A carving of the tale of Gilgamesh Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP (Glasg) via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 The first great masterpiece of world literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh ...

What he had uncovered would become known in the West as The Epic of Gilgamesh, the 3,200-year-old account of the eponymous hero's exploits and one of the oldest works of literature in the world.