The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh (the variant "Bilgames" was once thought to be the earlier Sumerian form), king of Uruk, some of which may date back to the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100 BCE). These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian.