吉尔伽美什的故事最早见于约公元前2100年的苏美尔语诗歌，比荷马史诗早了一千多年。后来巴比伦人把这些诗歌整理成一部完整的史诗，写在十二块泥板上；我们今天读到的版本，大多来自亚述王亚述巴尼拔在尼尼微建造的图书馆，那里的泥板约有两千七百年历史。

The earliest stories of Gilgamesh appear in Sumerian poems from around 2100 BC, more than a thousand years before the epics of Homer. Later, the Babylonians gathered these poems into one complete epic written on twelve clay tablets. Most of the version we read today comes from the library built by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, whose tablets are about 2,700 years old.

1872年，大英博物馆的年轻学者乔治·史密斯在整理尼尼微出土的泥板时，读出了史诗第十一块泥板上一场淹没世界的大洪水故事，据说他激动得在屋里跑来跑去。这个发现让全世界第一次知道：在古代美索不达米亚，很早就流传着大洪水和方舟的传说。

In 1872, George Smith, a young scholar at the British Museum, was studying clay tablets from Nineveh when he deciphered the story of a great flood that covered the world, written on the eleventh tablet of the epic. It is said that he was so excited he rushed about the room. His discovery showed the world for the first time that stories of a great flood and a boat had been told in ancient Mesopotamia since very early times.

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