The Flood Tablet Room 55
Copyright British Museum
The Flood tablet – A piece of the world’s oldest literature
Noahs-ark
There are many oral traditions in the world telling of a great flood that covered the earth. One of these versions is found on the Flood Tablet of Gilgamesh
This Assyrian tablet tells the story of a plan by the gods to destroy the world by means of a great flood. Ut-napishti, like the biblical Noah, builds a huge boat to rescue his family and every type of animal.
Mesopotamian poets had told versions of the story of the flood for 2,000 years before this tablet was written for King Ashurbanipal’s Library. This version is part of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh – the first great epic of world literature. Gilgamesh is a hero who sets off on a quest for immortality. He battles with monsters and ultimately must confront his own nature and mortality.
Epic-of-Gilgamesh
One of the most remarkable things about clay tablets is that they survive at all. Had the Assyrians written with parchment, nothing would have remained of this great library. This means that we have not just the words of the texts, but also the very clay manuscripts on which those texts were originally written.
Cuneiform-writing
- The Flood Tablet is part of a collection of tablets which record the
ancient Epic of GUgamesh. The epic tells the story of Gilgamesh, a
legendary ruler, and his search for immortality. It is the longest
literary work in ‘Akkadian’ which was the language of the Babylonian
and Assyrian people.
- The Assyrian King, Ashurbanipal (reigned 668-627BC), collected
thousands of cuneiform tablets in his palace at Nineveh. They
recorded legends and scientific information. The tablet of the Epic
was found there in 1853.