 Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları has just published “Eski Uygarlıkların Şiirleri,” an anthology of the poetry of ancient civilizations compiled, translated and edited by Talat S. Halman, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters.
This 653-page volume contains more than 1,300 poems from early civilizations including Babylonian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Sumerian, and Ugaritic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Byzantine, Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Iranian all composed prior to the year 1000 A.D. Some were written in 4000 or 3000 B.C. The book also features numerous Armenian, Sinhalese, and Icelandic poems, as well as traditional poems from remote cultures, including Native American, Asian and Pacific (India, Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, New Guinea, New Zealand, Australia), Eskimo, Africa, Central and South America (Mexican, Maya, Aztec, Inca, Peru, etc.).
The Halman volume contains a vast collection of lyrical verse, love poems, satires, religious hymns, panegyrics, songs, elegies and lullabies. It provides a rich panorama of ancient wisdom, universal love and happiness, as well as social criticism. Many of the poems will strike readers as if they were originally composed in Turkish.
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