Gilgamesh is a document of world history and civilization as much as a masterpiece of literature. They were sent to the British Museum in London for study, and gradually scholars deciphered the script and the language this was chiefly the work of George Smith, whose translations caused a sensation. Gilgamesh was effectively lost until the mid-1800s when British archaeologists uncovered the ruins and the tablets. And although invaders burned the library, the tablets crashed down into the ruined foundations, to be buried as they were built over by later generations. Copies of the epic were placed in his great library in Nineveh. It is to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal that we owe the story we know today. The stories were collected and organized by both Babylonian and Assyrian scribes or poets. His exploits were recognized in poems after his death, but these stories moved from memory to legacy to legend, circulating throughout the region as Sumeria became part of Akkadia, and then the Babylonian Empire. The epic refers to a real Sumerian king, who ruled Uruk, around 2800–2750 BCE. Gilgamesh comes from ancient Sumeria, a region where the first civilizations arose, the site of modern-day Iraq. “I think what fascinated me about the story most was, how is it that this one ancient text, of all the other thousands of ancient texts that we have, exercises such a hold over the modern imagination.” Gilgamesh has all of this and more, including reflections on what it means to be alive, in 2800 BCE, no less than in our own time. Adventure, the quest for immortality, the getting of wisdom, and more than a few life or death battles. After all, we don’t know know what the original readers in ancient Sumeria knew-their legends, their daily lives, what their kings were like, and what their heroes and legends meant to them.īut we do share a key characteristic with them and with readers from any era: we love a gripping story and The Epic of Gilgamesh is just that. At first it may seem intimidating to try to bridge the gap between the twenty-first century and 2800 BCE. Gilgamesh is considered the first masterpiece of World Literature in fact it is the earliest known epic narrative we have.
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