A 3,000-year-old epic, rediscovered by a self-taught engraver
The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh — credited to the scribe-poet Sîn-lēqi-unninni around 1200 BCE — survived on clay tablets buried in the ruins of King Ashurbanipal's library and sat unread for years after their 19th-century excavation. In 1872 CE the fragments were finally joined and deciphered in London by George Smith, a working-class former banknote engraver who had taught himself cuneiform, roughly 3,000 years after the poem took its standard form.
How we know
Sîn-lēqi-unninni's Standard Version compiled c. 1200 BCE (scholarly range c. 1300–1000 BCE); tablets from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh (excavated 1850s); George Smith (1840–1876), ex-banknote engraver, deciphered the fragments at the British Museum and announced them to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in Dec. 1872 CE.
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.