Gilgamesh and SOAS: 30 years of scholarly contribution to the ‘world’s oldest story’
The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the masterpieces of world literature. Exploring mankind’s universal longing for immortality, the poem tells the story of a Babylonian hero’s quest for glory and flight from death. The genesis of the story stretches back almost 4000 years, when an anonymous Babylonian poet composed the epic tale in the Akkadian language. Centuries of war, upheavals, , conquest and empire across the region we