Epic Gilgamesh facts

While investigating facts about Epic Gilgamesh Summary and Epic Gilgamesh Pdf, I found out little known, but curios details like:

The Epic of Gilgamesh depicts stories that are virtually identical to Adam & Eve and Noah's Flood, but predates the Bible by at least a thousand years, indicating that the Christian stories are not original but derived from ancient Mesopotamian legend

how old is the epic of gilgamesh?

The earliest piece of great literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, includes a story in which Gilgamesh is told to build a ship to save the animals of the world from a "great flood". Nearly 2,000 years later, a similar tale with different names appeared in the Bible's book of Genesis.

What is similar about the hebrew bible and the epic of gilgamesh?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what is the key theme of the epic of gilgamesh. Here are 13 of the best facts about Epic Gilgamesh Story and Epic Gilgamesh Flood I managed to collect.

what is the epic of gilgamesh?

1. The Bible's story of Noah's Ark is based on a 1st millennium Assyrian copy of a story known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. This story itself is over 4100 year old and is considered to be the earliest surviving great work of literature in human history.

2. About The Epic If Gilgamesh. The oldest surviving work of literature in existence dating back over 4,000 years. It features a demigod hunting for immortality and an account of a great flood very simular to the biblical one.

3. The story of Noah's Ark is nearly identical to "The Epic of Gilgamesh." A fictional flood story from ancient Mesopotamia, written 2000+ years before Noah's.

4. A new chapter of The Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates back to 18th century B.C., was discovered in 2011 after smugglers unknowingly looted it from Iraq.

5. About the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, named after Ashurbanipal, the last king of the Assyrian Empire. It's a collection of over 30,000 cuneiform tablets from the 7th century BC that was discovered in modern day Iraq in 1849. Among its holdings was the famous Epic of Gilgamesh.

6. George Smith (1840-76)(modest family, left school at 14) had a keen interest in Assyriology and was so often seen at the British Museum that he was employed as classifier. He taught himself Sumerian and literary Akkadian and became the one to discover the oldest story we have: Epic of Gilgamesh.

7. The main character in the Epic of Gilgamesh actually existed and was the king of Uruk, Mesopotamia.

8. There Was a Flood Story Before the Bible In "The Epic of Gilgamesh" That Pretty Much Debunks Major Religions

Why is gilgamesh an epic hero?

You can easily fact check why was the epic of gilgamesh written by examining the linked well-known sources.

About Hormudz Rassam, a Chaldean/Assyrian archeologists and assyriologist whom in 1877-1882 discovered clay tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh, the worlds oldest literature.