Epic of Gilgamesh

The standard Babylonian version, credited by tradition to the scholar-priest Sin-leqi-unninni, gathers and reworks older Sumerian tales of Gilgamesh into a unified narrative across eleven core tablets (a twelfth, appended later, revives an earlier Sumerian ending). Gilgamesh, the tyrannical king of Uruk, is humbled and transformed by his friendship with Enkidu, a wild man created to check his excess. When Enkidu dies after their joint defeat of the monster Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, Gilgamesh's grief drives him to seek out Utnapishtim, the flood survivor granted immortality, hoping to escape death himself. He fails twice, first at the test of staying awake and then when a serpent steals the plant of rejuvenation on his way home, and returns to Uruk to find his answer not in eternal life but in the enduring walls of his own city.