The Gilgamesh Epic is the most notable literary product of Babylonia as yetdiscovered in the mounds of Mesopotamia. It recounts the exploits and adventuresof a favorite hero, and in its final form covers twelve tablets, each tablet consistingof six columns (three on the obverse and three on the reverse) of about 50 lines foreach column, or a total of about 3600 lines. Of this total, however, barely morethan one-half has been found among the remains of the great collection ofcuneiform tablets gathered by King Ashurbanapal (668-626 B.C.) in his palace atNineveh, and discovered by Layard in 1854 [1] in the course of his excavations ofthe mound Kouyunjik (opposite Mosul). The fragments of the epic painfullygathered--chiefly by George Smith--from the circa 30,000 tablets and bits oftablets brought to the British Museum were published in model form by ProfessorPaul Haupt; [2] and that edition still remains the primary source for our study ofthe Epic.For the sake of convenience we may call the form of the Epic in the fragmentsfrom the library of Ashurbanapal the Assyrian version, though like most of theliterary productions in the library it not only reverts to a Babylonian original, butrepresents a late copy of a much older original. The absence of any reference toAssyria in the fragments recovered justifies us in assuming that the Assyrianversion received its present form in Babylonia, perhaps in Erech; though it is ofcourse possible that some of the late features, particularly the elaboration of theteachings of the theologians or schoolmen in the eleventh and twelfth tablets, mayhave been produced at least in part under Assyrian influence. A definite indicationthat the Gilgamesh Epic reverts to a period earlier than Hammurabi (orHammurawi) [3] i.e., beyond 2000 B. C., was furnished by the publication of atext clearly belonging to the first Babylonian dynasty (of which Hammurabi wasthe sixth member) in CT. VI, 5; which text Zimmern [4]…