Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood with The Sumerian Flood Story

by W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard and M. Civil

Hardcover with dust jacket. Contains 11 pages of illustrated plates. Previous owner's stamp on ffep and page 41. Limited red pen underlining and markings with yellow highlighting. Slight wear on outer and lower edges of text. Dust jacket slightly faded on front facing and along spine and worn on corners, front edges and ends of spine. Else fair condition

Genres: Mythology, Classics, Poetry, Ancient, Religion, History, Epic

198 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1801

Reviews

[fantine]

I'm counting ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets towards my reading challenge goal idgaf

[Sense of History]

Obviously it is difficult to read the Mesopotamian flood stories without the Biblical story in mind. Yet it is necessary, because the Genesis version is much younger than this one, and there were even older Mesopotamian flood stories in circulation. I leave aside that of Gilgamesh here, which is perhaps the oldest written version.

Atrahasis refers to the wisest man who lived on earth at the time of the flood and who, through the intercession of some gods, succeeded in achieving the survival of man. Still, he's not quite the main character in this story (his personality isn't really fleshed out). It starts much earlier, when only gods existed and no humans yet:
“When the gods were man
they did forced labor, they bore drudgery.
Great indeed was the drudgery of the gods,
the forced labor was heavy, the misery too much:
the seven great Anunna-gods were burdening
the Igigi godsnote with forced labor."
As we could see in some other Mesopotamian stories, there was a hierarchy between the gods, with higher and lower deities and quite a bit of infighting. The Atrahasis story starts from that battle, namely with a rebellion of the lower against the higher gods, because the former had to do all the hard work on earth. After some palaver, a solution was found: the flesh and blood of one of the gods (who sacrificed himself voluntarily) was mixed with clay to form the human race, which would henceforth take on the tasks of those lesser gods (“Let man bear the load of the gods!”).

For me, this is the most beautiful part of this whole story: it describes in detail how those first humans were formed, explicitly stating:
“From the flesh of the god let a spirit remain,
let it make the living know its sign,
lest he be allowed to be forgotten, let the spirit remain."
In other words, the "spirit" of man is a reference to his (partially) divine origin. Is a more classical humanistic reference possible?

What follows also is a classic tale: humans reproduce too quickly, causing a commotion on Earth that keeps the supreme god Ellil from sleeping; he sends a series of succeeding plagues to earth, but through the intercession of the rival god Enki and his human disciple Atrahasis, humans overcome the plagues. In this phase there is a wonderful, crescendo repetition in the description of the suffering of the people.

In the end, Ellil convinces other gods to bring a real deluge over the earth, but Enki again manages to save the day by having Atrahasis build an ark with all living things in it. Ellil is forced to compromise: from now on, death will control the number of people. This is where the story ends abruptly.

Just like in The Descent of Ishtar: both the Sumerian and Akkadian versions, this again is a nice homogeneous story, although there are regularly missing passages (which are no longer legible on the clay tablets). It is also a beautiful myth that explains two basic existential phenomena: the mortality of men and their fate to bear hard labour, and also, at a lower level, it prescribes a code of ethics, namely to follow the will of the gods.

We know this story through clay tablets from the early Babylonian period (ca 1650 BCE), but also from the Neo-Assyrian period (7th century BCE), which indicates its enormous popularity, over a very long period. It has long been a foregone conclusion that the biblical story of the flood was inspired by this Mesopotamian myth.

[Marc]

One of the oldest and most classic Mesopotamian flood stories, probably written around 1650 BCE (at least those are the oldest cuneiform tablets found to date). In the Gilgamesh story, which is much older, the Deluge is only part of the whole cycle, here the Deluge stands alone, as the outcome of an extensive preceding development. I was particularly struck by the very poetic formulations and the essentially humanistic slant of the story. More on that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Cynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anu and his familial band of Anunnaki gods come to Earth to load up resources into their transports. So it seems. In the story, the gods widen rivers Tigris and Euphrates and are "counting years of loads." So far I like these gods much more than the Olympian gods--engaging in occupations of engineering and mining along with maintaining households/palaces, doing intense committee work. In this flood story, drama ensues. Yet the personalities never devolve into Olypian squabbles. Better quality gods. I look forward to reading other selections from Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, including The Epic of Gilgamesh.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Proof that God is a plagiarist.

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

How am I supposed to rate ancient epic poetry lol

[John Greer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Epic of Atrahasis:

Gods: "Working like hoi polloi sucks!"

Other gods: "Working like what?"

Other other gods: "Hey, that's an idea! What if there were hoi polloi to do the work?"

*creates mankind*

Man: *does work but makes too much noise*

The gods: "God damn it! Getting pretty tired of all the racket these assholes are making..."

*kills all mankind in a flood except a lucky dude, his family, and some animals*

[Chandler Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very neat to read a very ancient (but very fragmented) Mesopotamian creation/flood story. I read this out of interest of understanding Genesis in its literary and cultural context as similarities between the Genesis 1-6, this story, and the Epic of Gilgamesh are extremely evident. Yet, the differences between this Epic and Genesis are also striking. The lower gods create the world and grow very tired of their work, so they complain to the great gods to create humans who can take over this workload. Eventually, the gods grow annoyed by the noise of humans so the supreme god Enlil decides to wipe out humanity with a flood. Atrahasis (the Noah-like figure) alone is spared because the gods grow hungry and need someone to supply them with food. An ark is built so that Atrahasis may survive the flood. This story was written in the 17th century BCE. It is an eye-opening depiction of Mesopotamian understandings of the gods as extremely needy and self-centered—very different from the God of the Bible. I would recommend this to anyone interested in classic works.

[Gavin White · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in-depth scholarly work on the Flood story in Mesopotamia. The thorough introduction gives a brief resume of the myth and its sources.
The major part of the book is a translation of the Akkadian Atrahasis myth which is the most complete version of the flood story. It is useful to have an alternative version to that provided in the more accessible account in Stephanie Dalley's 'Myths from Mesopotamia'.
Beyond the Old Babylonian version of the story this book also gives you different versions of the story - the authors present the much later Assyrian recension of the story as well as various other fragments hailing from different eras and locations. As an added bonus, the final chapter (written by Migual Civil) gives the Sumerian account of the story.
Rounded off with philological notes, bibliography and a full Akkadian glossary, this very informative volume constitutes a valuable resource for further studies.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is meant primarily for scholars of Middle Eastern antiquity, and not knowing Akkadian myself, there is much in it I cannot comment on. However, the book not only gives a line-by-line translation of the Atrahasis Epic, it also tells what parts came from what tablets, where translations are problematical, where there are plays on Akkadian words, etc. It also gives a prose retelling of the story which, although not particularly literary, is useful for those who don't want the distraction of missing lines and parts of lines which litter the main text. Finally, it includes translations of and background info on Berossus and the Sumerian flood story (the latter by M. Civil) which are the most complete I have seen. My main complaint is that it would be nice to have some indication in translations showing which lines have notes about them.

[Liam]

Fascinating ancient human origin story. Some serious parallels with the Biblical account here. Humans created from clay (though a god was sacrificed and blood was mixed with the clay in order to create them). Also a flood narrative with some striking similarities is included.

However even more striking when comparing this to the biblical narrative are the differences. The biblical story looks to be a polemic against some narratives here, such as: humanity created to image God rather than be the gods slaves as in this narrative, monotheism vs polytheism, the flood as an act of Justice for human violence and murder vs the flood as an act of an annoyed member of the divine assembly who can’t sleep because of the human racket.

Interesting to read them side by side.

[Ahmed A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! I greatly appreciated the explanations as well as the philological notes at the end. I would have liked it better if the distinctions between the versions mentioning Utnapishtim and Ziusudra were made a bit clearer, but nevertheless they are definitely mentioned in the book and if anyone wants a clearer idea they may easily consult the many other literary and video sources which explicate all these versions.

[Ethan Hulbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now THIS flood myth is great. I'm jumping ahead in history here quite a bit from the Sumerian flood myth, because this one was written far later when Hammurabi's great-grandson was in power - so, well after the Amoritization of Sumer and surrounding regions. However, it's pretty obviously based on the Sumerian myth, with just a lot of extra flavor, and it's likely that it's much older than this specific writing date.

This story is great. The high gods create the low gods to do the work, the low gods get tired of doing the work and have the high gods create humans to do the work instead. (This is Enki's idea - he's the god of wisdom. "En" is "king", and "Enki" is "king of earth.")

Interestingly, when the humans are created, it takes the sacrifice of a god with good sense, We-Ilu, to create them. His blood is mixed with the clay of the Earth, which I think is a fantastic origin story. The blood of the god of sense, empowering Earthen beings meant to labor. Put together specifically by a mother god. It's very poetic.

Humans do the work, but are noisy as hell and multiply a lot (the concept of death does not yet exist in this universe). Enlil, the king of gods (name literally meaning "king of air"), gets annoyed, and sends a drought, then pestilence, then famine, each time to reduce the number of us noisy buggers. With each catastrophe, though, Enki helps humans get through.

Enlil has finally had enough and makes all the gods swear an oath to not interfere in his next big catastrophe for the humans. Enki has no choice but to swear to not tell the humans, so instead, he just talks to a wall, in a dream, that he gives to a human, Atrahasis. Convenient loophole!

Then the whole flood happens, Atrahasis and the animals survive it, the gods realize they're hungry because there's no one left to bring sacrifices or do any work, so they decide to let Atrahasis live despite his rebellion.

But the gods install new rules to help with the human noise problem going forward: the idea that humans will now die, the celibacy of priests and nuns, less women giving birth, and - oh yeah - a she-demon that is the attributed cause of all infant mortality. Baby deaths. The end!

A pretty fun and wild story that combines human creation with the flood. Big fan of this version.

[Ava · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to give a rating to such an old text. I guess 3 stars? A polytheistic flood myth is very interesting because the decision to flood is not unilateral, unlike in the Hebrew Bible. Good story.

[RetroHaven5976 · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazingly undeniable connection to the Christian account of the flood.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping written account from the "fertile crescent" Mesopotamia of the environmental and social costs of population growth and forcing a working class into unsustainable agricultural practices.

[Adrián P. C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐ OK/Good.

[Leah Markum · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a three tablet 1700 B.C.E. flood story that would later get incorporated into other Babylonian and Abrahamic religion origin stories. In this case, the Akkadian gods spend the first tablet laboring over the creation of the world and create humans to "carry the load" of maintaining the world. However, in tablet two the population explodes, and Enlil becomes the god who wants to kill off humans while Enki is the god who tells Atrahasis to destroy his home and build a ship. The third tablet is the story of life surviving the flood. Tablet one is mostly intact while tablets two and three have a lot of damage, so most of what historians know about the story is extrapolated from myths built from this one.

Standard with reading ancient literature, I enjoyed the adventure of being an amateur historian by reading the original in as far as an English translation of the original, but otherwise these type of stories aren't exactly enticing.

[· · Rating 4 out of 5]

(12 March, 2015)

Fantastic, fantastic and more fantastic! Really fun to read about Uta-Napishtim (of 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' fame) again, here called Ziusudra, a reference to Shuruppak was also well received.

Noah's flood (and Deucalion's flood and... you get it, right?) and Zeus, Poseidon and Hades' division of Earth is evidently inspired by this - so awesome! By the way, are we that noisy?

(note to self) Read more Mesopotamia sh... stuff!