[en] The gluon momentum density xg(x, Q²) of the proton was extracted at Q²=20 GeV² for small values of x between 4x10^-4 and 10^-2 from the scaling violations of the proton structure function F₂ measured recently by ZEUS in deep inelastic neutral current ep scattering at HERA. The extraction was performed in two ways. Firstly, using a global NLO fit to the ZEUS data on F₂ at low x constrained by measurements from NMC at larger x; and secondly using published approximate methods for the solution of the GLAP QCD evolution equations. Consistent results are obtained. A substantial increase of the gluon density is found at small x in comparison with the NMC result obtained at larger values of x. (orig.)