John A. Cowgill’s Carved in Stone: A Narrative Account of the Epic of Gilgamesh is not merely a retelling of humanity’s oldest surviving epic; it is a philosophical meditation disguised as mythic narrative. While many modern adaptations of Gilgamesh aim for literary clarity or academic fidelity, Cowgill’s work pursues a different ambition altogether. He seeks to interpret the epic as a symbolic map of human transformation — psychological, spiritual, and existential — and to situate that map within a sweeping comparative framework that ranges from alchemy and Christian theology to Jungian psychology and world folklore. This is not a neutral translation, nor does it pretend to be. Carved in Stone…