What is reality? How might we know it, when it is so strange and when our own experience is subjective and finite?

These questions are central to the earliest known work of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh (c.1800BC).  The eponymous hero goes on a quest for eternal life and absolute knowledge. Yet, Gilgamesh is denied this prize, and offered another: to accept mortality and wild uncertainty. As a result, The Epic of Gilgamesh is not merely the first example of a quest narrative but also the first example of a quest narrative in which the hero fails to gain the prize he wanted, but is given another completely different prize and advised to be grateful anyway.