In 1872, George Smith, an employee at the British Museum, made a discovery that would significantly alter his life while examining a dirty clay tablet. Recognizing ancient cuneiform script detailing a stranded ship and a bird seeking land, Smith became convinced he had identified the origins of the biblical flood narrative.
He expressed his excitement, stating, “I am the first man to read that after more than 2,000 years of oblivion,” upon realizing the importance of the tablet, unearthed in what is now Iraq. This tablet was just a fragment of a much larger composition, which many believed could provide insight into the Book of Genesis. Smith, who had risen from a working-class background and largely taught himself the intricacies of cuneiform, found fame through this revelation. He devoted his remaining years to uncovering additional parts of the poem, making numerous trips to the Middle East until his death from illness during one of these journeys in 1876 at the age of 36.
For more than 150 years since his groundbreaking find, generations of Assyriologists—scholars specializing in cuneiform and the civilizations that used it—have continued Smith’s mission to reconstruct a complete version of what is now known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. This epic, composed over 3,000 years ago and inspired by even older texts, has gradually become more complete as fragments have been discovered through archaeological efforts, found in museum collections, or surfaced in the black market.