CHAPTER 7 – GILGAMESH XI
The Text
The Epic of Gilgamesh gained immediate popularity in modern times after it was first
published by George Smith in 1872 as an ancient Babylonian parallel to Genesis 1-11.^495
Later scholarship has determined that the text now known as the Epic of Gilgamesh is
based on a collection of earlier Sumerian literary works based around a common hero,
which date to the late third or early second millennium B.C.E.^496 The early Akkadian ver-
sions of the Gilgamesh poems, extant from around the 19th century B.C.E., were appar-
ently based on their Sumerian antecedents, but subsequent editing and transmission of the
poems transplanted the hero Gilgamesh into some literary compositions not known in the
earlier versions.^497 It is in this way that tablet XI, containing the story of the Deluge
(^495) The first announcement of George Smith’s discovery appeared in a paper presented to the Society for
Biblical Archaeology in London in late 1872. Subsequent publications by Smith culminated in the publica-
tion of a posthumous volume following his death whilst on an expedition in Mesopotamia in search of fur-
ther cuneiform parallels to the early biblical accounts. See G. Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis:
Containing the Description of the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, the Times of
the Patriarchs and Nimrod, Babylonian Fables and Legends of the Gods, From the Cuneiform Inscriptions
(London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1876). Smith’s publications are conveniently
listed in R.S. Hess and D. Toshio Tsumura, I Studied Inscriptions From Before the Flood: Ancient Near
Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11 (Sources for Biblical and Theological Study
4; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 4-6. 496
497 A.R. George, Gilgamesh, 7-8.
A.R. George, Gilgamesh, 17-22.