Gilgamesh of Uruk — The First King

The walls of Uruk were his greatest achievement — he built them to last, and they did, and he had the story of his own life carved on them so that travelers who came after him could read what he had seen and done. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest piece of literature ever recovered by archaeology: the story of a king who lost his best friend, refused to accept death, traveled to the edge of the world to find immortality, found it, lost it, and came home. The last tablet of the epic ends with Gilgamesh pointing to the walls of Uruk and saying: this is what I built. This is what remains. This is enough. It is the oldest and most honest conclusion to a human life ever written down.

These signs carry the walls of Uruk, the cedar forest, the monster Humbaba, and the wall inscription that was the first autobiography in human history.