The historical Gilgamesh was not Babylonian, but Sumerian. He is said to have been the King of Uruk, and possibly lived about 2700 BCE. The Sumerians were the first people to develop writing, using the script on clay tablets that we call cuneiform. Cuneiform was probably developed originally as a purely symbolic form, for numbers and accounting, but quickly developed into a complete script system, giving us the first writings. Among these were the records of Gilgamesh, already legendary when writing was developed.
Some fragments of the Sumerian Gilgamesh tales are still preserved on early tablets from about 2200-2000 BCE but Suni-Leqe-Unninni transformed them during the Old Babylonian period into a fresh story - a poetic piece of at least 1000 lines inscribed on clay tables and surviving fragmentarily but in a range of cuneiform sources. An analogy more familiar to modern readers might be the way in which Thomas Malory collected and wrote anew the tales of King Arthur into his Morte d'Arthur.
The epic had assumed standard for by around 1300 BCE, 500 years after Suni-Leqe-Unninni first transformed it.
Sumeria was the great civilisation of ancient Mesopotamia, with a long flowering and many important cultural and technical contributions. It was replaced by the Babylonians who however wished to portray themselves as the rightful inheritors of Sumerian culture. The original tales were recordings of oral traditions about Gilgamesh. But Sini-Leqe-Unninni may have crafted his version as a kind of nostalgia for the old days or, potentially, as a way in which to portray the current Babylonian rulers as kings of the same stamp. Again it seems as though Sumerian was used in ancient Mesopotamia much as Latin was during the medieval period -- as a language of the literate and educated in which the most important tales were told. The transfer of the Gilgamesh story into Babylonian would have represented the incorporation of classical civilisation into modern life.
Other events which were taking place around the time of the historical Gilgamesh, ca 2750 BCE:
- In China, it was the time of the "Sage Kings"
- In Egypt, the 3rd to 6th Dynasties of the Old Kingdom were ruling (the time of Cheops)
- Also in Egypt, the 365 day calendar was introduced.
- In Sumeria, writing was beginning
- King Sargon of Akkad defeats Lugalzaggisi the Sumerian King
- In China, the Shun dynasty rules
- In Egypt, the Middle Kingdom begins
- In Mesopotamia, Abraham leaves Ur ca 2100 BCE
- In India, the Indus Valley civilisation flourishes
- In Crete, it is the Early Minoan period
- In Scandinavia, dolmens are being erected
- In Peru, the cultivation of cotton is beginning
- The Hittite kingdom attacks Babylon
- Hammurabi reunites the Babylonian Empire and writes the Code of Hammurabi
- The Greeks begin to move from the Caspian sea to the Mediterranean
- Stonehenge is a centre of English worship
- In China, the first period of Chinese literature begins
- In Crete, it is the late Minoan period
- The Mycenaean palaces are built
- Egyptian civilization is weakening; Ramses re-establishes the old religion after the changes made by Akhenaton and Tutankhamun
- The Israelites, led by Moses, reach Canaan
- The destruction of Troy
- In Mexico, the earliest known settlement
- In India, the Upanishads are written and the Ganges civilization flourishes
- In China, the first dictionary appears
- In Greece, Corinth is founded
- There is evidence of tin mining in England
- In Scandinavia and the Mediterranean there is advanced shipbuilding
