The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving work of narrative literature, originating in ancient Mesopotamia. Its story began as five separate Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, with some possibly composed during the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2100 BCE. These independent tales were eventually combined into a single Akkadian epic. The earliest surviving version of this unified work, called the "Old Babylonian" version, dates to the 18th century BCE and is known by its opening line, *Shūtur eli sharrī* ("Surpassing All Other Kings"). Only a few tablets from this version remain. The later "Standard Babylonian" version, compiled by a scribe named Sîn-lēqi-unninni between the 13th and 10th centuries BCE, begins with the line *Sha naqba īmuru* ("He Who Saw the Deep" or "He Who Sees the Unknown"). Roughly two-thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered, with some of the best copies found in the ruins of the 7th-century BCE library of Assyrian King Ashurbanipal.

The first part of the epic describes Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to curb Gilgamesh’s oppression of his people. Enkidu becomes civilized after a sexual encounter with a temple prostitute named Shamhat, then travels to Uruk and challenges Gilgamesh to a contest of strength. Gilgamesh wins, but the two become close friends. Together, they journey for six days to the legendary Cedar Forest, where they kill its guardian, Humbaba, and fell the sacred cedar. The goddess Ishtar, angered when Gilgamesh rejects her advances, sends the Bull of Heaven to punish him. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the bull, further insulting Ishtar. In response, the gods decree that Enkidu must die from a fatal illness.

In the second part, Gilgamesh is driven by grief over Enkidu’s death to seek eternal life. He undertakes a long and dangerous journey and eventually meets Utnapishtim and his wife, the only humans to survive a great flood sent by the gods (a story similar to that of Atra-Hasis). Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that the life he seeks will never be found: the gods gave humanity death as their portion, keeping life for themselves.

The epic is considered a foundational work in religion and the tradition of heroic sagas. Gilgamesh served as a prototype for later heroes like Heracles (Hercules), and the epic itself influenced the Homeric epics. It has been translated into many languages and appears in numerous works of popular fiction.

**Discovery**

Around 15,000 fragments of Assyrian cuneiform tablets were uncovered in the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh in the early 1850s by Austen Henry Layard, his assistant Hormuzd Rassam, and W. K. Loftus. Later that decade, the British Museum hired George Smith to study them. In 1872, Smith read translated fragments to the Society of Biblical Archaeology, and in 1875 and 1876 he published fuller translations, the latter under the title *The Chaldaean Account of Genesis*. The central character was initially reintroduced to the world as "Izdubar" because the cuneiform logographs in his name could not yet be accurately pronounced. In 1891, Paul Haupt collected the cuneiform text; nine years later, orientalist Peter Jensen produced a comprehensive edition; and R. Campbell Thompson updated both works in 1930. Over the next two decades, Samuel Noah Kramer reassembled the Sumerian poems.

In 1998, American Assyriologist Theodore Kwasman discovered a fragment believed to contain the first lines of the epic in a British Museum storeroom. The piece, found in 1878 and dated between 600 BCE and 100 BCE, had gone unexamined by experts for over a century. It read: "He who saw all, who was the foundation of the land, who knew (everything), was wise in all matters: Gilgamesh." Artifacts from around 2600 BCE associated with Enmebaragesi of Kish—mentioned in the legends as the father of one of Gilgamesh’s adversaries—have lent credibility to Gilgamesh’s historical existence.

In the early 2000s, the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was illegally imported into the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the tablet was encrusted with dirt and unreadable when purchased by an American antiquities dealer in 2003. It was sold by an unnamed dealer in 2007 with a letter falsely claiming it had been inside a box of ancient bronze fragments bought at a 1981 auction. In 2014, Hobby Lobby privately purchased the tablet for display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. In 2019, U.S. officials seized the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, and it was returned to Iraq in September 2021. Recent advances in artificial intelligence software have greatly accelerated the discovery of new fragments of the epic, which remain scattered and often unread in museums worldwide.

**Versions**

Distinct sources span more than 2,000 years. The earliest Sumerian poems are now generally seen as separate stories rather than parts of a single epic; some may date back to the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2100 BCE. The Old Babylonian tablets from around 1800 BCE are the earliest surviving tablets for a unified *Epic of Gilgamesh* narrative. Both the older Old Babylonian tablets and the later Akkadian version are crucial for modern translations, with the earlier texts often used to fill gaps in the later ones. Although several revised editions based on new discoveries have been published, the epic remains incomplete. Analysis of the Old Babylonian text has helped scholars reconstruct possible earlier forms of the epic. The most recent Akkadian version, also called the Standard Babylonian version, consists of twelve tablets and was edited by Sîn-lēqi-unninni, who is thought to have lived sometime between the 13th and 10th centuries BCE.