There are two major strands in the Mesopotamian wisdom tradition. A popular one (proverbs and folk stories) reflects what we may call a zero degree reflection on the human condition, whereas a scribal tradition hails from a more detached intellectual effort at defining this human condition especially in its moments of greater fragility. Both may be seen as a form of knowledge: reaching for a realistic assessment of what we know about ourselves. As such, it has an epistemic dimension, one that we can appreciate all the more if we compare it with myths on the one hand, which may be seen epistemologically as an idealization of nature, and epics on the other, which may be seen as an idealization of the human past. The paper develops in some detail this contrast between idealization and realism, with reference to specific texts that illuminate this shared, if differently oriented, epistemic effort.