Noahs, Noahs everywhere

There are a number of flood stories from Sumer, Babylonia and Greece, in addition to the Bible’s. Livius.org has some great coverage of the various stories and their origins. They also compare versions in a handy table. According to the site it is speculated that there may have been a historical flood in southern Babylonia in the twenty-eighth century BCE.

Mesopotamian versions of the story of the flood (and of Gilgamesh) exist in both Sumerian and Akkadian. The Atrahasîs story is an Akkadian myth.

The Flood in The Story of Atrahasîs

Before the creation of humans the gods had to do all the work themselves. Having grown tired of their toil (digging out the Tigris and Euphrates) they decide to show their displeasure by launching an attack on the house of Enlil (“Lord Wind”, highest-ranked god along with An). Informed that the gods were not going back to work ever Enlil bursts into tears and offers to resign his position – being in charge of earth.

Enki (“Lord of the soil”) suggests instead that the birth goddess Nintur create man to do the work. The raw material used to create humans (clay made of divine flesh and blood) is procured by killing one of the gods, We-e, who originally came up with the bright idea to rebel. Womb deities tread the clay; 14 pieces are removed from it, and separated into 2 columns of 7 each. From these 2 columns of clay a male and a female embryo are fashioned. After 9 months Nintur delivers the babies.

After 1200 years there are so many humans that they are incredibly noisy, and Enlil can’t sleep. He gets the gods to send a plague, hoping to cull the humans back to a tolerable noise level. The wise man Atrahasîs, servant of Enki, appeals to Enki to help stop the plague. Enki tells him to get people to be less noisy, and to get everyone to worship Namtar, the god of the plague. Presently all the offerings and worship make Namtar feel too bad to carry on with the plague and it stops.

After another 1200 years humans have increased so much that the noise level is again intolerable. Enlil gets the gods to send a drought, by having Adad, the god of rain, withhold his rain. (The incredibly long-lived) Atrahasîs goes to Enki again, gets the same advice – about worshipping Adad this time – and pretty soon Adad makes it rain again.

When the noise level again rises to its previous levels all the gods withhold their bounty from humans, and famine and drought reign. But this plan is also foiled by Enki who “accidentally” causes humans to get hold of fish to eat.

Thoroughly cheesed off at the humans (not to mention Enki) Enlil decides to annihilate all the humans by means of a flood. Enki secretly warns Atrahasîs, who builds a huge boat. Atrahasîs explains this action to the town elders by saying that he was fleeing because of the enmity between his personal god Enki and Enlil. He loads all kinds of animals and his family. The storm lasts 7 days and 7 nights. Atrahasîs gives thanks for being saved by means of a sacrifice, and all the gods, who had gone hungry after the destruction of all humans (since offerings disappeared with humankind) again have nourishment.

In order to prevent humans from becoming a nuisance to the gods again Enki and Nintur come up with forms of birth control. Gods being gods, the birth control takes the form of:

• a supply of barren women,
• a demon (Pashittu) who kills children at birth, and
• new categories of priestesses prohibited from having children.

Better than wholesale destruction of all humans I guess …

Notes:

• Enlil equals “force”: he is the power in “growing weather”, administrator of earth and humans, and also the storm – he is capable of violence and destruction.
• Enki equals “cunning: he is the rival of Ninhursaga, one of the three ruling gods, the others being An and Enlil. He “persuades, tricks or evades to gain his ends”. Enki “personifies the numinous powers in the sweet waters in rivers and marshes or rain”.

The Flood in the Gilgamesh epic

The epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of the hero Gilgamesh and his beloved friend Enkidu, and the former’s search for immortality. Apparently there is a historical figure behind Gilgamesh, the ruler of the city of Uruk (Erekh in the Bible), circa 2600 BCE. The Third Dynasty of Ur celebrated Gilgamesh as their ancestor, and its court poets waxed lyrical about him around 2100 BCE. What Thorkild Jacobsen calls “the Gilgamesh Epic proper” dates back to 1600 BCE. It was written in Akkadian, and was preserved in copies dating back to 600 BCE, found in Ashurbanipal’s Nineveh library.

Gilgamesh journeys to the island of his ancestor Utanapishtim, in search of eternal life after his friend Enkidu dies. Utanapishtim tells him that he was warned about the coming of the flood by his lord Ea, and built an ark. Also in the ark, and saved from the waters, were his family and paired animals. Afterwards the gods bestowed immortality on Utanapishtim, grateful that he saved humanitity and the animals from extinction. Gilgamesh is terribly disappointed since Utanapishtim’s story means that his immortality was the result of a set of circumstances that won’t recur. After further adventures Gilgamesh accepts his mortality.

Notes

• Thorkild says that textual evidence suggests that the flood story was not originally part of the Gilgamesh epic.
• The Gilgamesh story features a serpent that steals the plant of rejuvenation.

Stories summarised and quotes taken from The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion, by Thorkild Jacobsen.

The Greek version of the flood

According to Wikipedia the most detailed version of this story is to be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE).

The flood is sent by Zeus to destroy evil humankind, who indulges in human sacrifice and cannibalism. The Greek Noah is Deucalion, son of Prometheus (who stole fire form the gods), who builds an ark after being warned by his father. He and his wife Pyrrha sail around for nine days and nine nights, and land on mount Parnassus. In this myth the earth is populated by means of an act of magic. Deucalion and Pyrrha are granted a wish, and wish for the earth to be repopulated. They are instructed to throw stones over their shoulders, and these become men (from Deucalion’s stone) and women (from Pyrrha’s stone), who repopulate the earth.

Similar to the Bible flood myth, in which the descendants of Noah give rise to for all the OT nations, the descendants of Deucalion himself become the different Greek tribes.

No animals are saved in this form of the story.

~ by tamfuwing on May 7, 2008.