The Epic of Gilgamesh is both the oldest substantial narrative literature that survives from anywhere in the world and a work of genuine literary power that anticipates themes — friendship, grief, the quest for immortality, the acceptance of mortality — that reappear across world literature for millennia.

The standard Babylonian version compiled by the scholar Sin-leqi-unninni around 1200 BC integrated older Sumerian tales about Gilgamesh into a single narrative. Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, befriends the wild man Enkidu; they kill the monster Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven; the gods decree Enkidu's death; Gilgamesh, devastated, seeks immortality; he finds the plant of eternal life but loses it to a snake; he returns to Uruk and contemplates the walls he built.

The flood narrative in Tablet XI — where Gilgamesh meets the flood survivor Utnapishtim — was recognized immediately upon its 1872 publication as a parallel to the biblical Noah story. The relationship between the Mesopotamian flood traditions and the biblical narrative has been debated ever since, with positions ranging from direct borrowing to parallel development from shared ancient Near Eastern mythology.

The work's emotional core is the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and the grief that follows Enkidu's death. The directness of the grief — Gilgamesh refusing to accept that his friend is dead, sitting beside the body for seven days — has struck readers across cultures as entirely modern. The consolation offered — that the walls of Uruk endure, that civilization is Gilgamesh's real achievement — is genuinely moving.