| | The '''Epic of Gilgamesh''' is a [[Sumerian]] tale that was preserved on stone and clay tablets for thousands of years. The text of [[Gilgamesh]]'s epic is on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets, found at a destroyed library of the [[Assyria]]n king Ashurbanipal in [[Nineveh]]. (Reigned 668-627 BC) | | The '''Epic of Gilgamesh''' is a [[Sumerian]] tale that was preserved on stone and clay tablets for thousands of years. The text of [[Gilgamesh]]'s epic is on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets, found at a destroyed library of the [[Assyria]]n king Ashurbanipal in [[Nineveh]]. (Reigned 668-627 BC) |
| − | The poem tells the story of Gilgamesh, the great sixth king of [[Uruk]], a city in [[Mesopotamia]], and his (perhaps fictional) quest for glory and immortal life. One of the more notable stories describes a world wide [[flood]] with great similarities to the [[Genesis]] account with [[Noah]]. The chronicles are from the ancient lands of [[Sumeria]], and, according to Sumerian records, would have taken place about 2650 B.C. | + | The poem tells the story of Gilgamesh, the great sixth king of [[Uruk]], a city in [[Mesopotamia]], and his (perhaps fictional) quest for glory and immortal life. One of the more notable stories describes a world wide [[flood]] with great similarities to the [[Genesis]] account with [[Noah]], however the flood narrative in the Epic of Gilgamesh was a later addition, with the earliest Epic of Gilgamesh tablets containing the flood narrative date to 600 BC, and thus historians rule out the idea that Genesis borrowed from the Epic of Gilgamesh.<ref>Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. The Bible in its world: the Bible and archaeology today. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004. pp. 27-30.</ref> The chronicles are from the ancient lands of [[Sumeria]], and, according to Sumerian records, would have taken place about 2650 B.C. |