Ancient Stories Of The Flood :: essays research papers

Stories of a primeval make full tide exist in on the whole parts of the world, virtually every set-back of the human race has traditions of a Great Flood that destroyed all of mankind, except one family.The closest parallel to the Biblical story of the flood occurs in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, our fullest version of which is furnished by an Akkadian recension prepared, in the 7th century B.C. for the great library of King Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. The story itself is farthest older. We have fragments of versions dating as much as a 1000 years earlier, and we possess also portions of a Summerian archetype. In the Mesopotamian version the gods obviously displeased with the evils of mankind decided to destroy it by means of a great flood. Ea, the god of wisdom and subtlety, was privy to their council and warned Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah, of the coming disaster. Utnapishtim was told to habitus a ship thirty cubits long and thirty cubits wide. Provision it and e ntrust in it specimens of every living thing. Then to board it with his family and possessions and launch it on the waters.For six twenty-four hour periods and nights the wind and flood raged. On the seventh day the flood abated. Everything, including mankind, had turned to mud and clay. Utnapishtim move turn up a go down on the seventh day but it came back. He then sent out a swallow, but it came back. Finally he sent out a raven. The raven, however, saw that the waters had receded it found food, and started to caw and wallow in the mud it never came back. Eventually the ship grounded on Mount Nisir. Utnapishtim, comprehend that the flood had receded, disembarked and set out an offering for the gods.Enil, &8220Lord of the underworld, was very huffy when he saw that Utnapishtim had been spared. He was soon calmed by the other gods and gave his arouse to Utnapishtim and his wife by granting them the gift of immortality and transferring them to a remote island.Older versions, o f which precisely fragments survive, tell virtually the same story, though the gun is sometimes called Atrahasis, or &8220Superwise, rather than Utnapishtim. In Western Asia the legend of the flood is of Summerian origin, and is now cognise from the excavations at Kish and Ur to have been based upon an historical catastrophe. In the Summerian version the hero is named Ziusudra, &8220the long lived.