Langdon Stephen. The Epic of Gilgamish

The University Museum of Pennsylvania, 1917. — 32 p. — (Publications of the Babylonian Section 10.3).In the year 1914 the University Museum secured by purchase
a large six column tablet nearly complete, carrying
originally, according to the scribal note, 240 lines of text. The
contents supply the South Babylonian version of the second
book of the epic Sa nagba inzuru, “He who has seen all things,”
commonly referred to as the Epic of Gilgamish, The tablet is
said to have been found at Senkere, ancient Larsa near Warka,
modern Arabic name for and vulgar descendant of the ancient
name Uruk, the Biblical Erech mentioned in Genesis x. 1O. This
fact makes the new text the more interesting since the legend
of Gilgamish is said to have originated at Erech and the hero
in fact figures as one of the prehistoric Sumerian rulers of that
ancient city. The dynastic list preserved on a Nippur tablet
mentions him as the fifth king of a legendary line of rulers at
Erech, who succeeded the dynasty of Kish, a city in North
Babylonia near the more famous but more recent city Babylon.
The list at Erech contains the names of two well known
Sumerian deities, Lugalbanda and Tammuz. The reign of the
former is given at 1,200 years and that of Tammuz at 100
years. Gilgamish ruled 126 years. We have to do here with
a confusion of myth and history in which the real facts are
disengaged only by conjecture.