Babylonian flood stories

Says God tells Noah to make an ark “300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high” with “lower, middle, and upper decks” (Gen 6:15–16), to enter it with his family, and to bring “two of every living creature” (6:18–19).

In Rogers’s translation of the Eleventh Tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, Ut-napishtim tells how the great gods resolved “to send a flood” on Shurippak. Ea warns him: “Pull down thy house, build a ship”, “Bring living seed of every kind into the ship”. He divides the ship “in seven parts” and its interior “into nine parts”. Rogers also prints another recension, in which Atra-khasis asks Ea to mark out a plan of the ship, and a fragment dated to Ammizaduga’s eleventh year, “ca. 1800 B. C.” In Berossus, Kronos warns Xisuthros in a dream to build a boat and board it with kin, friends and animals “both winged and four-footed”. King reads a Sumerian version in which Ziusudu, a king, is warned of a flood “to destroy the seed of mankind”, while in the Epic Ut-napishtim is “given no royal nor any other title”. These are their views. For earlier Babylonian background, see note.historical.Gen.3.1-Gen.3.24.ane-background.

Uncertain These stories share with Gen 6 a warning, a vessel and living things kept alive, and King finds in Ziusudu “a close parallel to the piety of Noah”. How the traditions relate is open. No dependence is claimed, no lean is taken, and this background does not fix the meaning of Gen 6.