Bible Synapse
Gilgamesh flood tablet
document · 7th century BC · Before the kings · also called Flood Tablet, Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 7th century BC (this copy of the tablet)
- Found
- Kuyunjik, Nineveh (Mosul), Iraq. Part of the British Museum’s Kuyunjik collection, excavated at Nineveh in the mid-19th century; Hormuzd Rassam is credited with finding it. In 1872 George Smith of the British Museum recognised the flood story on it.
- Now
- British Museum, London (K.3375)
- Passages
- Genesis 6:13–22, Genesis 8:6–12, Genesis 8:20–21
What it is
A broken clay tablet in Neo-Assyrian cuneiform holding the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh. In it Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh how the god Ea warned him of a flood sent by the gods, how he built a great boat and took his family, craftsmen and animals on board, and how after the storm the boat came to rest on Mount Nimush. He sent out a dove, a swallow and a raven, then made an offering, and the gods gathered round it.
How it connects to the Bible
The story is a close parallel to Noah’s flood in Genesis 6–9, not evidence for it: a divine warning, a boat holding a family and animals, birds sent out to look for dry land, and a sacrifice whose smell rises to heaven (“the LORD smelled a sweet savour”). The Mesopotamian flood tradition is much older than this copy, going back at least to the Old Babylonian Atrahasis epic.
What scholars debate
Scholars debate how the biblical and Mesopotamian flood stories are related, and by what route the tradition reached the writers of Genesis.