An Akkadian epic in which the gods, disturbed by an overpopulated and noisy humanity, move from plague to famine and finally to a great flood to silence it. Warned by the god Enki, the wise man Atrahasis builds a boat and survives, and the gods afterward accept permanent limits on human fertility and lifespan in place of destruction.
Facts
Text
Source TextThe Atrahasis Epic, three tablets, Old Babylonian recension, translated in Dalley 2000 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteAssyriologists read the Gilgamesh flood account, Tablet Eleven, as a later borrowing of the Atrahasis flood narrative, with Utnapishtim standing in for Atrahasis, evidence used to trace how far Mesopotamian flood tradition predates its better known telling. 1 History
Historical NoteThe Old Babylonian tablets naming a scribe and a regnal date place the surviving copy in the reign of Ammi-saduqa, seventeenth century BC, centuries older than the Gilgamesh flood tablet that later absorbed the same story. 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeScholars are divided on whether the epic's opening rebellion of junior gods against forced labor reflects a real memory of Mesopotamian corvee labor or is a literary device invented to explain humanity's creation. 1 Meaning
Central MotifDivine population control escalating to a flood that only a divinely warned survivor escapes 1 Sources
Primary SourceThe standard text is reconstructed from Old Babylonian tablets held in the British Museum, supplemented by later Assyrian fragments, with no single manuscript preserving the whole poem. 1 Connections
Associated With
Enki, Deities Source Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and OthersStephanie Dalley
Enlil, Deities Source Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and OthersStephanie Dalley
Belongs to Tradition
Source Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and OthersStephanie Dalley
Related To
Shared Myth-Motif
Canonical Ancient Near Eastern to Biblical flood-narrative comparison; both already carry a related-to edge to The Flood of Utnapishtim, and this closes the comparative triangle between the three.
Sources
1. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others
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