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The Gilgamesh flood myth is a flood myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is one of three Mesopotamian Flood Myths alongside the one including in the Eridu Genesis , and an episode from the Atra-Hasis Epic.
[5] [6] Both the Epic of Gilgamesh and Atra-Hasis are preceded by the similar Eridu Genesis (c. 1600 BCE) [7] —the oldest surviving example of such a flood-myth narrative, known from tablets found in the ruins of Nippur in the late 1890s and translated by assyriologist Arno Poebel. [8] George Smith, who discovered and translated the Epic of ...
Cultures around the world tell stories about a great flood. [14] In many cases, the flood leaves only one survivor or group of survivors. For example, both the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible tell of a global flood that wiped out humanity and of a man who saved the Earth's species by taking them aboard a boat. [15]
The motif of a weather deity who headed the pantheon causing the great flood and then the trickster who created men from clay saving man is also present in Sumerian Mythology, as Enlil, instead of Zeus, causes the flood, and Enki, rather than Prometheus, saves man. Stephanie West has written that this is perhaps due to the Greeks borrowing ...
The story follows the Sumerian king Gilgamesh, typically regarded as a historical figure, and his good friend, Enkidu through various adventures and quests that eventually lead to Enkidu's death. The second half of the epic deal with Gilgamesh, distressed about the death of his friend and his own impending mortality, as he searches for immortality.
When the flood destroys the world, Manu – in some versions accompanied by the seven great sages – survives by boarding the ark, which Matsya pulls to safety. Norbert Oettinger argues that the story originally was about Yama , but that he was replaced by his brother Manu due to the social context of the authorship of the Shatapatha Brahmana.
Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account. [69] What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives ...
In later versions of the flood story, contained in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Eridu Genesis, the hero is not named Atra-Hasis. In Gilgamesh, the name of the flood hero is Utnapishtim, who is said to be the son of Ubara-Tutu, king of Shuruppak: "Gilgamesh spoke to Utnapishtim, the Faraway... O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubara-Tutu."