Epic of Gilgamesh
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" was discovered by Austen Henry Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and W. K. Loftus in 1853. The central character of Gilgamesh was initially reintroduced to the world as ""Izdubar"", before the cuneiform logographs in his name could be pronounced accurately. The first modern translation was published in the early 1870s by George Smith. Smith then made further discoveries of texts on his later expeditions, which culminated in his final translation which is given in his book "The Chaldaean Account of Genesis" (1880).
Gilgamesh
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" exerted substantial influence on the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", two epic poems written in ancient Greek during the eighth century BC. According to Barry B. Powell, an American classical scholar, early Greeks were probably exposed to Mesopotamian oral traditions through their extensive connections to the civilizations of the ancient Near East and this exposure resulted in the similarities that are seen between the "Epic of Gilgamesh" and the Homeric epics. Walter Burkert, a German classicist, observes that the scene in Tablet VI of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" in which Gilgamesh rejects Ishtar's advances and she complains before her mother Antu, but is mildly rebuked by her father Anu, is directly paralleled in Book V of the "Iliad". In this scene, Aphrodite, the later Greek adaptation of Ishtar, is wounded by the hero Diomedes and flees to Mount Olympus, where she cries to her mother Dione and is mildly rebuked by her father Zeus.