One of the more interesting stories of 2003 was published late in April, when it was overshadowed by other, rather more urgent and interesting news coming from Iraq.

"Archaeologists in Iraq," announced the BBC, "believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh…The Epic Of Gilgamesh - written by a Middle Eastern scholar 2,500 years before the birth of Christ - commemorated the life of the ruler of the city of Uruk, from which Iraq gets its name."

A German-led expedition, the story said, had discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including the last resting place of its famous King. The whole shebang was under what was once the bed of the river Euphrates.

It was easy to get the impression that expedition members had been digging away in the bed of the Euphrates as bullets whizzed around their ears, but that wasn't the case. The expedition had been in Iraq some time before the war, and their discovery wasn't made by digging, but by using a magnetometer, a device that measures variations in the magnetic properties of the soil.

It's one of a number of new archaeological tools that enable archaeologists to identify and target small areas of interest, instead of having to completely dig up (and lose to future generations of archaeologists) a promising site. Sensing techniques like magnetometry are improving by leaps and bounds, and are already making it seem that the soil that buries historic artefacts can be made transparent.

The expedition was led by Jorg Fassbinder, of the Bavarian department of Historical Monuments in Munich. "We covered more than 100 hectares," he said. "We have found garden structures and field structures as described in the epic, and we found Babylonian houses.

"The magnetogram detailed buried walls, gardens, palaces, houses and a surprising network of canals that would have made Uruk a kind of 'Venice in the desert'."

It also pinpointed a structure in the middle of the former Euphrates river "which could be interpreted as the grave of King Gilgamesh", according to Fassbinder.

Not everyone in archaeology thinks he's right. "I would be very happy to hear that Gilgamesh's tomb has been found. However, I believe it is highly unlikely," Giovanni Pettinato of Rome's La Sapienza University said.

One of the world's most respected assyrologists, Pettinato discovered a new version of the Gilgamesh story two years ago, after translating hundreds of tablets that archaeologists from Baghdad had found in an immense private archive.

The new tablets tell of Gilgamesh meeting death freely, and at the same time ordering the mass suicide of his entire court. Indeed, after a huge tomb with a golden roof was built, the king invited his entire court to enter it. The structure was then inundated by the water of a dam opened after Gilgamesh's last order.

"We should not forget that this is myth. The German team is making a big mistake: they are trying to turn legend into history," Pettinato said.

But what a legend!

The Epic ofGilgamesh is, to all intents and purposes, a poem. Or rather, it is a compilation of 72 more or less separate and complete poems. They are written in the Akkadian language of the Babylonians and Assyrians, engraved in the very earliest form of writing, cuneiform, on clay tablets. Cuneiform is written using a stylus, made of reed or wood. Because it is difficult to use such a tool to draw curves on wet clay, cuneiform consists entirely of signs formed from straight lines. It looks like a bit like what's left behind when a chicken walks on wet sand.

The main hoard (to us) of tablets telling the story of Gilgamesh were found in the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia a little more than a century ago. But when they were found, no one knew what they were, or how important they were, so fragments of the find are apt to turn up in strange places.

There were many editions of Gilgamesh - many versions of the poem were copied down over many centuries. Hundreds of fragments of various editions of this set of tablets have been identified and fitted together like a giant jigsaw. But almost 20 percent of the epic is still missing and a further 25 percent is so fragmentary that it is only partially legible.

Archaeologists are confident, though, that the entire jigsaw will be completed, and that the work - known originally as Surpassing All Other Kings and later as The One Who Saw All - will once again be available in its entirety. Missing lines are being discovered in museum collections world-wide and in excavations in the Middle East at the rate of several dozen words a year.

In fact, a piece of the very beginning of the poem was discovered very recently in a British Museum storeroom. Scholars have been able to reconstruct the first four lines as follows:

He who saw all, who was the foundation of the land, Who knew (everything), was wise in all matters. Gilgamesh, who saw all, who was the foundation of the land, Who knew (everything), was wise in all matters.

Gilgamesh is the work upon which the Biblical story of Noah and the Flood was probably based. It tells the story of an early 3rd-millennium BC Sumerian king who went in search of the secret of everlasting life - a secret held by the survivor of the great flood, the proto-Noah, who had been made immortal by the Gods.

The young King Gilgamesh was, as befits the heroes of all epics, handsome and strong.

Son of Lugalbanda - Gilgamesh is the pattern of strength,

child of that great wild cow, Ninsun,

…Gilgamesh, dazzling, sublime…

Two-thirds of him is divine, one-third human.

The image of his body the Great Goddess designed.

But he wasn't happy with just being two-thirds divine, he wanted to be immortal. So with his friend Enkidu, he went on a long journey, to look for the secret of immortality.

On their journeys, the two of them defeat Humbaba, a demon, and the terrifying Bull of Heaven. But just as they have become famed throughout the length and breadth of Mesopotamia and environs for their feats, the gods decide that one of them, Enkidu, must die.

Gilgamesh is heartbroken - his lament for his friend is powerful (though inconveniently lengthy) poetry - and he goes wandering again, this time looking for the meaning of his friend's death. This time, he searches for Upnapishtim, the only human immortal and the sole survivor of the Great Flood. To find him, he knows he must cross the waters of death.

A barmaid he meets on the way says:

Gilgamesh, there has never been a crossing

And none from the beginning of days has been able to cross the sea…

Painful is the crossing, troublesome the road,

And everywhere the waters of death stream across its face.

But he does cross, and finds Upnapishtim, who tells him the story of the flood, and of how he built and provisioned his ark:

One acre was its whole floorspace; ten dozen cubits the height of each wall;

Ten dozen cubits its deck, square on each side…

I gave it six decks,

And divided it, thus, into seven parts.

Its innards I divided into nine parts.

The gods were so impressed by the success of the ark that they made Upnapishtim and his wife gods.

And in his turn, Upnapishtim is so impressed with Gilgamesh and his journey across the ocean of death, that he tells him about the Plant of Openings, which grows deep in the sea, and which bestows immortality.

Gilgamesh dives up a specimen and leaves, to take it, and himself, home. Sadly, before he can get there, a cunning snake steals the plant from him.

Much of the ending of the poem is missing, or unclear. But Gilgamesh certainly returns to Iruk cleansed and happy, to rule as King for the rest of his life. Perhaps by his efforts and by finding, then losing, immortality he achieved one of those sudden, Zen-like blows of comprehension of man's fate in the world.

Giovanni Pettinato's probably correct - Gilgamesh is just a myth. But finding the birthplace of this mother of all legends would be reason enough to make Jorg Fassbinder's feat one of the more extraordinary events of 2003.

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