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The Gilgamesh flood tablet 11 (XI) contains additional story material besides the flood. The flood story was included because in it, the flood hero Utnapishtim is granted immortality by the gods and that fits the immortality theme of the epic. The main point seems to be that Utnapishtim was granted eternal life in unique, never-to-be-repeated ...
Cuneiform tablet with the Atra-Hasis epic in the British Museum. Uta-napishtim or Utnapishtim (Akkadian: 𒌓𒍣, "he has found life") was a legendary king of the ancient city of Shuruppak in southern Iraq, who, according to the Gilgamesh flood myth, one of several similar narratives, survived the Flood by making and occupying a boat.
The Deucalion legend as told by the Bibliotheca has some similarity to other deluge myths such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (which Stephanie West writes was likely the source of this myth [8]); the story of Noah's Ark in the Judeo-Christian telling; and the story of Manu's ark in the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions.
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.
One example of a flood myth is in the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100–1800 BCE). This account is similar to the Akkadian Atra-Hasis, [a] which dates to the 18th century BCE. [3] [b] In the Gilgamesh flood myth, the highest god, Enlil, decides to destroy the world with a flood because humans have become too noisy.
Several versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh were already known. The earliest surviving tablets date to the 18th century BCE and are named after its hero, Atra-Hasis. Finkel was able to read the clean first verses of the tablet famous among Assyriologists as the opening lines of the Atra-Hasis Flood Story.
The flood story in Genesis 6–8 matches the Gilgamesh flood myth so closely that "few doubt that [it] derives from a Mesopotamian account." [65] 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. [66]
Cultures around the world tell stories about a great flood. [18] 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. [19]