Gilgamesh is known as the first great heroic narrative of world literature. Scholars have found that the origins of Gilgamesh were written on tablets throughout the Middle East and in cuneiform. The history of the text is far from being fully understood, but it is believed that this work was written between 2500-1500 B.C. The earliest written version of the text date roughly 2000 B.C., but the history of the epic itself begins sometime before 1600 B.C. This critique will center on the Akkadian version of the work that appears in the Norton Anthology of World Literature (Second Edition, Volume A).
             Gilgamesh developed over a period of a thousand years. The version known as the Standard version was discovered in the city of Nineveh amid the ruins of the great royal library of the last great king of the Assyrian empire. Therefore Gilgamesh is considered as the oldest epic. But is it really an epic? An epic is a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero. Gilgamesh is more of a myth than it is an epic. Myths, so far as their origins are concerned, are like dreams, spontaneous expressions of the unconscious. But one may ask who the dreamer is? In this case, it is the collective ego of the people, that is, the commonly held beliefs and attitudes – the collective consciousness. The context available would be the culture of the time in which Gilgamesh arose and was valued. The definition also states that there is a hero involved. The author's choice to categorize Gilgamesh as a hero serves as a means of further illustrating the misuse of the term epic. Overall, the author aims to create a piece of work that is considered to be an epic – considerably one of the greatest.
             Since the story of Gilgamesh appears to be more of a myth than an epic, it is correct to say that it is based on the convictions of a people as to their own divine
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