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The Assyriologist's approach to the literature (and other written documentation) of ancient Mesopotamia is conventionally philological.Through a close reading of the text, involving the meticulous dissection of its vocabulary, grammar and syntax, he produces an understanding of it and extracts meaning from it.This empirical method of literary study, which has been called the "positivist approach" (e.g. by Black 1998), owes much to historicist methodology and little to the often subjective techniques of modern literarycritical method.Editions of Babylonian literary texts are necessarily founded upon the philological approach and should remain so, at least while the pioneering work of reconstruction remains at a comparatively early stage.The Epic of Gilgamesh is a case in point.I am fortunate enough to have recently completed a philologically based critical edition of this masterpiece of Babylonian poetry (George 2003), and know that, as more text comes to light and our knowledge of Akkadian language and grammar is refined, so the techniques of philological enquiry will continue to be the principal tool that Assyriologists will employ in the task of understanding how the poem reads and what it says.At the same time, Assyriologists are aware that the academic study of literature has steadily developed an array of other critical methods, many of which have not been much utilized in discussing the literatures of ancient Mesopotamia.A few have been vocal on * This paper is not at all the one I gave as keynote speech to the symposium on Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria on 21 July 2004.That paper, entitled "The present state of Gilgamesh studies", was a summation that looked more back than forward; it contributed little that had not already been said in George 1999 and 2003.The present contribution makes a different approach.It is offered here with great gratitude to Dr Joseph Azize and Dr Noel Weeks for their kindness in making possible my visit to Sydney and for their hospitality during the week of the symposium.
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