Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the modern name for an epic poem tradition from southern Mesopotamia that dates to the third and second millennia BCE. The original narratives were composed in Sumerian, the earliest-known written language using the ancient cuneiform script. These texts consist of separate stories about Gilgamesh, some of which were not incorporated into the later Gilgamesh traditions. In the Old Babylonian period (ca. 1700 BCE), a number of the Gilgamesh stories were woven together into a coherent narrative, written in Akkadian, another language employing cuneiform. The longest existing version comes from Nineveh in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (seventh century BCE), where the work was titled “He who saw everything,” after the first few words of the composition. Paraphrases of the Gilgamesh epic dating to the second millennium BCE have been found in Anatolia, Syria, Israel, and Egypt in the Hurrian and Hittite languages. The flood traditions in the Gilgamesh epic appear to have been known to such Hellenistic writers as Berossus as late as the third century BCE.

Through all of its variations, the epic is concerned with the adventures of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian king of the city of Uruk, who was likely a historical figure living about 2600 BCE. The narrative depicts Gilgamesh as a semidivine monarch who abuses his subjects. However, through a series of adventures and tragic life experiences, Gilgamesh is transformed into the ideal ruler, keen to the needs of his people. To the modern audience, the most compelling part of the narrative is the description of a flood story that is similar in many ways to the account in Genesis.