The oldest surviving work of literature, inscribed on clay tablets in ancient Sumeria. Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, befriends the wild man Enkidu, loses him to death, and travels to the end of the world seeking immortality. The tablets were buried for millennia and rediscovered in the nineteenth century. The story of the flood predates Noah. The grief Gilgamesh feels for Enkidu is raw and present across four thousand years. The quest for eternal life fails, as such quests must, but the fame of Gilgamesh's deeds survives in the very tablets we read. The walls of Uruk remain. The story continues.