What are the similarities between Noah’s ark and the Epic of Gilgamesh?

A flood written in clay

In 1872 George Smith, a self-taught engraver working at the British Museum, was reading broken clay tablets from Nineveh, in today’s Iraq. On one he found a ship that came to rest on a mountain and a dove sent out to look for land. It was the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, copied for the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the 7th century BC. In it an old man, Utnapishtim, tells Gilgamesh how he survived the flood and became immortal.

The story is older than that copy. An earlier Babylonian poem, Atrahasis, tells the same flood on tablets from the 1600s BC, and a Sumerian version calls the hero Ziusudra. All of these are older than any surviving manuscript of Genesis; the oldest, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, are centuries younger than the tablet from Nineveh. When Genesis itself was written is debated.

Point by point

1. The warning. The god Ea, sworn to secrecy, whispers the plan through the reed wall of Utnapishtim’s hut: tear down your house, build a boat. In Genesis God speaks to Noah directly, gives him the plan and promises a covenant (Genesis 6:13–18).
2. The reason. Tablet XI gives none; Atrahasis blames human noise that keeps the god Enlil awake. Genesis says “the earth was filled with violence,” and God grieves (Genesis 6:6, 11).
3. The boat. Utnapishtim builds a cube, 120 cubits each way, seven levels high, sealed with bitumen. Noah’s ark is a long box, 300 by 50 by 30 cubits, sealed with pitch (how big it was).
4. Who goes aboard. Utnapishtim loads gold and silver, his kin, craftsmen and animals, and hands the boat to a boatman. Noah takes eight people and the animals, and “Yahweh shut him in” (Genesis 7:16).
5. The storm. In Gilgamesh the gods themselves cower like dogs against the wall of heaven, and the storm blows for six days. In Genesis rain falls forty days and the waters rule for 150.
6. The landing. Utnapishtim’s boat sticks fast on Mount Nimush. Noah’s rests on “Ararat’s mountains” (Genesis 8:4).
7. The birds. Utnapishtim sends a dove and a swallow, which come back, then a raven, which does not. Noah sends a raven, then a dove three times, until she stays away (Genesis 8:7–12).
8. The sacrifice. The gods smell the offering and gather like flies around it. In Genesis “Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma” (Genesis 8:21).
9. The sign. The mother goddess lifts her necklace of lapis lazuli and swears never to forget these days. God sets his bow in the cloud (Genesis 9:13).
10. The ending. Utnapishtim and his wife are made like gods and sent to live far away, at the mouth of the rivers. Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk and dies at 950 (Genesis 9:20–29).

Did Genesis borrow from Gilgamesh?

The match is too close for chance, and nearly all historians think the stories are related. The Mesopotamian flood traveled far: a piece of the Gilgamesh epic even turned up at Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, on a tablet from about 1200 BC. Most scholars think Genesis knew this tradition and retold it with one God, a moral reason and a promise to every living thing. Many traditional readers see it the other way: two memories of one real flood, with Genesis the faithful one. Either way, Genesis is no copy. Its God is not frightened by his own flood, and he ends it by binding himself:

I will establish my covenant with you: All flesh will not be cut off any more by the waters of the flood. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.