Utnapishtim, Atrahasis, and the Flood of Noah
The Urantia Book · 78:7.3
The Violet Race After the Days of Adam
For thousands of years the survivors of this disaster told the story of the great flood, and from this nucleus has come down to us the legends of Noah and the ark. But there never was a worldwide flood since life was established on Urantia. The only universal flood was the Caligastia rebellion when the spiritual currents of the planet were dammed up.Read the full UB paper →
Ancient Source · Sumerian / Akkadian
The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Atrahasis Epic (~2000 to 1600 BCE)
Ea spoke to Utnapishtim: "Tear down thy house, build a ship. Forsake possessions, save life. Take the seed of all living things into the ship." The storm raged six days and six nights; on the seventh the flood subsided. The ship came to rest on Mount Nisir. I sent forth a dove, and the dove went forth and came back; no resting place appeared, so she returned. Then I sent forth a raven, and the raven did not return.
Gilgamesh Tablet XI, lines 24 to 156, trans. E.A. Speiser (ANET pp. 93 to 95)
The Gilgamesh flood narrative was discovered by George Smith of the British Museum in 1872 and predates the Genesis flood by at least a millennium.
The Parallel
The parallels are too specific to be coincidence: divine warning to a single righteous man, instruction to build a vessel, gathering of animals, a flood lasting a defined period, landing on a mountain, the bird release sequence (raven and dove in both accounts), and a sacrifice afterward that pleases the deity. Genesis 8:7 to 12 reproduces the bird sequence almost step for step. The Hebrew tradition inherited this story during the Mesopotamian period of Abraham's ancestors and refined it during the Babylonian captivity.
Why It Matters
The UB locates a real local catastrophe: the Mesopotamian flood plain experienced repeated devastating floods, and one or more of these became the seed of the universal flood legend. The story is not invention; it is memory of a real event, retold through the Mesopotamian tradition and inherited by the Hebrews.
Scholarship
- Smith, George. The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).
- Lambert, W.G. and A.R. Millard. Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford, 1969).
- Finkel, Irving. The Ark Before Noah (Doubleday, 2014).
- Pritchard, ANET pp. 93 to 95, 104 to 106.