The Great Flood- Mesopotamian EventEvent

The Noise

After creating humanity from clay and divine blood to serve as laborers, the gods discovered that humans multiplied fast. Their numbers produced a clamor that disturbed Enlil's rest, and he demanded silence.

In the Atrahasis Epic, Enlil made three attempts to reduce the population before resorting to the flood. He sent plague first: Namtar, the god of disease, struck the mortal world. But the sage Atrahasis, counseled by Enki, instructed the people to cease worshipping all gods except Namtar, concentrating their offerings on the plague deity alone. Flattered and sated, Namtar relented. Enlil then cut off the rains, bringing drought and famine so severe that people sold their children into servitude. Again Enki directed offerings to Adad, the rain god, and the suffering eased. After each failed attempt, Enlil's fury intensified.

He pronounced his final decree: total annihilation by flood. Every god was bound by oath to warn no mortal of what was coming.

The Reed Wall

Enki did not break his oath. He spoke to a wall.

"Reed wall, reed wall! Brick wall, brick wall! Hear, O reed wall! Attend, O brick wall! Tear down the house, build a boat! Abandon wealth, seek life! Spurn property, save the living!" The words appear in both the Atrahasis Epic and the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic. Atrahasis was listening on the other side. He understood perfectly.

In the Gilgamesh version, the flood hero is Utnapishtim of Shuruppak, and Ea provides detailed specifications for the vessel: it must be perfectly cubic, with equal dimensions in every direction, divided into compartments and sealed with bitumen. Utnapishtim enlists the entire community to build it, feasting the workers with wine and beer as though celebrating a festival. To the curious townspeople he explains that he has fallen out of favor with Enlil and must leave by sea. A half-truth. He loaded the vessel with his family and the animals of the field.

The Storm

When the appointed hour arrived, Adad unleashed the storm. The Anunnaki gods raised their torches, setting the land ablaze with a ghastly flare. Adad's thunder reached to the heavens. The storm tore the land apart like a clay pot being smashed. Daylight turned to a darkness so total that people could not see one another.

The deluge terrified even the gods who had ordained it. They retreated to the heaven of Anu, the highest tier of the cosmos, and cowered against its walls like dogs. Ishtar screamed like a woman in labor: "How could I speak evil in the assembly of the gods? I ordered war to destroy my people, but are they not my people, for I myself gave birth to them! Now like the spawn of fish they fill the sea!"

For six days and seven nights the south wind drove the flood. On the seventh day the storm subsided. The sea grew calm. Utnapishtim opened a hatch, and daylight fell on his face. He looked out over the water and wept. The landscape was flat as a rooftop. Nothing remained.

The Sumerian Eridu Genesis, the oldest surviving version of the flood, names a different hero: Ziusudra, "He of Long Life." The tablet is badly damaged, but the essential scene survives. After seven days and seven nights the sun god Utu appeared and light returned to the world. Ziusudra opened a window in the boat, prostrated himself before the sunlight, and sacrificed an ox and a sheep.

The Mountain and the Birds

In the Gilgamesh version, the vessel grounds on Mount Nisir. Utnapishtim waits seven days, then releases a dove. It flies out, finds no resting place, and returns. He releases a swallow; it too circles back. Then he releases a raven. The raven sees that the waters have receded. It eats, it circles, it caws. It does not come back.

Utnapishtim disembarks and prepares a sacrifice on the mountaintop, setting up offerings of reed and cedar and pouring a libation. The gods, deprived of human offerings throughout the seven days of destruction, crowded around the sweet smoke. The lords of heaven gathered "like flies" around the burnt offering, desperate for the sustenance they had nearly destroyed forever.

Ea's Rebuke

Enlil arrived at the sacrifice and discovered that humans had survived. He demanded to know which god had broken the oath. Ea stepped forward. He had not broken his oath, he said. He had merely allowed a mortal to perceive the gods' intention through a wall.

But Ea pressed further. "On the sinner lay his sin; on the transgressor lay his transgression!" Let individual wrongdoers suffer for their crimes, but never again annihilate all of life for the failings of some. Send wolves next time, send famine, but not the flood.

Enlil relented. He boarded the vessel and touched the foreheads of Utnapishtim and his wife: "Formerly Utnapishtim was a human being, but now he and his wife have become gods like us." He settled them at the mouth of the rivers, in Dilmun, to dwell in eternal life. New limits were set on humanity to prevent the noise from rising again: some women would be barren, and the demon Pashittu would claim certain infants. Humanity would continue, but within bounds. Death would balance birth. The noise would never reach that pitch again.