The oldest great story on Earth: a king, a wild friend, a monster, and a flood that sounds familiar.
Documented
The tablet that leaked the flood
George Smith of the British Museum announced in 1872 that tablet XI of the epic held a flood account matching Noah's in detail, written a millennium earlier. The Sumerian King List already knew Gilgamesh as a historical ruler of Uruk.
Assessment: Documented in cuneiform and in the Victorian newspapers that lost their minds over it. The chronology is not in dispute.
Stories
The proof, whichever proof you wanted
Believers heard confirmation: the flood was real, so both texts remembered it. Skeptics heard plagiarism: the later text borrowed the older. Both sermons are still being preached from the same tablet.
Assessment: A single artifact carrying two opposite theologies. The tablet does not care.
Interesting claims
The king in the dirt
The claim: beneath the demigod stands a real king of Uruk, and some researchers have proposed matching his tomb and works to the city's archaeology.
Assessment: His place in the King List is documented. His body, like Alexander's, remains unproduced.
Sources and further reading
George Smith, 1872 announcement of the flood tablet
Epic of Gilgamesh, Standard Babylonian version, tablet XI
Sumerian King List, the Uruk entry
Andrew George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, critical edition
Worth asking
When the older copy surfaces, the original becomes the echo. How many originals are translations?