Sin-leqi-unninni

Sin-leqi-unninni was a mashmashu, an exorcist and scholar, from Uruk. Later Mesopotamian tradition credits him with editing the 'standard' Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, the version that begins 'He who saw the deep' and includes Utnapishtim's account of the Flood on Tablet XI. Scholars place him somewhere between about 1300 and 1000 BCE.

Little is known of his life, and some scholars think he may be partly a figure of tradition. Several scribal families of Uruk in later centuries claimed him as their ancestor. His version is the one found in Ashurbanipal's library and read by George Smith in 1872. Unusually for cuneiform literature, a later catalogue of texts and authors names him directly as the source of the Gilgamesh series, which is why he is sometimes called the first named editor of a great epic. Older Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh and the Old Babylonian version show that he reworked material that had existed for centuries.