Pre-Christian Versions of Noah's Ark
Flood Myths Are Common in Many Ancient Civilizations
The story of Noah’s ark is one of the best known in the Christian world. Told in Genesis 6–9, the tale describes how God, unhappy with the wickedness of humans, decides to send a great flood to wipe out his creation. Noah is the only man warned of the impending disaster, and at God’s command builds a boat in which he installs his family and a pair of every animal, so that the world can be repopulated once the catastrophe has passed. Noah survives the flood, lands on Mount Ararat, makes a sacrifice to God to show his appreciation, then releases the animals. The apocryphal 1st Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees (both from the 2nd century BCE) contain elaborations and additions to the myth; even within the Biblical canon the story contains contradictions — for example, Genesis 7:17 describes the flood as lasting forty days, while 7:11 and 8:13 give its duration as one year; additionally, there are conflicting passages about the number of animals (pairs vs. groups of seven) and the source of the flood waters (below the earth vs. rainfall) — but the core of the story is familiar to most Westerners.
Several ancient cultures in existence at the same time or after the appearance of the Bible — including the Norse, Irish, Islamic, Hopi, Australian aborigine, and Aztec — have flood stories very similar to the Noah tale. There are several other cultures, however, whose deluge myths precede the Bible’s by a significant margin.
Sumer
The oldest recorded occurrence of the flood myth dates from roughly 2800 BCE. Called the Eridu Genesis, the fragmentary tale describes a Sumerian priest-king named Ziusudra who builds a boat at the command of a god, Enki, who has warned that the gods plan to destroy life on earth with a flood. The deluge lasts seven days, after which Ziusudra makes a sacrifice to the gods An and Enlil, receives immortality, and sets about repopulating the world. There has been speculation that this particular story, as well as many other flood myths, derives from an actual event — the ancient Sumerian King List mentions a catastrophic flood that occurred in 2900 BCE — but so far there is no ironclad evidence supporting this view.
Babylonia
Aside from the Noah story, probably the best known flood myth derives from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, dating from around 2000 BCE. Utnapishtim is warned by an earth god, Ea, that a flood will destroy all life. He builds a 180-foot boat and fills it with pairs of every living species (some versions say the boat contains Utnapishtim’s family and his cattle). Utnapishtim is also granted immortality after surviving the disaster. Another Babylonian myth, the Epic of Atrahasis, dates from around 1640 BCE and is very similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Greece
The Greeks have three known flood myths. The Ogygian flood — named after the mythical king Ogyges of Attica — was told by Plato in his Laws, Book III and was supposed to have occurred 10,000 years before Plato’s time. There is also the flood of the Deucalion, told in The Library by Apollodorus, and the flood of Dardanus, told by Dionysus of Halicarnassus. Apollodorus also writes a version in his Theogony, in which Deucalion, son of Prometheus, escapes a nine-day flood by floating on the waters in a chest.
India
Though it is unknown when the story actually originated, Hindu tradition holds that their flood myth dates from around 3100 BCE, which if true would make the Hindu account the oldest known flood story. In the Indian version, from the Matsya Purana, Manu rescues a fish from a river; the fish grows to enormous size and warns Manu that in seven days a flood will come and wipe out all life. Manu builds a boat and the fish tows him safely to a mountaintop, where he populates the earth using “seeds of life” he has brought along.
Deluge Tablet from Epic of Gilgamesh
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Deluge of Deucalion
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