For text editions and translations of the famous account of the deluge, being the eleventh tablet of the epic, see the note prefixed to the translation of this tablet, below.
The true reading: Gilgamesh, the Gilgamos of Ælian, in place of the conventional Iz-du-bar, was found by Theophilus G. Pinches in 1894. On the Nimrod epic see also Morris Jastrow, "Religion of Babylonia and Assyria," pp. 467–517, 727–730; C. J. Ball, "Light from the East, or the Witness of the Monuments," pp. 44 foll.; and L. W. King, "Babylonian Religion and Mythology" (London, 1899), chap, v, pp. 146–177.
TABLET I
Of this tablet only a few fragments are preserved. The correct beginning of the first tablet has been determined by Professor Haupt.[1] It reads thus:
He who has seen the history of Gilgamesh,
[He who] knows all [that has happened to him]
* * * together * * *
[He who] has seen all kinds of wisdom,
[and] knows the mysteries and has seen what is hidden,
he bringeth news dating farther back [than the deluge?];
He has travelled far-distant roads, and become weary * * *
[and now he has written] on a memorial tablet all the other things
* * * the wall of Uruk-supuru[2]
[Lines ten and eleven are wanting.]
He spoke a charm which does not leave [him]
* * * the god who from distant days * * *
So far page 1 of Haupt's text; to the same tablet, as Haupt and Jeremias have pointed out, belongs page 51,[3] narrating a siege of the city of Erech.
* * * his cattle forsook him.
* * * he went down to the river,
