Gilgamesh is the name of a legendary warrior king, a figure based on the fifth king of the first dynasty of the Mesopotamian capital of Uruk, sometime between 2700–2500 BCE. Real or not, Gilgamesh was the hero of the first recorded epic adventure tale, told in the ancient world from Egypt to Turkey, from the Mediterranean coast to the Arabian desert for well over 2,000 years.

The earliest surviving documents referring to Gilgamesh are cuneiform tablets found throughout Mesopotamia and made between 2100–1800 BCE. The tablets were written in Sumerian and describe events in Gilgamesh's life that were later woven into a narrative. Scholars believe that the Sumerian tales may have been copies of older (non-surviving) compositions from the court of the Ur III kings (21st century BCE), who claimed descent from Gilgamesh.

The earliest evidence of the stories as a narrative was likely composed by scribes at the cities of Larsa or Babylon. By the 12th century BCE, the epic of Gilgamesh was widespread throughout the Mediterranean region. Babylonian tradition says that the exorcist Si-leqi-unninni of Uruk was the author of the Gilgamesh poem called "He Who Saw the Deep," about 1200 BCE.

A nearly complete copy was found in 1853 in Nineveh, Iraq, partly at the Library of Ashurbanipal (r. 688–633 BCE). Copies and fragments of the Gilgamesh epic have been found from the Hittite site of Hattusa in Turkey to Egypt, from Megiddo in Israel to the Arabian desert. These fragments of the tale are variously written in Sumerian, Akkadian, and several forms of Babylonian, and the latest ancient version dates to the time of the Seleucids, Alexander the Great's successors in the fourth century BCE. 

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