When Does "Gilgamesh and Akka" (1750 BCE) Take Place?
"lu2 kin-gi4-a aka" (referred to originally only by under its opening line "The envoys of Akka"* but released for English-speaking audiences as "Gilgamesh and Akka" or "Gilgameš and Ak" or "Bilgamesh and Agga" or "Bilgames and Aga") is a historical fiction epic poem written anonymously and released around 1750 BCE (i.e. Before the Common Era).
It takes place roughly in the year:
We know this because its conclusion depicts the legendary Urukean King Gilgamesh and his army defeating the real-world Kishite King Aga/Ak/Akka at the Siege of Uruk. Akka was a leader of the real-world city-state of Kish, which fell from a position of domination over its neighboring cities (in what is now Iraq) around 2600 BC. Though the Siege of Uruk is not recorded historical fact, something similar must have happened in the real world around this time.
~2600 BC
We know this because its conclusion depicts the legendary Urukean King Gilgamesh and his army defeating the real-world Kishite King Aga/Ak/Akka at the Siege of Uruk. Akka was a leader of the real-world city-state of Kish, which fell from a position of domination over its neighboring cities (in what is now Iraq) around 2600 BC. Though the Siege of Uruk is not recorded historical fact, something similar must have happened in the real world around this time.
It is the first chronological epic poem featuring the quasi-historical legendary Gilgamesh and can be read at its timeline point.
*NOTES:
1. To our knowledge, Sumerians did not give works distinct titles but simply referred to a poem by its first line.
2. Numbers are used in transliterating some Sumerian written words to the modern Roman alphabet because scholars believe some multiples of their alphabet's symbols were phonetically pronounced the same way, something like "f" and "ph" in Modern English.
