When was the Epic of Gilgamesh written — and when was it actually discovered?

There is no single date: the Epic of Gilgamesh was written over roughly a thousand years. The oldest Gilgamesh stories are separate Sumerian poems copied in the late third and early second millennium BCE — the period around 2100 BCE that most "Gilgamesh 2100 BCE" claims are pointing at — while the unified Akkadian epic appears around 1800 BCE (the Old Babylonian version) and the standard twelve-tablet text credited to Sîn-lēqi-unninni was fixed between about 1300 and 1000 BCE. Modern knowledge of it begins with the excavation of Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh in 1849–1854 and with George Smith's public announcement of the Babylonian flood tablet on 3 December 1872.

Four different things get called "the date of Gilgamesh"

Almost every disagreement about Gilgamesh dating comes from collapsing four separate events into one. Kept apart, the picture is stable and uncontroversial among Assyriologists.

1. The historical king, traditionally around 2700 BCE. The Sumerian King List names Gilgamesh as a ruler of Uruk in the Early Dynastic period. He is plausibly a real king, but he is not attested in contemporary documents of his own reign, and the date is a traditional placement rather than a measured one.

2. The Sumerian poems, late third to early second millennium BCE. Five distinct Sumerian narrative poems about Gilgamesh survive — including Gilgamesh and Huwawa, Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, and The Death of Gilgamesh. They were cultivated at the court of the Third Dynasty of Ur, whose kings claimed Gilgamesh as kin, and the bulk of surviving copies are Old Babylonian scribal-school tablets. This is the layer behind the widely repeated figure of circa 2100 BCE.

3. The Akkadian epic, circa 1800 BCE. In the Old Babylonian period a poet in Akkadian turned the loose Sumerian material into one connected story, known from its opening line šūtur eli šarrī, "Surpassing all other kings." This is the first thing that deserves the word epic.

4. The Standard Babylonian version, circa 1300–1000 BCE. The twelve-tablet text most translations follow, beginning ša naqba īmuru, "He who saw the Deep," and attributed in ancient scribal catalogues to Sîn-lēqi-unninni. This version contains the flood narrated by Uta-napishti on Tablet XI.

The rediscovery: 1850s tablets, an 1872 announcement

The excavation and the discovery are not the same event, and conflating them produces most of the wrong dates online.

Between 1849 and 1854, excavations at Kuyunjik — the mound of ancient Nineveh — by Austen Henry Layard, his assistant Hormuzd Rassam, and William Kennett Loftus recovered thousands of cuneiform tablets from the libraries of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. The material was crated and shipped to the British Museum, where much of it sat unsorted and unread for years. Akkadian cuneiform had only recently been deciphered, and nobody yet knew that an epic was in the boxes.

The recognition came from George Smith, a former banknote engraver who had taught himself cuneiform and been hired by the British Museum to sort the Nineveh fragments. While working through the collection he found a tablet describing a great flood, a ship, and a survivor releasing birds to find land. On 3 December 1872 he presented it to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London, and the news travelled internationally within days because of its evident relationship to the Genesis flood story.

The tablet was incomplete. The Daily Telegraph funded Smith to return to Nineveh, and in 1873 he recovered further fragments of the flood account. He published The Chaldean Account of the Deluge in 1873 and The Chaldean Account of Genesis in 1876, and died of illness on a third expedition in 1876, aged 36.

The text is still not finished — and that is normal

Gilgamesh is a reconstruction assembled from many broken, incomplete copies found at multiple sites and dating from different centuries. There is no one master manuscript. Scholars build the text by aligning fragments, which means the epic genuinely grows as new tablets surface.

The most publicised recent case: a tablet acquired by the Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraqi Kurdistan was published in 2014 by Farouk Al-Rawi and Andrew George, supplying roughly twenty previously unknown lines of Tablet V and enriching the description of the Cedar Forest. Andrew George's two-volume critical edition of 2003 remains the standard scholarly reference, and it is explicitly a work in progress rather than a closed text.

The practical consequence for anyone citing a date: specify which layer you mean. "The Epic of Gilgamesh dates to 2100 BCE" is not defensible as written. "Sumerian Gilgamesh poetry was cultivated around 2100 BCE, and the standard Akkadian epic was fixed by roughly 1300–1000 BCE" is.

What most scholars accept, and what stays contested

Accepted: The epic exists in multiple versions composed across roughly a millennium, not as one text with one date. Sumerian Gilgamesh poems precede the Akkadian epic. The Old Babylonian Akkadian version dates to the early second millennium BCE. The Standard Babylonian twelve-tablet version is the text most translations render, and its flood account on Tablet XI closely parallels the Genesis flood. Thousands of tablets, including the flood tablet, came from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, excavated 1849–1854, and George Smith announced the flood tablet in London on 3 December 1872.
Mainstream: Sumerian Gilgamesh poetry flourished under the Third Dynasty of Ur, roughly 2100 BCE, and survives mainly in Old Babylonian school copies. The Old Babylonian Akkadian epic is dated to about 1800 BCE. The Standard Babylonian version is placed between roughly 1300 and 1000 BCE and is attributed by ancient scribal tradition to Sîn-lēqi-unninni. The historical Gilgamesh, if he existed, is conventionally placed around 2700 BCE in Uruk.
Contested: Whether Gilgamesh was a real king at all, and if so his dates — there is no contemporary inscription from his reign, and the Sumerian King List is not a reliable chronology. The precise dates of Sîn-lēqi-unninni and how much of the standard version he authored rather than edited. Whether Tablet XII, a partial Akkadian translation of a Sumerian poem, was ever meant as part of the epic; many scholars treat it as an appendix. The exact composition dates of individual Sumerian poems, since surviving copies are centuries later than the compositions. And whether the Mesopotamian and biblical flood stories share a common ancestor or reflect direct literary borrowing.

Frequently asked questions

Was the Epic of Gilgamesh written in 2100 BCE?

Not the epic as we read it. Around 2100 BCE, under the Third Dynasty of Ur, Sumerian court poetry about Gilgamesh was being composed and copied — five separate poems, not one epic. The single connected Akkadian narrative dates to about 1800 BCE, and the standard twelve-tablet version to roughly 1300–1000 BCE. So 2100 BCE is a reasonable date for the earliest Gilgamesh literature, but not for the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Who wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh?

No single author wrote it. Anonymous Sumerian scribes composed the earliest poems, and an unknown Old Babylonian poet welded them into a connected Akkadian epic around 1800 BCE. Ancient Mesopotamian catalogues credit the standard twelve-tablet version to Sîn-lēqi-unninni, an incantation priest usually placed between about 1300 and 1000 BCE. He is best understood as an editor of inherited material rather than an original author, and nothing else about his life is known.

When was the Epic of Gilgamesh discovered?

The tablets were excavated at Nineveh between 1849 and 1854 by Austen Henry Layard, Hormuzd Rassam and William Kennett Loftus, and shipped to the British Museum. They were not understood until George Smith read the flood episode and announced it on 3 December 1872. The discovery date depends on which you mean: 1850s for the physical tablets, 1872 for the recognition of the epic.

Is the Epic of Gilgamesh older than the Bible?

Yes, on any mainstream dating. The Old Babylonian Akkadian epic dates to about 1800 BCE and the standard version to roughly 1300–1000 BCE, while the Hebrew Bible's narrative texts were written and edited in the first millennium BCE. This chronological gap is what made George Smith's 1872 flood tablet so controversial, since it showed a Mesopotamian flood story with an ark, a survivor and released birds circulating before the biblical account was written down.

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Sources and further reading

Overview of the epic's Sumerian antecedents, the Akkadian versions, the attribution to Sîn-lēqi-unninni, and the Nineveh find.
The standard critical edition: introduction, critical edition and cuneiform texts, covering the manuscript history and the dating of each version.
Holds the Flood Tablet (K.3375) from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, the tablet George Smith read in 1872, together with the wider Kuyunjik collection excavated 1849–1854.
Publication of the Sulaymaniyah Museum tablet adding roughly twenty new lines to Tablet V and the Cedar Forest episode.
Transliterations and translations of the five Sumerian Gilgamesh poems that predate the Akkadian epic.