History › First civilizations › Invention of writing
Epic of Gilgamesh
oldest tales c. 2100 BC· Book, artwork, monument or document· Middle East & Africa
Well documentedSolid records, physical evidence or scientific consensus.
Often called the oldest great work of literature: the story of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and his failed quest to escape death.
See it on the History map →What happened
Gilgamesh may have been a real king of Uruk around 2700 BC, but the tale is legend. Sumerian poems about him were written down about 2100 BC; a longer Babylonian epic followed around 1700 BC, and the best-known version, on 12 clay tablets, was edited between about 1300 and 1000 BC. Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu slay monsters; after Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh seeks immortality from Utnapishtim, survivor of a great flood. He fails and returns home to accept mortality.
Why it matters
It shows people 4,000 years ago wrestling with friendship, grief and death much as we do, and its flood story anticipates Noah's.
How we know
Clay tablets from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, dug up around 1850; George Smith's 1872 reading of the flood tablet caused a sensation. New fragments still surface.
Still debated
Whether Gilgamesh was a real king is unknown, and gaps in the broken tablets mean parts of the story are still missing.
Connections (2)
▸Invention of writing recorded Epic of GilgameshWell documented
The connection
Writing began with accounting, not stories: early tablets list grain, sheep and workers. Over centuries scribes learned to write full sentences, and by about 2100 BC they wrote down Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh that had probably long been told aloud. Copying them in scribal schools helped the poems survive, grow into an epic and spread across the region.
When and how
Sumerian cities such as Ur and Nippur, about 2100–1700 BC; later versions across the Near East, including Nineveh about 650 BC.
How we know
Hundreds of school tablets contain Gilgamesh episodes; fragments have turned up as far away as Megiddo in Israel and Hattusa, the Hittite capital in Turkey.
Debates and open questions
How long the stories circulated orally before being written, and how closely the written tales match earlier tellings, is unknown.
▸Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story echoed in Hebrew prophets and the Hebrew BibleMostly agreed
The connection
In the epic, the god Ea warns Utnapishtim to build a boat and save his family and animals; after the flood he sends out birds to find land, then offers a sacrifice. Genesis tells a closely parallel story of Noah. Most scholars think Israelite writers adapted a widespread Mesopotamian flood tradition, reshaping it around one moral God.
When and how
Mesopotamian flood tales date to before 1700 BC (the Atrahasis epic); the Genesis account took shape roughly 900–400 BC (dates debated), possibly during the Babylonian exile.
How sure are we?
Detailed parallels: a divine warning, a sealed boat, animals aboard, a dove and a raven sent out, a mountain landing and a sacrifice. George Smith noticed them in 1872.
Debates and open questions
Whether Genesis borrowed from Gilgamesh itself or both drew on older shared traditions is debated; whether a real ancient flood lies behind them is unknown.