Gilgamesh

"Gilgamesh is the great epic of Mesopotamia, one of the oldest works in Western literature, contemporary with the oldest parts of the Bible. It is the story of a legendary king who achieves heroic victories with the help of the wild man Enkidu; but when his friend dies, Gilgamesh goes in search of the way to escape death, a secret he can learn only from the one man who survived the Great Flood."--back cover.