The Epic of Gilgamesh is a Sumerian tale that was preserved on stone and clay tablets for thousands of years. The text of Gilgamesh's epic is on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets, found at a destroyed library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. (Reigned 668-627 BC)
The origin of the Epic of Gilgamesh is dated from 2150 - 2000 B.C.[1]
The poem tells the story of Gilgamesh, the great sixth king of Uruk, a city in Mesopotamia, and his (perhaps fictional) quest for glory and immortal life. One of the more notable stories describes a world wide flood with great similarities to the Genesis account with Noah, however the flood narrative in the Epic of Gilgamesh was a later addition, with the earliest Epic of Gilgamesh tablets containing the flood narrative date to 600 BC, and thus historians rule out the idea that Genesis borrowed from the Epic of Gilgamesh.[2] The chronicles are from the ancient lands of Sumeria, and, according to Sumerian records, would have taken place about 2650 B.C.
Categories: [Ancient History] [Mythology] [Middle East]