Q 01/05

The Epic of Gilgamesh comes from which ancient region?

A) Mesopotamia

B) Egypt

C) Anatolia

D) The Indus Valley

Answer · why

A) Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia. Scribes there copied the poem for well over a thousand years, then it lay forgotten under ruined cities until Victorian excavators dug it...

Q 02/05

Gilgamesh was king of which city?

A) Nineveh

B) Ur

C) Uruk

D) Babylon

Answer · why

C) 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 brickwo...

Q 03/05

According to the epic, what fraction of Gilgamesh was divine?

A) One-twelfth

B) One-sixth

C) One-third

D) Two-thirds

Answer · why

D) 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 searc...

Q 04/05

The tablets that preserve the epic are written in which script?

A) Hieroglyphs

B) Cuneiform

C) Linear B

D) Runes

Answer · why

B) 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 c...

Q 05/05

Which scribe-scholar is credited with compiling the Standard Babylonian version around 1300-1000 BCE?

A) Enheduanna

B) Nabu-zuqup-kenu

C) Sîn-lēqi-unninni

D) Berossus

Answer · why

C) Sîn-lēqi-unninni

Sîn-lēqi-unninni. Babylonian tradition held that he reworked centuries-old poems into the version read today.