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“We know Gilgamesh best through what is probably the earliest example of an epic poem. The “Epic of Gilgamesh” certainly had oral roots but was first expressed in written— Akkadian—form in the Old Babylonian period of the early second millennium B.C.E. A more complete version was written later, in the Middle Babylonian period, supposedly by one Sin-leqe-unnini, and there are neo-Babylonian, neo- Assyrian, Hittite, and other versions. The epic had gained popularity in much of the Middle East by the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. It was apparently the Middle Babylonian version that was the basis for most of the Ninevite recension, the c. 1500 line epic in twelve tablets discovered in the Assyrian Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh dating from the seventh century B.C.E."
Excerpted From:
David Leeming. "Gilgamesh," The Oxford Companion to World mythology. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press