The Ark Earlier than Noah: Uncover the Historical Flood Myths That Got here Earlier than the Bible

The Lord stated to Noah, there’s going to be a floody, floody; then to get these chil­dren out of the mud­dy, mud­dy; then to construct him an arky, arky. This a lot we heard whereas toast­ing marsh­mal­lows across the camp­fireplace, no less than if we grew up in a cer­tain mod­ern Protes­tant tra­di­tion. As adults, we might or might not consider that there ever lived a person known as Noah who constructed an ark to save lots of all of the world’s inno­cent ani­mal species from a sin-cleans­ing flood. However except we’ve tak­en a deep dive into historic his­to­ry, we prob­a­bly don’t know that this espe­cial­ly well-known Bible sto­ry was­n’t the primary of its par­tic­u­lar sub­style. As defined in the Hochela­ga video above, there are even previous­er glob­al-del­uge tales to be reck­oned with.

In truth, one such fable seems within the previous­est recognized work of lit­er­a­ture in human his­to­ry, the Epic of Gil­gamesh. “In it, the god Ea learns of this divine flood, and secret­ly warns the people about this com­ing dis­as­ter,” says Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny. Thus knowledgeable, the king Utnapish­tim builds an enormous cor­a­cle, a form of cir­cu­lar boat “used to nav­i­gate the rivers of Mesopotamia for cen­turies.”

Like Noah, Utnapish­tim brings his fam­i­ly and a number of ani­mals aboard, and after rid­ing out the worst of the storm, finds that his craft has come to relaxation on a moun­tain­high. Additionally like Noah, he then sends birds out to seek out dry land. However ulti­mate­ly, “the sto­ry takes a wierd flip: as a substitute of being happy, the gods are indignant,” although Ea does step in to take respon­si­bil­i­ty and be sure that Utnapish­tim is reward­ed.

There are oth­er ver­sions with oth­er gods, floods, and ark-builders as nicely. In the Reli­gion for Break­quick video simply above, reli­gious stud­ies schol­ar Andrew Mark Hen­ry com­pares the Bib­li­cal sto­ry of Noah and the Utnapish­tim episode of the Epic of Gil­gamesh with the “Sumer­ian flood sto­ry” from the sec­ond mil­len­ni­um BC and the two-cen­turies-old­er “Atra­ha­sis epic.” All of those ver­sions have a great deal in com­mon, not least the exec­u­tive deci­sion by an exas­per­at­ed excessive­er being (or beings) to wipe out nearly complete­ly the human­i­ty they them­selves cre­at­ed. Iron­i­cal­ly, we mod­erns are like­ly to have first encoun­tered this story of god­ly wrath and sub­se­quent mass destruc­tion in mild­coronary heart­ed, even cheer­ful pre­sen­ta­tions. Whether or not historic Sume­ri­ans additionally sang about it in youth teams, no clay pill has but revealed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Minimize-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Learn the Curi­ous Edi­tion On-line

Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Northrop Frye Educate­es “The Bible and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture”: All 25 Lec­tures Free On-line

A Map of All of the Coun­tries Males­tioned within the Bible: What The Coun­tries Had been Known as Then, and Now

Isaac Asimov’s Information to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Information to the World’s Most Well-known E-book

Did the Tow­er of Babel Actu­al­ly Exist?: A Take a look at the Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence

The Epic of Gil­gamesh, the Outdated­est-Identified Work of Lit­er­a­ture in World His­to­ry

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.