What is the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest story we can still read?
A king of Uruk learns that he will die, and spends the rest of the poem looking for a way out. It is the world's oldest surviving narrative literature.
▶ Start the storyThe of Gilgamesh is the oldest story we can still read: an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the world's oldest surviving example of narrative literature. It tells how a king of Uruk, Gilgamesh, discovers that he will die and goes looking for a way not to.
It starts with a king who is a problem. The gods create Enkidu, a wild man, to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing his people. Enkidu comes to Uruk and challenges him to a test of strength. Gilgamesh wins, but the two become friends. Together they travel to the Cedar Forest and slay its guardian Humbaba, and then kill the Bull of Heaven that the goddess Ishtar sends against them. For that, the gods decide that Enkidu must die, by a fatal illness.
The second half is grief. Distressed by Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh sets out on a long and perilous journey to find the secret of eternal life. He meets Utnapishtim, one of the only humans to survive the flood the gods sent. The answer is blunt: when the gods created man, they let death be his share and kept life in their own hands. Gilgamesh does win a plant that can make him young again, but a steals it while he bathes. He returns to Uruk empty-handed, and then sees the massive walls of the city and praises that enduring work.
The poem was built over centuries. It began as five Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, some of which may date to around 2100 BCE. These were later used as source material for a combined in . The first surviving version dates to the 18th century BCE, and the later 12-tablet version was compiled between the 13th and 10th centuries BCE.
c. 2100 BCE
Sumerian poems
18th century BCE
Old Babylonian version
13th to 10th century BCE
, 12 tablets
Early 1850s
Tablets found at Nineveh
1872
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Recap
Gilgamesh fails to find immortality and instead praises the lasting walls of his city.
💡 A trick to remember it · Gilgamesh chased a plant that lets you live forever, a snake stole it, and the walls he was left with outlasted him.
Surprising fact · A fragment with the epic's first lines lay unexamined in a museum storeroom until 1998.
Sources (1)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (15 claims) cites at least one of these.