Who first translated the Epic of Gilgamesh into a modern language?

The first modern-language translator of the Epic of Gilgamesh is generally credited as George Smith.

Smith was a largely self-taught English Assyriologist employed by the British Museum. In 1872, while studying cuneiform tablets from the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, he deciphered a Babylonian Flood story. He presented his translation to the Society of Biblical Archaeology on 3 December 1872, astonishing Victorian audiences because its details resembled the Flood narrative in Genesis.

Smith’s work initially translated portions rather than the entire epic as modern readers know it. He recognized that the Flood account belonged to a larger composition about Gilgamesh and published fuller translations in the 1870s. His 1876 book, The Chaldaean Account of Genesis, helped introduce the poem to the public, although the hero’s name was still sometimes misread as “Izdubar.”

Hormuzd Rassam and Austen Henry Layard were associated with discovering or excavating the tablets, not with being the first translators. Henry Rawlinson was a major pioneer in deciphering cuneiform and studying Assyrian texts, but Smith made the breakthrough translation that brought Gilgamesh to widespread modern attention. Complete and more accurate English editions appeared later as additional fragments were found and scholarship improved.