The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the most ancient surviving literary texts in the world. The earliest Sumerian versions, a series of distinct stories, date from the third millennium BCE. There are versions in multiple ancient languages from the ancient near east. The standard version is based on tablets in Babylonian that were discovered in the 19^th century CE in Nineveh in the library of an Assyrian king from around 800 BCE. The epic was a foundational story for Mesopotamian cultures and kings for thousands of years, holding a similar place as Homer in Greek culture. It is more ancient than the Homeric epics as well as the stories in Genesis in the Bible, which were influenced by the Mesopotamian myths such as the flood story or the creation of humans. The ancient tablets are fragmentary and incomplete, which means English translations often use paraphrase and additions to the text in order to produce a more coherent narrative.

As a truly ancient text, Gilgamesh shows the enduring nature of many of the questions discussed in EQ. Central issues include the nature of Gilgamesh as hero or anti-hero; his change or development from beginning to end of the poem; how Enkidu becomes “human”; the rivalry and friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu as an aspect of human identity; the promises and pitfalls of human achievement; relations between and women and their gendered roles in society; human encounters with death; notions of the afterlife and the divine world; and the nature of a good ruler or king.