The Flood ... Mesopotamia: Atrahasis and Utanapishtim, the Mesopotamian Noah. 4 / 4 
By Maximilian Lormier
Looking through the flood myths.
The story of the biblical Flood was never really challenged until the discovery of the tablets from Nineveh. Once translated into English by George Smith in the late nineteenth century, the flood of the epic of Gilgamesh drew a great theological upheaval in which the religious authorities did not expect. Given all the issues that arose, the Vatican chose to remain silent. Today the debate seems to have found a way out. Many other stories of the Old Testament are found in the Mesopotamian world as the stories of the Tower of Babel and the mixture of languages, so it is clear that the Flood of Yahweh is a story influenced by the deluges of the god Enlil in the stories and Atrahasis Utanapishtim .
Archaeologists, gnawed by doubt and hoping to find traces of the Flood, rushed to Iraq to find stratigraphies corroborating the statements of various myths. That Leonard Woolley at Ur that met the bottom of a deep trench stratigraphy which showed the traces of a great flood. Then we discovered in other cities Kish, Uruk, Lagash or Shuruppak. Each of archaeologists interpreted differently, but dating concordèrent all around the beginning of the third millennium. However, it is strictly impossible to say that all these tracks all come from the same phenomenon, let alone a flood. How to interpret the
/ the flood (s)?
assumptions regarding the phenomenon of one or more floods can be made today. Archaeological research, topographic and geological field in Iraq today we learned more about what was the country of the great civilizations of Mesopotamia. The name of Mesopotamia, or Mesopotamia - "the land between two rivers" - was given by the Greek historian Polybius to describe this narrow strip of land that runs between and around the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. These rivers, unlike Egypt which is "a gift of the Nile", knew the devastating floods that invaded all farmland and other towns and villages built nearby. Therefore, men learned to domesticate this region, although difficult, the whims of these two rivers by constructing, from the fourth millennium, large canals and dams that allowed cities to obtain water and away from rivers. Unfortunately, large floods occurred regularly and annihilated everything. Also the stories of the flood can be interpreted as the memory of a flood so devastating that it remained in our memories before, over time, as told in the form of myths. One can also see a deluge of stories or Atrahasis Utanapishtim like distant memories where their ancestors saw rivers devastated their homes and crops.
The field observations of precipitation rare but devastating in archaeological layers and in the lives of everyday construction, led some archaeologists to develop another theory, equally credible, that falls due, in time more or less long, large precipitation of rain. Mesopotamian architecture being made based on clay and earth, when the rains were too heavy were absolutely destroying everything.
Today, climate experts and Assyriologists wonder about the possible link between the famous speech of the Flood and the end of the last ice age - Würm glaciation - to -10,000 BC. AD. Thus, the earth gradually warms, the water would rise while the invading Persian Gulf, inexorably destroying human structures. Research in this direction show that the cities of Ur, Uruk and Lagash have been even between the fifth and early third millennium coastal cities, while the sites are now in the middle of the desert. So what is the thesis of global warming - very popular these days - is credible? Perhaps, if we consider that a narrative could be transmitted orally from generation to generation for several millennia, until it finally transcribed on shelf. Nomadic tribes are still being based on oral history to pass on their ancestors. For example, it is as if today we passed off orally why the men who lived there in the Morbihan 4000-5000, years had erected the menhirs of Carnac.
That there were one or more floods, the fact remains that the story of Genesis was very much inspired by both Mesopotamian works, namely the Myth of Atrahasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Atrahasis Utanapishtim and Noah are the first in history, at least literary. The similarities are so striking between the various texts that the question of the origin of such an outpouring of stories, similar in different mythologies and religions of the world pose the problem on another debate: the diffusion of Mesopotamian myths in the world and eastern Mediterranean.
Appendices
flood story in Genesis.
God saw the earth and saw corrupt for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth. God told Noah "For me the end of all flesh is here! For men because the earth is filled with violence, and I will destroy them with the earth (...)
Make yourself an ark of softwood. Me, I am bringing the deluge that is to say the waters on earth, to destroy every creature under heaven breath of life (...)
into the ark, you and with you, your son, your wife and your son women. Of every living thing of all flesh, you introduce a couple in the ark, to keep alive with thee there is a male and a female! (...)
Seven days passed and the flood waters swamped earth. (...)
The rain poured down on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. (...)
Ark rested on Mount Ararat. (...) It
sent forth a raven which flew to and fro until the waters discover land. Then he sent the dove (...) But the dove found no place to put the paw (...)
(Noah) dropped again the dove from the ark. On the evening she returned to him, and now she had to spout a fresh olive branch! Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. He waited another seven days and sent forth the dove did not return to him. Myth
Atrahasis.
Twelve hundred years had not passed
That territory is expanded and the population multiplied.
Like a bull, as the country gave voice
the god-king was bothered by the noise.
"The rumor of humans is now too loud
I can not sleep with this racket! So order that their
come Epidemic (...) And
Enki, reopening the mouth
spoke again to the gods, his brothers
"Why do you want to link me to an oath?
Can I bring my hand against creatures? And that
Deluge you speak,
What's this? I do not know!
Does this happen to me? (...)
Jette low your house, you build a boat!
Turn away from your property,
To save your life!
The boat that you should build (...)
And let loose the flood, The Curse
passed like the war on men!
Nobody saw no one: No
was discernible in this carnage! (...) The roar of the flood
alarmed even the gods. (...) So
Nintu she moaned, her excitement
Exhaling,
And the gods, with it deplored the earth.
got drunk with despair,
The goddess had a thirst for beer (...) It
(Atrahasis) scattered to the four winds, all that was the boat, then served a meal
-sacrificial
To meet the food of the gods, And
he gave them a fumigation Orodes.
breathes in the aroma, the gods around the crowded banquet
like flies!
The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Utanapistim therefore explained to Gilgamesh:
"Gilgamesh, I will tell you a mystery,
I'll tell you a secret of the gods! (...)
It was there that the great god- the desire to cause the Flood. (...)
uruppak O king, son of Ubar-Tutu, Tear down your house
to make you a boat. (...)
The boat that you should make construction equilateral
Will: A
identical width and length. (...)
The next morning, everything I owned, I support:
All I had money,
All I had gold
All I had to specimens of the living beings.
I boarded my family and my entire household,
As large and small animals-wild, and all technicians. (...)
And [Anathema] spent the war as the men.
Nobody saw anyone. (...)
The gods were horrified by the Storm (...)
Six days and seven nights,
squalls, rain-swing, and hurricane flood never ceased to ravage the earth.
the seventh day arrived, Storm, Flood and stoppèrent carnage. (...) It was
Nimush Mount, where the boat landed. (...)
When the seventh day arrived, I took
a dove and let go.
The dove went and returned:
Having seen anything arise where it would returned.
Then I took a swallow and let go:
The swallow went off, then returned:
Having seen anything arise where it was returning.
Then I took a raven and let him go.
The raven went off, but having found the waters receded,
He pecked, he croaked, he snorted, but it came back. (...) And
, down, (I) poured in cymbo the incense burners, cedar and myrtle.
Gods, inhaling the smell,
breathes in the aroma,
crowded like flies around the priest! (...)
