Dictator

by PhilipTerry (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2018

  $13.77

  Dictator recreates Gilgamesh using the 1500 word vocabulary of Globish (from the words global and English ) put together by Jean-Paul Nerriere. Globish is a business language, appropriate to translate cuneiform which emerged from the need to record business transactions. Nerriere considered Globish the world dialect of the third millennium; so Akkadian, the language of Gilgamesh, was the lingua franca of communications in the Near East. This link between script, language and business is there in the substance of the poem. An underpinning theme involves trade, here the trade in hard wood and access to forests for building materials, links the poem to recent wars in and around Iraq, where the contemporary commodity is oil. This in turn links the poem to related issues such as migration and the refugee crisis. Working with refugees in Palermo, Terry was involved with putting on a puppet version of Gilgamesh: the children related to the boat scene viscerally.