Position in chronology
Epic of Gilgamesh Flood Tablet in Akkadian Cuneiform - Nate Loper (43494374962)
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued and photographed, but no published translation exists yet. Our translation engine works through the untranslated corpus every night, oldest first — this page will update the day its turn comes. If you are a specialist and can read it, we would love your help.
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving great work of literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. It records a
Attribution
Image: Nate Loper from Flagstaff, AZ, USA — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Epic of Gilgamesh Flood Tablet in Akkadian Cuneiform - Nate Loper (43494374962).jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEpic_of_Gilgamesh_Flood_Tablet_in_Akkadian_Cuneiform_-_Nate_Loper_(43494374962).jpg. Description: The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving great work of literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. It records a great flood, in a similar way to the Bib.
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The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.
The single most influential Mesopotamian king list — the model for every later attempt to chronicle the deep history of the region. It transmits the political theology of divinely granted kingship, an idea that would echo through Babylon, Assyria, and into the Hebrew Bible. The Weld-Blundell prism (WB 444) at the Ashmolean is the most complete surviving copy.