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Flood Tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh
7th century BC
Tablet XI of the 'Standard Babylonian' version of the 'Epic of Gilgamesh', recovered from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, preserves the earliest surviving flood narrative in world literature. Composed from older Sumerian originals reaching back to around 2100 BC, the cuneiform text recounts how the wise Utnapishtim, warned by the god Ea, builds a great ship and survives a deluge that destroys humankind. George Smith's 1872 decipherment of this very tablet at the British Museum stunned Victorian Europe by showing that the story of Noah's Flood had an ancient Mesopotamian prototype — a turning point for biblical studies and archaeology alike.
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