In 1872, George Smith, an employee at the British Museum, made a groundbreaking discovery while examining a clay tablet covered in grime in a second-floor room. He identified ancient cuneiform inscriptions that alluded to a ship in distress and a bird sent to seek land. After cleaning the tablet, Smith became convinced he had found a precursor to the biblical flood narrative.
“I am the first man to read that after more than 2,000 years of oblivion,” Smith reportedly exclaimed with excitement.
Smith understood that the tablet, unearthed in present-day Iraq, was part of a more extensive work that could potentially illuminate aspects of the Book of Genesis. This revelation propelled Smith, who came from a modest background and was largely self-taught in cuneiform, into the spotlight. He devoted the remainder of his life to uncovering additional sections of the poem, making several trips to the Middle East before passing away from illness during his last expedition in 1876 at the age of 36.
For the past 152 years, generations of Assyriologists, specialists in cuneiform and the civilizations that used it, have continued Smith’s efforts to reconstruct a complete version of the poem now recognized as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Fragments of this epic, composed over 3,000 years ago and influenced by even older texts, have been rediscovered through archaeological excavations, found in museum storerooms, or appeared on the black market.