Mystery AtlasEpic of Gilgamesh
The Mesopotamian epic whose eleventh tablet contains the flood story of Utnapishtim; the version discovered in Nineveh and read by George Smith in 1872 revealed a flood narrative older than and strikingly parallel to Genesis.
This is a knowledge-graph entry: what our data records about Epic of Gilgamesh and how it connects to the rest of the atlas. It does not have a full article of its own yet.
Connected to
How this topic links to the people, places, and ideas around it — drawn from our knowledge graph.
People
- Gilgameshtraditionally placed c. 27th century BC; earliest texts naming him date from c. 2100 BC
Epic of Gilgamesh mentions Gilgamesh — Title figure and protagonist across every version of the epic, from the separate Sumerian poems through the standard Akkadian recension.
Places
Epic of Gilgamesh is associated with Mesopotamia.
Creatures & Figures
Epic of Gilgamesh mentions Great Flood Myth — Tablet XI carries the flood story of Utnapishtim, the oldest fully preserved version of the motif.
Epic of Gilgamesh gave rise to Genesis Flood Narrative — Mainstream scholarship derives the Genesis account from Mesopotamian flood traditions (Atrahasis and Gilgamesh XI), with which it shares structure and detail down to the birds sent from the ark.
Explored on these pages
Did Gilgamesh Really Exist?
Did Gilgamesh really exist? What the Sumerian King List says, the evidence for a historical King of Uruk, and why scholars remain genuinely divided.
Why Do So Many Cultures Have Flood Myths?
Why flood myths appear in cultures worldwide: shared Mesopotamian roots, real local floods, and how mythologists explain the pattern without one global deluge.