Very short: Sophus Helle is a writer, translator, and cultural historian specializing in ancient poetry.
Short: Sophus Helle is a translator and cultural historian specializing in the literature of ancient Iraq. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Aarhus University and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. He has translated the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh and the poetry of Enheduana, the first known author, and is the managing editor of the Library of Babylonian Literature.
Long: Sophus Helle is a translator and cultural historian specializing in the literature of ancient Iraq. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Aarhus University and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. He has translated the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh and the poetry of Enheduana, the first known author, into English and Danish. The translation of Gilgamesh was hailed in the New York Review of Books as “lively, earthy, and scrupulous in its scholarship,” while the translation of Enheduana was reviewed enthusiastically in the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. He has appeared on a string of podcasts, including Poetry Off the Shelf and The Ancients, and hosts his own podcast, Monkey Mind. He is the managing editor of the Library of Babylonian Literature and edited a volume on cuneiform narrative structures with Gina Konstantopoulos. He has contributed essays and reviews on a wide range of topics related to ancient literature to, among others, Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen. He is the winner of the 2020 European Young Researcher Award.