The narrative comprises a total of twelve panels. But we still don’t know the entire text – only 38 percent of the 3033 lines have survived in full. Most of the textual fragments of it come from Ashurbanipal’s library.
Smith digs in Mesopotamia for the lost parts
But Smith didn’t know that in 1872, because he had only found a few lines of the Flood story. So he came up with the plan to conduct his own excavation in Nineveh. Alone, the funding was lacking because the British Museum was not willing to pay for an expedition. The Daily Telegraph sponsored it, and in 1873 Smith made his way to the Ottoman Empire with the aim of finding more parts of the story of the Flood in the ruins of Nineveh.
The excavations began on May 7, 1873, and only a week later the sensation was perfect: Smith actually found what he was looking for! He hurriedly telegraphed London, which turned out to be a mistake. Because the Daily Telegraph had its media coup and ordered Smith home again. Disappointed, Smith made his way home, determined to come back soon. After that, things really happened in quick succession: in 1873 he started the next excavation and returned to London in the summer of 1874 with many more fragments.
In the end he really succeeded in reconstructing the story of the Flood and also other tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh. He set a breathtaking pace: by the end of 1874 he published the translations of all the literary texts he had found up to that point, and in the following year he wrote no fewer than four books. Almost as if he had guessed that he wouldn’t have much time left.