Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
at the 2008 flooding of Burma's heavily populated Irrawaddy River delta, where in some
areas nine out of ten inhabitants drowned overnight. The populated lowlands filled up like
bathtubs when the levees broke. The story of a great flood that submerged the world would
have been perfectly plausible to those living in Mesopotamia's flood-prone estuary, where
everyone was no more than a few generations removed from a locally disastrous flood.
By the time Smith took his ill-fated trip to Syria, he realized that the ancient tablets that
so captivated him recorded multiple versions of the story of a great flood. As it turned out,
Smith discovered portions of at least three flood stories that predated the biblical story by
centuries, if not millennia. The earliest, a Sumerian version, featured Ziusudra as the hero.
The middle version, the Akkadian story of Atrahasis, was later integrated into the third
version, the Gilgamesh epic, with Utnapishtim (Sisit) as the Babylonian flood survivor.
Smith's discoveries showed that Mesopotamian flood stories had a long and complex his-
tory dating back to the frontier between mythology and history.
The earliest version of the flood stories that Smith uncovered preserved an older tale in-
scribed around 1600
BC
. This Sumerian version of the story told of the flooding of Shur-
rupak, a city about 30 kilometers north of Uruk in southern Iraq. Another version divides
history into the time before and after the flood and names Ziusudra as the last pre-flood
king of Shuruppak. Excavations at Shurrupak revealed that a flood did indeed destroy the
city around 2800
BC
. Perhaps the story of a flood that destroyed the city circulated for a
thousand years before it was pressed into clay and baked for posterity.
The surviving fragments of the Sumerian version open with a speech by the supreme god
Enlil telling how he established kings to rule over each of the five Sumerian city-states.
When the capricious gods later decided to destroy mankind, pious Ziusudra overheard from
a sympathetic god that a great flood was coming. So he built a large vessel and rode out
the flood for seven days and nights. After making appropriate offerings to the gods, he was
rewarded with eternal life for having saved humanity.
This even-then ancient story served the political establishment of Mesopotamia by rein-
forcing the divine sanction of kingship and promoting the interests of priests who kept the
temples. Whatever its origin, the Sumerian flood story proved useful enough to the ruling
class that when King Hammurabi conquered Sumer and founded the Babylonian empire
