
Only the first few works in Vol. 1 of Lichtheim predate the Sumerian and Akkadian literature, and most of the stuff in Vol. 3 is all the way up in the first millennium BCE, but I keep the trilogy together anyway.
(1) http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Egyptian-Literature-Middle-Kin...
(2) http://www.amazon.com/Gilgamesh-English-Version-Stephen-Mitc...
(3) http://www.amazon.com/Literature-Ancient-Sumer-Jeremy-Black/...
(4) http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Days-Poetry-Ancient-Mesopotami...
[EDIT] formatting [EDIT 2] If you're only going to buy/read one volume of Lichtheim I'd recommend Vol. 2 (not the one I linked)