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"Until now every night has been a gem
well spent—but this time I can’t think my way. I’ve come up
against an essence. In a rockless unwooded land I can forge these
stones in a furnace—but who can make firewood? If a whole
city’s cooking must be done on dung and dried reeds, how can I
find the fuel to bake a million bricks? I can’t squeeze flame
from sod! What’s left to burn? There isn’t heat enough in all
our straw to glaze a single square-foot slab of clay."
-- Gilgamesh
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These two plays are components of the novels Gloucestertide and Gloucestermas (work in progress), which themselves - along with Gloucesterbook - form the trilogy within a tetralogy headed by the novel
Prologos. The comprehensive set of these four novels is called GLOUCESTERMAN. The three novels are available through Amazon and
www.baylisswritings.net. * * * Civilization began in southern Iraq - known to scholars as Sumer.
Before the civilizations of Egypt, India, or China. That was when the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers still emptied separately into the Persian
Gulf. Agriculture began in Iraq. The first cities formed in Iraq. The
first writing and numbering. The world's first accounting and the
world's first literature. For better or for worse, the Tower of Babel.
The epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible both came out of Iraq. The West
shares them with Muslim civilization.
The plays are sequentially related to the life of Gilgamesh, but
they can be produced independently and in different styles. The
production notes of the first play (Tower of Gilgamesh)
are relevant to the second play (The Acts of
Gilgamesh). Both playscripts are available on this
website for inspection. They are in PDF format (Adobe
Reader required; free download at
www.adobe.com).
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