world’s oldest zombie apocalypse

This just might be the world’s oldest record of the idea of a “zombie apocalypse.”  In the Epic of Gilgamesh (standard version, as translated by Stephanie Dalley in Myths from Mesopotamia), Ishtar seeks Gilgamesh’s hand in marriage, but Gilgamesh, knowing Ishtar’s history with men, declines the invitation.  Ishtar is furious, and asks her father Anu to send a fierce bull to attack Gilgamesh.  When he refuses, she threatens him.  Send the bull, she says, or else

“If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I shall smash [the gates of the Netherworld, right down] to its dwelling,
I shall bring up the dead to consume the living,
I shall make the dead outnumber the living. “
(Andrew George’s translation, VI 96-100)