Erra and Ishum — Tablet I of the Babylonian poem of divine plague and devastation. The god Erra, goaded by his Seven warrior attendants, rises from sloth to fury, confronts Marduk in Esagil, and deceives the king of the gods into vacating Babylon. Standard Babylonian Akkadian, ca. 8th century BCE. Good Works Translation from the Akkadian.
Gilgamesh and Akka — The Sumerian political poem in which Gilgamesh of Uruk refuses to submit to the corvée demands of Akka, king of Kish, consults two assemblies, endures a siege, and wins by the power of his divine presence — releasing Akka in honor at the end.
Gilgamesh and Huwawa — A Sumerian poem in which Gilgamesh and Enkidu journey to the cedar mountain, defeat the forest guardian Huwawa, and bring his head before the god Enlil.
Gilgamesh and the Guardian of the Cedar Forest — The Sumerian poem in which Gilgamesh, driven by grief at human mortality, journeys with Enkidu to the Cedar Mountain, defeats its divine guardian Huwawa, and incurs the rebuke of Enlil — the oldest telling of the Cedar Forest adventure.
Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld — The Sumerian epic in which Gilgamesh clears Inanna's huluppu tree, loses his sacred ball to the underworld, sends Enkidu to retrieve it, and receives a visitation from Enkidu's ghost — who recounts the fates of the dead.
The Atrahasis — The Babylonian creation and flood epic — humanity made from clay and divine blood, the wrath of Enlil, and the survival of Atrahasis through the great flood. Good Works Translation from Akkadian, ca. 1700 BCE.
The Death of Gilgamesh — A Sumerian lament for the hero-king Gilgamesh — his fate decreed by the assembly of the gods, his burial on the Euphrates, and his appointment to rule among the shades.
The Enuma Elish — The Babylonian creation epic — seven cuneiform tablets telling how Marduk slew chaos and shaped the world from her body.
The Epic of Gilgamesh — The oldest epic poem in human history — a Sumerian king's quest for immortality, rendered from cuneiform tablets in the British Museum.