The later Standard Babylonian version compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni dates to somewhere between the 13th to the 10th centuries BCE and bears the incipit Sha naqba īmuru[note 1] ("He who Saw the Deep(s)", lit.

In the second half of the epic, distress over Enkidu's death causes Gilgamesh to undertake a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life.

It is possible, however, as has been pointed out, that the Chaldean inscription, if genuine, may be regarded as a confirmation of the statement that there are various traditions of the deluge apart from the Biblical one, which is perhaps legendary like the rest.

About 15,000 fragments of Assyrian cuneiform tablets were discovered in the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh by Austen Henry Layard, his assistant Hormuzd Rassam, and W. K. Loftus in the early 1850s.

[10][13] In 1891, Paul Haupt collected the cuneiform text, and nine years later, Peter Jensen provided a comprehensive edition; R. Campbell Thompson updated both of their work in 1930.

The tablet was sold by an unnamed antiques dealer in 2007 with a letter falsely stating that it had been inside a box of ancient bronze fragments purchased in a 1981 auction.

[19][20] Recent developments in the use of Artificial Intelligence software have vastly accelerated the process of uncovering new fragments of the epic dispersed, and often unread, in museums around the world.

[28][29] One impact that Sin-leqi-unninni brought to the work was to bring the issue of mortality to the foreground, thus making it possible for the character to move from being an "adventurer to a wise man.

[37] When Alfred Jeremias translated the text, he insisted on the relationship to Genesis by giving the title "Izdubar-Nimrod" and by recognizing the genre as that of Greek heroic poetry.

"[39] Lins Brandão 2019 suggested, though with little supporting evidence, that the prologue of "He who Saw the Abyss" recalls the inspiration of the Greek Muses, even though there is no assistance from the Sumerian gods here.

[40] In more popular treatments, Sir Jonathan Sacks, Neil McGregor, and BBC Radio 4 interpret the Epic of Gilgamesh's flood myth as having a pantheon of gods who are misanthropes willing to condemn humanity to death,[41] with the exception of Ea.

For the young men (the tablet is damaged at this point) it is conjectured that Gilgamesh exhausts them through games, tests of strength, or perhaps forced labour on building projects.

The trapper tells the sun god Shamash about the man, and it is arranged that Enkidu will be seduced by Shamhat, a temple prostitute, as the first step in taming him.

Shamhat takes Enkidu to a shepherd's camp, teaching him to be civilised: his hair is cut, and he learns to eat human food and drink beer.

Gilgamesh proposes a journey to the Cedar Forest to slay the monstrous demi-god Humbaba in order to gain fame and renown.

When Anu rejects her complaints, Ishtar threatens to raise the dead who will "outnumber the living" and "devour them", as well as screaming loud enough to be heard by the heavens and earth.

In a famous line from the epic, Gilgamesh clings to Enkidu's body and denies that he has died until a maggot drops from the nose of the corpse.

Gilgamesh delivers a lament for Enkidu, in which he calls upon mountains, forests, fields, rivers, wild animals, and all of Uruk to mourn for his friend.

He commissions a funerary statue, and provides grave gifts from his treasury to ensure that Enkidu has a favourable reception in the realm of the dead.

He comes across the tunnel of the sun god Shamash, which no man has ever entered, guarded by two scorpion monsters, who appear to be a married couple.

[47] Entering the tunnel's gate, he follows the path of Shamash in total darkness and actually manages to reach the eastern exit within 12 ‘double hours’, just before he would have been caught up by the sun god, burning him alive.

"[54] Gilgamesh complains to Enkidu that various of his possessions (the tablet is unclear exactly what – different translations include a drum and a ball) have fallen into the underworld.

[61] The definitive modern translation into English is a two-volume critical work by Andrew George, published by Oxford University Press in 2003.

A book review by Cambridge scholar Eleanor Robson claims that George's is the most significant critical work on Gilgamesh in the last 70 years.

In 2004, Stephen Mitchell supplied a controversial version that takes many liberties with the text and includes modernized allusions and commentary relating to the Iraq War of 2003.

[65] Various themes, plot elements, and characters in the Hebrew Bible have been suggested to correlate with the Epic of Gilgamesh – notably, the accounts of the Garden of Eden, the advice from Ecclesiastes, and the Genesis flood narrative.

This is in contrast to Adam, whose fall from grace is largely portrayed as a punishment for disobeying God and the inevitable consequence of the loss of innocence regarding good and evil.

[citation needed] Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account.

[70] In a 2001 Torah commentary released on behalf of the Conservative Movement of Judaism, rabbinic scholar Robert Wexler stated: "The most likely assumption we can make is that both Genesis and Gilgamesh drew their material from a common tradition about the flood that existed in Mesopotamia.

[72] Many characters in the Epic have biblical parallels, most notably Ninti, the Sumerian goddess of life, was created from Enki's rib to heal him after he had eaten forbidden flowers.