The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic Babylonian tale that was preserved on stone and clay tablets for thousands of years. The text of Gilgamesh's epic is on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets, found at a destroyed library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. (Reigned 668-627 BC) Written around 2500 BC, the tale takes place a few hundred years after Noah and the Great Flood. The poem tells the story of Gilgamesh, the great sixth king of Uruk, a city in Mesopotamia, and his (perhaps fictional) quest for glory and immortal life.