Gilgamesh was an historical king of Uruk in Babylonia, on the River Euphrates in modern Iraq; he lived about 6700 years before today. (about 2700 B.C. - see timescales). Although historians tend to emphasize Hammurabi and his code of law, the people of the area and the time focused on Gilgamesh and the legends accruing around him to explain, as it were, themselves. Many stories and myths were written about Gilgamesh, some of which were written down about 4000 years before today. in the Sumerian language on clay tablets which still survive. The Sumerian language is not derived from any Indo-European language or so some scholars say. These Sumerian Gilgamesh stories were integrated into a longer poem, versions of which survive not only in Akkadian (the Semitic language, related to Hebrew, spoken by the Babylonians) but also on tablets written in Hurrian and Hittite (an Indo-European language, a family of languages which includes Greek and English, spoken in Asia Minor).
All the above languages were written in the script known as cuneiform, which means "wedge-shaped." The fullest surviving version of the Epic is derived from twelve stone tablets, in the Akkadian language, found in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria 668-627 B.C. at Nineveh. The library was destroyed by the Persians in 2612 B.P., and all the tablets are damaged. The tablets actually name the author, Shin-eqi-unninni, such naming very rare in the ancient world. This is the oldest known human author we can name!
