Secondary Source: C.W. Ceram, Gods, Graves and Scholars, Alfred Knopf: New York, 1978.

Gilgamesh, the story of the Sumerians, the oldest civilization in the world.
In Mesopotamia, a rich agricultural region located between the Tigrus and Euphrates Rivers

4000-3000 B.C. Sumeria
2000 B. C. Assyria, to the north -- Ninevah, chief city
2000 B.C. Babylonia, to the south -- Babylon, chief city
(presently, Baghdad, Iraq
Nebuchadnezzar, the last ruler of New Babylonia

Ninevah, Assyria was the parvenue of the pre-historic world, much like Rome was to Greece.

Paul Emile Botta, physician to a rich Arab and who later became a French consul, in 1841, discovered the first Assyrian palace.
This was the first substantiation of the places of the Old Testament. He discovered the out-skirts of Ninevah.
Later excavation by Layard uncovered Ninevah and Nimrud.
Rassam, for the British Museum, discovered the Gilgamesh tables.(25,000) brought back to London)

The Gilgamesh tablets were written in Akkadian, a language much like Hebrew.

Assurbanipal, the last great Assyrian king in the seventh century B.C. had older versions, versions in the Sumerian language, translated into the more modern Akkadian and housed in a great library. It is this translation, albeit from Akkadian to English, that we are reading today.

George Smith, at the British Museum, translated the first Gilgamesh tablets and returned to Mesopotamia to find the missing tablets; he found tablets relating the account of the flood. Smith died of hunger and exposure in Mesopotamia at the age of 36.

These early amateur excavators began to see that there was a much older culture, the Sumerican culture, which seemed to date back to the time of Genesis or before. Questions arose, such as were these the people who were wiped out by the flood?

Graves of the rulers of Ur (Sumeria) were found and evidence of human sacrificial ritual uncovered -- soldiers, servants, ladies-in-waiting. Such sacrifices were probably carried out by priests to affirm the divinity of their king. No evidence that this practice was carried out in Babylonia or Assyria.

Sumerians -- believed to come from the Indus Valley, 1500 miles away.They were non-semitic people who came to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley which was originally inhabited by tribes of Semites.

Gilgamesh, originally a Sumerian legend recopied by the Assyrians, was composed and recited before written down. Assurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria, sent messengers out to search the archives of the ancient seats of learning in Babylon,Uruk, and Nippur, and to copy and translate into the contemporary Akkadian Semitic those texts which were in the older Sumerian language of Mesopotamia. Amongst these texts, was the poem which we call the Epic of Gilgamesh.