Gilgamesh:

Gilgamesh , the best known of all ancient Mesopotamian heroes. Numerous tales in the Akkadian language have been told about Gilgamesh , and the whole collection has been described as an odyssey—the odyssey of a king who did not want to die. Gilgamesh is widely accepted as the historical 5th king of Uruk who reigned in the 26th century BCE. His influence is thought to have been so profound that myths of his divine status grew up around his deeds and finally culminated in the tales that inform The Epic of Gilgamesh . The Epic of Gilgamesh (/ ˈɡɪlɡəmɛʃ /) [2] is an epic from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh (formerly read as Sumerian "Bilgames" [3]), king of Uruk, some of which may date back to the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100 BCE). [1] These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the "Old Babylonian" version, dates back ... The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Babylonia and arguably the oldest known work of literature. The story includes a series of legends and poems integrated into a longer Akkadian epic about the hero-king Gilgamesh of Uruk (Erech, in the Bible), a ruler of the third millennium B.C.E. Several versions have survived, the most complete being preserved on eleven clay tablets in the library of the seventh-century B.C.E. Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. The essential story tells of the spiritual ...