Mesopotamian Civilisations — Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon

The chapter presents the Epic of Gilgamesh as history's first written epic: the quest for immortality of a king believed to have ruled Uruk in the 28th century BC. The book explains that the epic was written down about a thousand years after the king, that twelve clay tablets have been found, and that they are incomplete. It lists the tablets from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh and the finds at Nippur, Sultantepe and Boğazköy. The most interesting detail is the tablet acquired from a smuggler in Iraq in 2011 and given to the Sulaymaniyah Museum: in Andrew George's words, its new lines depict the Cedar Forest as a lively place full of noisy birds and screeching monkeys.

The plot is then retold: the wild Enkidu, created as a rival to Gilgamesh who oppresses his people; their fight and friendship; the rejection of the love goddess Ishtar's marriage proposal; the killing of the Bull of Heaven; the gods condemning Enkidu to death; Gilgamesh's lament and his quest for immortality. The wise Utnapishtim who survived the Flood, the plant of immortality brought up from the sea bed and its loss to a snake — the saddest moment of the epic — are told briefly but effectively. The book compares the «plant of immortality» motif to the Turkish-Islamic legend of Luqman the physician.

The fullest part of the chapter is the section «The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Flood». It opens with George Smith announcing in 1872 that he had found the Flood story among the Assyrian tablets in the British Museum, then quotes long passages from the epic: the god Ea commanding Utnapishtim of Shuruppak to tear down his house and build a ship; the ship's dimensions, six decks and coat of pitch; the animals slaughtered for the workers and wine flowing like a river; family and animals taken aboard; the storm raging for six days and seven nights; and the ship coming to rest on Mount Nisir. These are the book's best pages and help explain how the Flood myth passed into the scriptures of three major religions.

But the chapter's weaknesses will not escape a careful reader. Within the same chapter Enkidu is first said to have been sent by the sky god Anu to kill Gilgamesh, and a few pages later to have been created by the goddess Aruru in answer to the prayers of Uruk's women — the text feels compiled from two different sources. In one place Utnapishtim himself is said to bring the plant up from the sea bed, whereas in the epic it is Gilgamesh who dives for it. The claim that the Flood was started by Ishtar and Bel also does not match the traditional reading.

Still, the chapter also addresses the question of the historical Gilgamesh: the Sumerian King List names him as the fifth king of Uruk after the Flood, reigning for 126 years; the list is thought to date from the Third Dynasty of Ur; a Sumerian tablet from Me-Turan describes the people of Uruk diverting the Euphrates to bury their king in the riverbed; and a structure found in 2003 has been claimed to be that tomb. Marginal boxes give short notes on Enkidu and the sun god Utu-Shamash.

Overall, the Gilgamesh chapter is the most interesting and readable part of the book: it gives a first-time reader a good sense of the plot, the historical context and the Flood text. But unsourced information, internal contradictions and editing errors make it only a first source of information. For anyone who wants to read the epic itself, the best next step after this chapter is a full translation.

• A chronological chapter structure
• Colour illustrations and short notes in marginal boxes
• Long direct quotations from the Epic of Gilgamesh
• Bibliography and the translator's sources at the end