The Epic of Gilgameš (Standard Babylonian)
A king who would not die learns the hardest wisdom — eternal life is the gods' alone, but a name endures.
Also: Epic of Gilgamesh · Gilgameš · Gilgamesh · He who saw the deep · Sin-leqi-unninni · Enkidu · Utnapishtim · Humbaba · Bull of Heaven
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the most celebrated work of Mesopotamian literature and one of the oldest great poems in the world. Its hero, Gilgamesh, the overbearing king of Uruk, is matched by the gods with a wild man, Enkidu, who becomes his beloved friend. Together they journey to the Cedar Forest to kill its guardian Humbaba and slay the Bull of Heaven sent by the spurned goddess Ishtar. As punishment the gods condemn Enkidu to die, and his death shatters Gilgamesh, who — now terrified of his own mortality — sets out to find the one man granted eternal life, the Flood-survivor Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim tells him the Flood story and shows him that immortality cannot be won; even a rejuvenating plant Gilgamesh finds is stolen by a snake. He returns home empty-handed but wiser, his enduring achievement the great walls of Uruk. The epic's answer to death is sober and humane: accept mortality, and live well.
In short
The great Akkadian epic of Gilgameš, legendary king of Uruk — his friendship with the wild man Enkidu, their monster-slaying adventures, Enkidu's death, and Gilgameš's failed quest for immortality, ending in the hard wisdom that eternal life belongs to the gods alone while a lasting name is humanity's portion.
Where it’s found
The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgameš, Akkadian (NOT freely served on ORACC — akkadian-pending; ed. A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, 2003). Sumerian Gilgameš material IS in our corpus: 'Gilgameš and Ḫuwawa A' (ETCSL 1.8.1.5), 'Gilgameš and the bull of heaven' (1.8.1.2), 'The death of Gilgameš' (1.8.1.3), 'Gilgameš, Enkidu and the nether world' (1.8.1.4).
How the idea developed across Sumer, Babylon & Assyria
Built on older Sumerian Gilgameš poems and Old Babylonian Akkadian versions, the unified Standard Babylonian epic (on eleven tablets, with a twelfth appended that translates a Sumerian poem) was traditionally ascribed to the scholar Sîn-lēqi-unninni and is best known from the first-millennium tablets of Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh. Composition (the literary shaping) is distinct from the manuscripts (the surviving copies).
Gilgameš is a LEGENDARY/epic figure — listed as an early king of Uruk in the Sumerian King List, with a possible historical kernel, but known through legend. Not to be presented as a documented historical person.