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Genesis, the Babylonian epic of Atrahasis, and the Gilgamesh flood tablet tell close to the same story: a warned survivor, a vessel, and a household and its animals preserved inside it. The record treats the texts as clearly related. It treats the people in them very differently.

Three Texts, Three Attested Matches

The Genesis flood narrative, the third tablet of Atrahasis, and the eleventh tablet of Gilgamesh are each linked to the other two, and all three links are recorded as attested textual parallels: a warned survivor, a vessel, a deluge, the release of those inside it, and a closing sacrifice, in that order, in all three accounts. The Gilgamesh flood is itself understood as a reworking of the older Atrahasis account, with Utnapishtim standing in the role Atrahasis once held.

The Match Does Not Extend to the People

The record draws a careful line the texts themselves do not draw. Utnapishtim and Noah, and separately Manu and Noah, are recorded as parallel figures, but that parallel is marked debated rather than attested: a shared narrative role across cultures is not the same claim as a shared identity, and the atlas declines to assert a line of descent between the stories that it has not verified. The demonstrable fact is the resemblance between the documents. Whether it reflects one story travelling, or two peoples answering the same danger the same way, is left open.

The same caution appears in an unrelated case. A hymn from the eighth book of the Rig Veda and a passage of the Avesta, sacred to two branches of one family that split apart in antiquity, are recorded as an attested textual parallel, the residue of a shared religious vocabulary from before the two traditions went their separate ways.

Where To Read More

• NoachTorahThe Genesis flood portion, matched to both other tablets
• Tablet XI: The FloodEpic of GilgameshThe Gilgamesh flood tablet, matched to Genesis and to Atrahasis
• Tablet III: The FloodAtrahasisThe older Atrahasis flood tablet the other two are matched against
• NoahPatriarchsHeld as a debated, not attested, parallel to two other flood survivors
• UtnapishtimPatriarchsThe Mesopotamian flood survivor whose parallel to Noah is marked debated
• ManuPatriarchsThe Indian flood survivor whose parallel to Noah is also marked debated
• Mandala 8Rig VedaThe Rig Veda passage matched to the Avesta in the unrelated case