Epic of Gilgamesh Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
110 free Epic of Gilgamesh trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Epic of Gilgamesh trivia takes you back to the oldest surviving story on Earth: a tyrant king of Uruk, two-thirds god, tamed by friendship with a wild man, and then broken by that friend's death into a hopeless hunt for immortality. Along the way there is a cedar forest with a monstrous guardian, a spurned goddess who unleashes a bull from heaven, a tavern-keeper at the edge of the world with excellent advice, a ferryman with magic stones, a flood survivor who has already tried everything, and a snake that steals the one plant that might have worked. This quiz covers the story tablet by tablet, plus how we have it at all: the fragments from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, George Smith's 1872 sensation, the hero first called 'Izdubar', the Old Babylonian and Standard Babylonian versions and their opening lines, the five Sumerian poems, the Dream Tablet that Hobby Lobby had to give back to Iraq, the parallels with Genesis and Ecclesiastes, and echoes as far afield as the Alexander Romance and Princess Mononoke. Easy questions suit anyone who has read a summary; the expert tier assumes you know how many punting poles the ferryman demanded. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the epic, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Epic of Gilgamesh comes from which ancient region?
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia. Scribes there copied the poem for well over a thousand years, then it lay forgotten under ruined cities until Victorian excavators dug its tablets up.
Q 02Gilgamesh was king of which city?
Uruk
Uruk. The poem opens and closes on its massive walls: home from his failed quest, the king tells his boatman to walk along them and admire the brickwork.
Q 03According to the epic, what fraction of Gilgamesh was divine?
Two-thirds
Two-thirds divine and one-third human. His mother is a goddess, yet the mortal third decides his fate: the second half of the poem is his failed search for a way not to die.
Q 04The tablets that preserve the epic are written in which script?
Cuneiform
Cuneiform, from the Latin for 'wedge'. Scribes pressed a cut reed into damp tablets, and once the script died out some two thousand years ago nobody could read it until the nineteenth century.
Q 05Which scribe-scholar is credited with compiling the Standard Babylonian version around 1300-1000 BCE?
Sîn-lēqi-unninni
Sîn-lēqi-unninni. Babylonian tradition held that he reworked centuries-old poems into the version read today.
Q 06What is the opening phrase, or incipit, of the Standard Babylonian version?
'He who saw the deep'
'He who saw the deep', also rendered 'He who saw everything'. Babylonian works were known by their first words, and these point to the wisdom the hero carries home, not to his strength.
Q 07After his days with the woman sent to tame him, how do the wild animals react to Enkidu?
They run from him
They run from him. He tries to follow but can no longer keep up, and the poem sets the loss against a gain: his body is slower, but his understanding has widened.
Q 08In which language were the earliest poems about Gilgamesh written?
Sumerian
Sumerian. Five separate poems about him survive in it, and Babylonian poets later wove some of their episodes into one long epic in Akkadian.
Q 09In the older poems that predate the Akkadian epic, what is Enkidu's relationship to Gilgamesh?
His servant
His servant. The later epic remade him as a wild man created by the gods to be the king's equal, turning master and attendant into inseparable friends.
Q 10The best copies of the epic were found in the ruined library of which 7th-century BCE Assyrian king?
Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal. Proud that he could read ancient scripts himself, he sent scribes across his empire to collect or copy every old text they could find for his palace.
Q 11In which ancient city was the great royal library containing the epic excavated?
Nineveh
Nineveh. When enemies sacked and burned the city in 612 BCE, the fire that destroyed the palace baked the library's tablets hard, which helped them survive.
Q 12Which British Museum scholar read translated fragments of the epic to a learned society in 1872?
George Smith
George Smith, a self-taught former banknote engraver. On deciphering the flood story he reportedly rushed about the room in excitement, pulling off his clothes.
Q 13Victorian scholars at first misread the signs of Gilgamesh's name as what?
Izdubar
Izdubar. Early translations and even an 1884 verse retelling used that name; the correct reading was only published in 1890.
Q 21What is the name of the monstrous guardian of the forest whom the heroes kill?
Humbaba
Humbaba. Beaten, he begs for his life and offers to serve the king and cut timber for him, but Enkidu urges a quick kill before the gods can step in.
Q 22What does the sun god send to pin down the forest guardian?
Thirteen winds
Thirteen winds. They blast him in the face from every side until he can neither charge forward nor back away, and only then can the heroes close in.
Q 23Which sun god protects the heroes and later argues against Enkidu's death sentence?
Shamash
Shamash. In the gods' council he protests that the pair killed at his own command, and is told he is to blame too, for travelling with them daily like a friend.
Q 14The gods created Enkidu to stop Gilgamesh doing what to the people of his city?
Oppressing them
Oppressing them. The citizens complain to the gods, who decide the king needs a match for his 'stormy heart' and have a wild man made in the wilderness.
Q 15Which temple prostitute is sent to tame the wild man Enkidu?
Shamhat
Shamhat. Afterwards she dresses him in part of her own clothing and leads him to a shepherds' camp to learn human ways.
Q 16Who first comes face to face with the wild Enkidu at a watering hole?
A trapper
A trapper. Too frightened to go near the wild man, who keeps filling in his pits and freeing his catch, he tells his father, who sends him to the king for help.
Q 17At the shepherds' camp, Enkidu learns to eat bread and to drink what?
Beer
Beer, given as wine or mead in older translations. After seven helpings he turns cheerful and starts to sing, then washes, oils his shaggy body and guards the flocks at night.
Q 18Where does Enkidu block Gilgamesh's path, starting the fight that makes them friends?
At a wedding chamber
At a wedding chamber. The king was on his way in to the bride when the newcomer blocked the door with his foot; they wrestled until the walls shook, then became friends.
Q 19Which goddess, Gilgamesh's mother, adopts Enkidu as her son before the heroes leave?
Ninsun
Ninsun. First she climbs to her roof, burns incense and asks the sun god why he gave her son such a restless heart, then begs him to watch over the pair.
Q 20To which distant place do Gilgamesh and Enkidu journey to win fame?
The Cedar Forest
The Cedar Forest. The city elders call the trip reckless and even Enkidu, who knew the place in his wild days, argues against it, but the king wants a name that will outlast him.
Q 24Enkidu plans to turn a gigantic felled tree into a door for the temple of which god?
Enlil
Enlil. The door is floated downriver to his temple at Nippur, and the dying Enkidu later rages at it as if it could hear him.
Q 25Which goddess proposes to Gilgamesh and, when spurned, demands a monster to punish him?
Ishtar
Ishtar. He turns her down by reciting the fates of her past lovers, among them a shepherd she turned into an animal chased by his own dogs.
Q 26What creature does the spurned goddess unleash to avenge Gilgamesh's insult?
The Bull of Heaven
The Bull of Heaven. Each snort opens a pit that swallows men by the hundred, until Enkidu seizes its tail and Gilgamesh drives a blade in behind the horns.
Q 27What does the goddess threaten if her father Anu refuses her the beast?
Raise the dead to devour the living
Raise the dead to devour the living, until corpses outnumber the breathing. Anu gives in, but warns that the beast will bring seven years of famine.
Q 28What does Enkidu hurl at the goddess after the beast is killed?
One of its hindquarters
One of its hindquarters, flung in her face with the taunt that he would do the same to her if he could catch her. The heart went to the sun god as an offering.
Q 29On the road to the forest, how does Enkidu interpret each of Gilgamesh's terrifying dreams?
As good omens
As good omens. A mountain falls on him, a storm breaks in lightning and fire: every time Enkidu insists the dream is favourable and they press on.
Q 30What finally makes Gilgamesh accept that Enkidu is really dead?
A maggot drops from the corpse's nose
A maggot drops from the corpse's nose. For six days and seven nights he had refused to let the body be buried, hoping his cries might bring his friend back.